Broadwater, Seaway and Inshore Report Saturday 2nd September 2012

Conditions were right for a special trip targeting surface feeding jewies in the broadwater on saturday, so we got on the water very early at around 1am.  It only happens a few times a year and its a 50/50 chance that you'll find them but its always worth the effort as sometimes the fish can be quite large.  Indications were good as soon as we arrived at our chosen location and we could hear the telltale thwack of a surface feeding jewie every now and again.   We tried 95mm Owner Tango Dancers at first and managed to get a few hits and I managed to get a small tailor around 20cm but nothing big connected.  On the next drift we switched to vision 110's as they do seem to prefer lures that run shallow.  Sure enough within the first few casts I hooked up  but dropped the fish(thereby setting my tone for the rest of the trip) while dad hooked up on a very good fish which turned out to be a decent jewie at 75cm.  The fish had enhaled the lure headfirst and just the rear of the lure was sticking out of his mouth, unfortunately the back treble got caught on the net during landing and it ended up being ripped out of the lure.  Next drift I hookup up again only to drop the fish(again) and Dad picked up a very fat 52cm tailor.  We had a few more hits and tried a few more different lures but no more hookups after an hour so we headed into the seaway.

Fished around the walls for a bit but got nothing, alot of fish holding in close to wavebreak but they weren't eating.  At dawn we fished around the north wall, After a few casts on the northern side of the wall I saw a dark shape follow the lure to the boat, it looked like a cobia to me at first so I stuck the lure back in and swam the lure to try and get him to eat it, thats when he stuck his head out of the water and I realised it was a seal not a cobia.  Not a big one he was maybe around 80cm long, he stuck around for about 30 seconds before swimming off, wasn't quick enough to get a picture.  Never seen a seal in the seaway before and according to what I've read there aren't any in queensland so either he was very lost or he was an escapee from sea world.

Fishwise we picked up a few small tailor and bonito but it was fairly quiet, almost zero swell.. too calm for my liking.  Had a look around the pipe and wavebreak but didn't see anything interesting.  Headed offshore and about 1km south east of the seaway found a small pack of decent tuna feeding, first cast and I was on, a good fish too his first run had me down the the bottom half of the spool and we had to chase him, unfortunately 10 minutes into the fight the hooks pulled!@!@$!@#$#@%!@#$^!#%~!$ I just couldn't win today.  Headed down to mermaid hoping for some more but only found a few more bonito and small tailor.

So only a couple of decent fish caught and not by me, dad was happy though.  Nice conditions, no swell and barely any wind once the sun came up.