There's some nice GT's around at the moment, thanks to the guys for letting me post the pics. March sees the GT's at thier best in the seaway so if you want a quality GT now is the time to target them.
Jonathan got this 63cm Giant Trevally in the seaway yesterday on a 30gram twistie casting into a bustup.
Steve got this 62cm Giant Trevally on a trolled xrd10 just on dusk a couple of weeks ago.
An opportunity arose to fish monday morning in my usual hours so I jumped on it, despite the fact that the wind was still howling from the east, the swell was up nudging 3 metres, it was the bottom of the tide and the weekends rain had once again turned the rivers into a liquid brown torrent. Knowing all that I knew it would be a tough day out on the water but decided to go anyway. Into the seaway at 5am, as expected the water was very dirty with visibilty down to about 30cm. We tried plastics, metals and minnows around the pipeline and walls but didn't even get a hit.
So I decided to try and get some livies for the run in tide, we managed that fairly quickly but only kept half a dozen herring and about the same number of sand mullet in the 20-25cm range as I don't like to keep too many livies incase the fish are not interested on the day. First down was the sand mullet in the hope of a decent jewie in the dirty water. We drifted those things for at least an hour around the walls and pipeline and didn't get a hit so we switched to herring. Now I'll say I haven't been a big fan of using live herring in the seaway up to this point as I think they are a bit small, I've always preferred pike or yellowtail. After today I might use them a bit more often. The first few drifts yielded nothing so we moved to a new spot and dad immediately hooked and landed a nice GT around 50cm. We moved slightly to get a better drift and I picked a small jewie around 50cm. Next drift we had a double hookup and my jewie got chomped on the way up, obviously a few sharks around. Dad landed his, a jewie of around 55cm. We had run out of herring so we motored back and on the second throw with the cast net scored a jackpot of 30+herring.
Back to the seaway we began one of the most awesome sessions I've had, for the next hour and a half nearly every drop was a double hookup on fish. GT's up to 57cm, more small jewies up to 60cm and a lone flathead at 73cm. We lost at least as many as we landed and the sharks got a couple of fish as well. We had a 2m+ whaler follow a jewie to the surface and at the last minute as the fish was 2 metres away from the boat the shark made a last ditch charge to grab him and actually came out of the water... awesome to watch but he missed his meal. The fish of the day came towards the end of the trip when on yet another double hookup, mine took off like a rocket and just kept going, definitely a good fish and far better than anything else landed so far that day. After a solid fight out of the gloom a nice golden trevally materialised, now I've seen a few small specimens caught in the seaway by other boats but this was definitely a first for me and a quality fish at that. After a few more minutes of dogged fighting under the boat I netted a beautiful 64cm Golden Trevally. Definitely fish of the year so far for me. We landed a few more GT's and jewies before we ran out of bait again at around 11am and called it a day. Overall we landed 8 GT's from 50-57cm, 10 jewies from 48-60cm, 1 flathead @73cm and 1 golden trevally at 64cm
Definitely the best day fishing I've had in the seaway so far this year, I think the dirty water helped make the fish less skittish than they usually are and willing to stay on the bite for a longer period. The dirty brown water only stayed around for the bottom half of the run out tide, An hour after the start of the run in green water replaced it and cleaner water was not far offshore towards the top of the tide. Give it a couple of weeks and it should be back to normal. Water temps were aroun 24.5 -24.9 degrees so its dropped a couple of degrees with the rain runoff.
Seaway at 12pm on Saturday 25th February 2012. Looks calmer than it was as there was at least a metre of swell over the pipeline and the north wall was getting smashed by big swells. The upper reaches of the rivers are in minor flood mode with the nerang and coomera rivers all running fast with brown water. With more rain we might be back to where we started from a month ago with dirty brown water. This pic was taken about an hour after the top of the tide and water visibility was around 2 metres so still pretty good.
Into the seaway at 2am we tried fishing for tarpon, no joy on that, in fact nothing whatsoever in the seaway, not a hit or a nudge even at dawn. We tried plastics, metals, popper and minnows in many locations. There's a lack of bait in the seaway at the moment which may be the cause of the problem, there's plenty offshore so we just have to wait until some it makes its way into the seaway.
Disappointed with that we headed offshore as the sun rose and started looking for tuna. We found some just off surfers but the birds were that thick we couldn't get a cast into them without hooking a bird. They went down soon after anyway. We found some more schools inshore from mermaid and I landed 1 mack tuna just over a kilo. Moved around a bit more and found some more fish and after a spirited fight landed a yellowfin tuna around 3 kilos. Been a few years since I've caught a yellowfin and they do not disappoint in the fighting stakes. Chased more schools around unsuccessfully and headed back to the seaway, bby the time we got up there the wind had increased to an uncomfortable 15 knots and it was rough going in my 4.1 poly. We found some bigger schools of striped tuna and landed a couple around the 3 kilo mark, and at that size they go hard. One of them broke the ticker on my drag(bloody shimano's) he took off so fast. We chased them around for a bit longer but they had gone into fussy mode. All in all we landed 5 fish for the day, 1 mackt, 1 yellowfin, 2 striped tuna and 1 whiting I got on a plastic over one of the reefs.
There's plenty of tuna out there now and numbers should increase until the end of march so if you want a tuna and can get out there, get out there on the first good day you can and head south. They were very flighty but with persistance you can get one to hit a slug.
Into the seaway at 5.30pm for an evening fish, the wind was down to about 10kts from the E and the swell was about 1m from ESE. Water temp was around 26-27 dregrees, water visibilty was less than a metre. The dirty water from the floods is still having an effect and only the top half of the tides have reasonable water quality. We started off by working the edges with minnows and didn't take long to get my first fish on a new lure.. a vision 110 +1 (which will now be called a vision 111) A tailor around 40cm which had certainly been having a hard time of it lately going by the wounds he had. We fished on but got nothing else until sunset when I switched to a popper. Picked up a nice tailor around 50cm around the front of the wall, but got nothing else. Went down to the pipeline and saw a few bigeyes feeding on the surface but they only stayed up for a few seconds then were gone. The moon rose as the sun set and with no cloud cover was shining brightly on the water which I don't like for night fishing. We fished on a bit more, did a bit of trolling but caught nothing and called it a night at around 8pm. I'm still not sold on the evening fish yet, I'm yet to have a decent catch compared to the early morning fishes I prefer. I'll give it a few more goes though.
Firstly apologies for the lack of posts so far this year, it has been difficult to get out on the water. As I can no longer get out on the water for my usual time of between 2am and 9am I'll be trying a few different times. Early evening, overnight and might even try a middle of the day fish if the tides are right.
Finally managed to get out for a quick fish this morning, on the water at 2am we were greeted by a stiff 20kt SE breeze just to make things extra difficult. Swell was 1 metre from the East and the seaway was lumpy. Moved into the seaway to have a look around, as its been a few weeks since I was in there and the floods have come through since then I wanted to spend some time sounding around to see where the fish were holding. There were plenty of fish on the sounder in most locations in fact more than I've seen for a while. Started off with ecogear grass minnows on 3/8 oz jigheads and started to work the edges. Didn't take long before dad hooked a big fish which proceeded to make a beeline for the rocks and promptly busted him off. I was next and this time landed a nice bigeye around 55cm, had a few more hits and landed a small stingray but nothing too exciting so we switched to poppers and dad landed another bigeye at around 45cm. Quiet for a while then I tried some trolling with a special rig I'll be trialling over the next few months(more on that one later)had 2 good strikes but hooks pulled on both of them as I was using single hooks. I'll change back to trebles and see how it goes. Anyway dawn arrived and we started working the edges but it was quiet on that front, only a couple of hookups but no fish landed. Dropped some plastics to the bottom and dad got a jewie in the 60's. Saw some fish feeding at the front of the north wall which turned out to be more bigeyes in the 40-50cm range, landed a couple each before we had to leave at 6am.
Water temp was between 25.5 & 25.8 degrees, water quality was ok visbility was about a metre at the top of the tide but its very dirty from the 2nd half of the run out to the 2nd half of the run in. Water colour was a dirty green colour at the top of the tide. Didn't see much bait around, but did notice quite a few eagle rays feeding on bait close to the rocks. We didn't get enough time to try any different techniques today, but there's alot of fish in the seaway at the moment so if you can crack the pattern you may do well.