Peel Island Mackeral

[aquarius]

Hi Ausfishers......We headed out from Redland bay boat ramp at 6-30 am, our destination the pinnacle at the hole in the wall Peel Island.
Conditions early morning were good with a 10 knot N/W breeze....On our arrival i started jigging for yakkas.....on our last trip we caught heaps but this trip they were very scarce indeed......manage 6 nice ones so out goes the first livey for the day.......15 minutes go by before the ratchet started to click.......i struck hard and for a few seconds connected to something big but guess what the fish went towards the bow and tangled up in the anchor rope...BANG! fight over....oh well next livey please.
The other live baits did get hit but failed to hook up so i decided to try a floating pilchard on a different rod.
first cast was picked up and the line cut through..RAZOR GANG?......out goes the set of ganged hooks with another pilchard and this time the reel screams as a mackeral speeds off towards goat island.......a few minutes latter we boated a nice 70 cm spotted mackeral.
Best squire of the day returned was 30 cms ......that 35 cm keeper always seems to be just out of reach..lol
Midday and the place shut down so time for a new plan of attack.....we headed over towards Dunwhich and then down the inside of Staddie to the Pelican banks.
We encoutered several groups of working tuna on our way south and tried casting lures to them but with no interest shown we decided to press on.
The wind had freshen to 20 knots by the time we reached the banks so we decided to pull the pin and head back home.........very choppy ride accross the bay but hey it sure beats workin..lol
Cheers #Brent.

[Wesley_Pang]

Brent,

Were the Tunas Longtails??

Any Spotties working on the surface??

I'm hoping its going to be a hot mackeral season without the ringnetters.

Thanks for the report.

Wes

[adamleah]

Was out on Tuesday Morn..
Small schools of 5-10 definately Longtails out front of Cleveland Point.
There have been a few of late in drop off in front of Hilliards Creek and even in the corally shallows " 2-3m" behind King Island

Very Finicky .. not keen at all for slugs

Cheers Adam

[vertico]

i noticed some out the front of king island just a week ago
was about to get slug ready and they disappeared
oh well

[vertico]

there is alot of bait in the king island aread atm
they are small hardyheads
so thats what the tuna are rounding up
the biggest hardy head in the schools were around 5 cm
so i think i should try small lures next time

[aquarius]

Wes i think they were long tails but i could be wrong...they looked big fish to me as they broke the surface......the water was very choppy at the time and it was hard to get the boat to drift onto the school...wind pushing all over the place but the right direction.
I was surprised to see so many groups of schools in a close area....Do they always break up into groups like this?...What size slug do you cast?....I was using a 20gram chrome lure.
Cheers Brent

[Wesley_Pang]

Brent,

We were chased Longtails right in Raby Bay about 3-4 months ago. We also played chicken with the Straddie ferry with Longtails busting up in the their path and idiots #??? almost cutting off our fish.

I don't toss metal . I prefer to flyfish for them. We had great success with 4-5cm synthetic Clouser flies(just a small bucktail jig).

When the Tuna have the bait balled up they can feed like there's no tomorrow. Its an AWESOME sight when you see the fish leaping out of the water. You just have to keep at them and experiment sometimes.

Flog the water to a foam.

Wes