Fishing for Spotted Mackerel on the Gold Coast Video

Seaway and Inshore Report Monday 27th December 2010

Conditions

• Wind: NW  5-10  knots
• Preceeding 3 Days Wind : NW & SE 5–15 knots
• Barometer – 1001.9 rising to 1002.2
• Swell: 1.m NE Swell
• Water Clarity 0.1-2m
• Tide : BOM: Low tide at 06.14 am, High tide at 12.41am  ( 0.25-1.43) Actual bottom of tide 03.00am
• Time Fished: 05.30am to 08.30am
• Moon Phase: day before the first quarter.
• Water Temp 23.9-24.4 Degrees C

Notes

Rain Periods, Heavy Overcast. Chocolate brown water in the seaway due to dirty water runoff.  112mm rain in the preceeding 24hrs, 200mm+ in the preceeding 48hrs.  Spotted Mackerel feeding at mermaid reef.

Report

Headed straight down to Mermaid Reef and despite getting out there a bit late(5.30am) the mackerel were around.  It started off a bit slow with just a few surface hits then they just went berserk for a couple of hours.
I've never seen fish feed like that before, one behaviour I did notice towards the end was the baitfish were hiding as close as they could next to the boat while it was sitting still.  As soon as I moved the boat as little as 5 metres away the mackerel would tear into them as the baitfish were suddenly out in the open, almost as if the mackerel were waiting for me to move.  That behaviour happened quite a few times.  Don't know how many fish I landed, I stopped counting after about 15 fish.  I tried poppers for a while and managed 2  spotties on them, lots of hits with no hookups though.
Size was ranging between 65 and 75cm, not huge but heaps of fun regardless.  Lost about 10 lures today though, best lure was a 25gm Gillies baitfish, I used raiders as well but towards the end as they were getting a bit fussy the gillies was definitely the better lure.  At around 8am they stopped feeding on top so I moved back to the seaway.

Had a couple of casts at the seaway at around 8.30am but the water was chocolate brown and there was lots of weed, 2 different tides at once too.  The top layer was running out and the bottom layer was running in.  Would have been better at the top of the tide.