Seaway Overnighter Report Tuesday Wednesday 16th-17th July 2013

Set out to do an overnighter on tuesday afternoon about 2.00pm, met Jayde and Andy out on the water and started off around the end of the north wall.   Jayde pulled a couple of Tailor on a 7cm skitter pop so I threw out a Flash Stick 9(now known as a skitterbait) and it didn't take long before a nice tailor grabbed it off the surface. Unfortunately that was it, no more fish were hooked after that. I decided to go for a run around and look for some surface action so I headed north. Wasn't until I was driving past the weed beds north of Crab Island that I saw some bird action and a few bustups in the shallows. Headed over there and found some small tailor chasing bait and threw out the skitterbait and it was smashed straight away by small tailor. If they didn't hook up they hit it again and again even right next to the boat. Size wasn't much good with the biggest coming in around 40cm. They disappeared after half an hour so I headed back to the seaway for the dusk session. Started off throwing a Lucky Strike King hunter minnow around the north wall flats hooking 3 tailor but only landing one around 45cm. Changed to a Skitter Pop 9 but had no interest.




The outgoing tide and the easterly swell made the seaway channel lumpy and barely fishable so once the sun set I changed to a 3/8 CCM and concentrated around the ends of both the walls and the north wall flats. Had a few hits on the north wall flats but no takers anywhere else. Had a look further in the broadwater and had a troll around for Hairtail but only caught bream. Came back to the seaway just as the tide turned to run in. Worked the tip of the north wall first before doing a drift right along the length of the wall. Wasn't until I was about 3/4 of the way along that I had my first decent hookup, it ran at the boat which had me thinking Tarpon, but as soon as it saw the boat it took off on a good run. After a few more good runs I finally got a good look at the fish, a Hairtail and a good one too at around 1.5m long. Gave him a quick measure, took a few pics and sent him back to terrorize baitfish once again. Decided to do the inside drift again and soon hooked up again this time on a small jewie around 50cm. Continued to do the same drift and picked up 1 more jewie around 60cm, 5 bigeyes all small and 2 Tarpon. The technique was the same one I used earlier on in the week, cast out, quick wind in to pick up slack, then a prolonged pause, then a slow wind, then pause etc. Around 1am decided to take a break and rest up for the dawn session.

At 5am I got back into it but as the tide was now running out I concentrated around the end of the north wall slow rolling plastics along the bottom but no takers. Just as it was getting light I switched to a skitterbait and began working the north wall flats and it was soon being hit by small tailor all around the 35cm size, landed half a dozen before they went off the bite. Tried minnows and twisties after that but had no interest. Went back into the broadwater just on sunup to look around for fish. Didn't see any on the surface but I threw the skitterbait around on some shallow flats north of Horseshoe Flats and had bream attacking it. Hooked a couple but didn't land any. Went back to the north wall well after sunup and threw the skitterbait around on the flats once again and more tailor started attacking it with most of the hits coming in close to the wash about 10 metres back from the tip. These tailor were bigger than the dawn fish with all of them being between 40 & 50cm. While I wasn't getting hit on every cast it was consistent enough to spend a couple of hours there watching the tailor smacking the hell out of this little surface lure. As a matter of interest I threw around plastics, twisties and minnows as well but didn't even get a hit on them. They went off the bite around 10am but I waited around until the top of the tide just incase they would start feeding again but they didn't. So I called it a day around 12pm.

So an interesting overnighter, nothing real big other than the Hairtail and alot of time between fish on some occasions. The skitterbait is an awesome little lure, in just 3 sessions it has caught tailor, dart, bigeyes and bream. Expect to see alot of this lure in reports in the near future. Once we get into spring and the frogmouth pilchard schools arrive along with big greenback tailor, large bigeyes and more kingfish this lure will be pulling some big fish. I haven't been this impressed with a lure since the Vision 111.

Just as a side note, there doesn't seem to be alot of bait around in the seaway or broadwater during the day, though this can change at any time.  There are large bait schools coming through on the night run in tides but they are going back out again on the next run out.  I went out for a quick fish last night pulled a tailor and bigeye on a skitterbait around the north wall but there was no surface feeding by anything.  Hopefully things should improve over the weekend as we get better dawn/dusk tides and closer to the full moon on tuesday.  Less than 6 weeks left until spring!

Date	Time Fished	Tides
Tuesday 16th July	2.00pm - 1.00am	0104 1.26 0729 0.25 1420 1.24 2010 0.50
Wednesday 17th July	5.00am - 10.00am	0206 1.18 0826 0.24 1528 1.33 2134 0.48

I will be at the Victoria Point Boaties Market on this Sunday selling lures, braid and fishing gear if any of our brisbane based members wants to come and have a chat.

• Gates open 6AM to 12:PM
• Admission - By donation

Where?

            Victoria Point State School
Colburn Avenue, Victoria Point