Wind: gentle SW, changing to gentle SE later
Swell: 1.5m SE
Water temp: 26.1°C
Current: at Jew Shoal, none detected
Launch point: Middle Groyne
Participants: viking, scottyD, diesel, jaro, tunny, jimbo, peebee, fatyak, sunshiner plus two visitors from Brisbane, boris and matt (who may join Noosa Yakkers)
Keen Angler Program: unknown, but tunny and fatyak have the right fish to donate.
As jaro reminded us out on the water today, conditions were perfect for offshore yakking from Middle Groyne.
Quite a crowd, as you've probably noticed. I think it was peebee's first trip out with us since becoming a member recently. Viking and fatyak completed their second trips out with us today and thus were presented with their stickers. Launch and return were both easy as pie and the seas were gentle.
The fishing was slow, generally, with a few notable highpoints. The exception was fatyak who must be rubbing something irresistible onto his SPs as he was slaying the grassies, and telling us about it ("got another grassy, guys!").
So the highlights:
Tunny was first on the board scoring a 70cm school mackerel soon after leaving the beach.
On the beach afterward
Diesel hooked up to a big cobia (on a drifting pillie) soon after arriving at Jew Shoal. He had it next to the boat but it somehow contrived to escape the gaff and disappeared to likely return and haunt diesel some time soon.
Jimbo picked up a shark on his light casting outfit (prawn bait), boated it and released it.
As well as catching and releasing numerous undersized black-tipped rock cod, fatyak took home four grassies to 48cm, all caught on the same SP as last time. The surprise was, no legal snapper this time.
The evidence. Pic by fatyak.
The weapon, a 3 inch translucent, grub tail Zman, drifting in mid water on light jighead.
Worth a mention:
A first for me today: a jelly blubber "swam" straight into the bag of my deployed drogue.
Note that these creatures apparently do have a sting, on the tentacles, but it is not known to be of danger (just a little uncomfortable) to humans. I have handled them on many occasions (mainly by holding the bell) without being stung.
Diesel caught two juvenile (and undersize) red emperor. He took a pic so that anyone not familiar with these fish will not make the mistake of keeping them. The legal limit size for red emperor, the adults of which often differ in appearance to the juvenile, is 55cm.
Juvenile red emperor, aka "government bream" because of the imagined arrowhead shape of the stripes.
I had two screaming hookups on my cast SP. The first was almost certainly a cobia but I could feel the line around its body or tail and sure enough, there was enough abrasion to cause the line to fail after several minutes' tussle. The second went like a bottom hugging torpedo towards the NE and was unstoppable in the long initial run. Again, I could feel the “clicking" as the line encountered parts of the fish's body. After about five minutes the leader wore through and I was down two jigheads for the day. Not happy!
No surface action seen, but many terns passed overhead while we were paddling out and many could be seen returning about 8:00am.
Lots of bait on the sonar, all over Jew Shoal.
I have no info on whether scottyD or peebee caught any fish as I had no opportunity to speak with them after we launched. Please let us know guys if you have some info of interest for us.
Kev Long
Sunshiner
Author Kayak Fishing Manual for iPad and Mac (click linked text to view)
Stealth Supalite X, yellow/orange
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