Northern Gold Coasters ?

[thunnus]

agree with everything fisheasy has said, great post. I have done a bit of switch baiting for blacks and sails out of m'bah and the trench and blues out wide of the cape. The one teaser in the water thing is a super big issue, anymore then one and they wont soley focus on one teaser and wont get pissed off.

Like quinny said, deanos article is a good place to start but i feel that in a boat with less than four people it would be pritty tuff with fly. You really need 4 or more. One soley at the wheel, as the boat will be consistantly going in and out of gear for a IGFA legal shot, and you always really want the boat moving forward while the fish is being teased. We had one day wide of the cape, where we knocked the boat out of gear and came to a holt with the fish at the back of the boat. We lost site of him for a moment, and when the skipper looked foward there he was at the bow of the boat waiting for us to catch up with him!!!!

you'll need at least one person on each teaser rod, and the deckie who jumps the non-attacked rod, once finised clearing that line would probably want to grab a spin stick with a live brideled slimey for those fish that are on the teaser but not yet fully switched on. pull out a belly flap and chuck in a livey and watch the fishes colours change!!!!

the angler makes four.

last tip i would give is if you make a cast and the fish vanishes, keep making 5 or 6 blind deep casts, chances are the bugger is still hanging around. We had an instance where we stopped the boat, feed out of bait, lost sight of the fish and after a few moments decided to get underway again. Before we could get the second teaser deployed he was back for another taste.

Its truelly one of the boat exciting forms of fishing with will ever incounter, and its so close to the back of the boat you can just about grab the fish.

Hope you fellas can get out there and do it!

best of luck, Justin

[Smithy]

Just got back from Hervey Bay and watched a heap of raw video of teasing at Jared "Dingo" Boshammer's place. If that doesn't get you thinking about switchbaiting nothing will! The crew they had onboard was Dingo, Bo Jennings (Sally's brother) and Dean Butler. The angler was Tom Evans and skipper was Biggles on the "Allure". They had Stripeys up on the teasers for what seemed minutes and minutes and Tom was able to get multiple casts away on the fish. The fish were coming up as lit up as anything but weren't switching to the fly real good. Worth trying for conventional tackle as well. "Colorado" one of the top private boats down the Gold Coast has now nearly gone all bait and switch. The other benefit is you need less gear. Just a couple of teaser rods which can be anything then either your conventional outfits or fly. I reckon your deep jigging outfits would be perfect. High speed and heavy line to drag the teaers out of the fishes mouth.

[Maxg]

Actually you do not need to tease billfish if you get into the right place, like when they are harrassing bait fish. The first billy, a sail, caught on fly in our waters was done on a free cast to a feeding fish by Ron Pearson back in the early 70"s. I had a cast to a free swimming sail in 1969. It didn't get interested. But teasing is accepted as a way of getting them going. If I could get one I'd prefer it was off a rock, and I'd prefer to use a dh rod in 12' to do it because of casting distance. If one wanted to do something really exotic, I'd hunt one off a rock. Now that would be XFF, big time. Max

[thunnus]

smithy - have you fished m'bah over the last few weeks? If so got any fish yet.

cheers, Justin

[Smithy]

Fished for them two weekends ago for one Billwhacked bait. Keneka got 2, Free Spirit got 1 and dropped 1 and Bluewater IV got 1. Before that I went 3 from 4 in August. Didn't hear of anything last weekend.

[thunnus]

the old boy was out on saturday, doing some bottom bashing out the back of murphs and had a little sail free jump behind the boat. But from other reports sounds pritty slow.

got out wide last wednesday, no billes but got some nice little 'fin up to about 40kg. water about 22.5, not bad for middle of september.

cheers, Justin