Couple of squire off South Passage

[david_bl]

Hi,

Nothing much to report but I'm always reading other peoples posts so I thought I'd better make a contribution...
Headed out from Nudgee at a very lazy 9:30 and made our way through south passage, out the northern bar crossing and out to the 29/33 reef. The wind was pretty calm all day so it was a only about an hour each way in the new HH 585R doing 29 kts most of the way.
Drifted the same area with pilchards until about 2 pm and landed quite a few squire but only 3 keepers. A couple just over the legal size and one around the 40 cm mark. Was drifting about 1.8 kts but we didn't get any snags.
Great day out with lots of whales passing by and fortunately no dolphins - last time I fished Harrys there was a dolphin there trying to splash us with his tail!
The safety inspectors were working the boat ramp when we returned but was happy with my catch, life-jackets and flares so that was a relief.
Sorry no photos - everybody's seen squire anyway!
cheers

[lightsout76]

Cheers for the report, we headed out on sunday early crossed the bar just after 6 fished the northern 35's and square patch, got heaps of fish on the sounder but got blown around by the wind too much without a chute anchor.

Wish we had of left later as we didn't get any success until lunch time when the wind started to drop off and still only had 2 keepers 1 squire 38cm and 1 pearly 37cm but dropped something big after a 35 minute fight about 50mtrs from the boat got a little impatient, ha ha!

Thanks again.

[FINICKY]

Would be great to be able to fish on week days:)
also got blown around on the 35's on sunday with two mates on board. Brought home 3 snapper, 2 at 47cm and 1 at 53cm.
Also kept a just over legal hussar and parrot and bait for next time, a 50cm bonito.
I fish around 70-75m of water with success but my humminbird 788 sounder never seems to show fish, only structure on the bottom. 3 of us can bag out on snapper and release the rest but not see any fish on the sounder all day? Anyone have any tips or similar problems?

[david_bl]

Hi Finicky,
Nice size snapper! I have a Lowrance HDS8 with a 50/200 kHz transducer mounted on the transom. I haven't used it much in deeper water but could certainly see fish at 60 m on the 200 kHz setting but believe that's getting close to the limit for that frequency. I haven't used the 50 kHz setting much but suspect it would be more suitable for > 60 m. So have you tried the lower freq on the 788? There's also the usual tuning aspects such as turning up the sensitivity but I'm sure you would have tried that. I believe there's also some sensitivity loss for through-hull mounts. Hopefully some humminbird owners can respond.
regards, Dave

[FINICKY]

Thanks Dave. Have found it to work well in 40 to 50m with both frequencies on.
Will have to play around with the lower frequency next time and see how it goes.
Time to read the instructions again.

[lightsout76]

Hey Finicky,

I'm a shift worker so i'm a bit spoilt cause i get to work both week days and weekends and yeah it does help so i do get to jag a couple of good days here and there weather wise:P
but on the down side i also miss out on headin out on the good ones with friends, when i'm working some weekends.>:(
Sounds like you got a couple of nice fish but hey.

Cheers,
Leon.