Nice feed of Jewies

[Tony_N]

Opted to go out from Evans Head yesterday with buoyweather and BOM both saying less than 10kt winds. #bit of a surprise to see a 15 kt breeze when we got there and decided to fish in relatively close to home on the North Grounds. #Plenty of shows on the way out and lots of birds sitting over bait schools waiting for them to be driven to the surface. #Had a quick couple of drifts over one of these for no result. #Motored on the the chosen mark and sounded around for not much - a few dispersed and small bait schools but not much hanging off them. Piddled around the whole area for the best part of an hour before we had to make a decision to anchor up near structure and one of the small schools of baitfish. #Seemed like it wasn't going to be a very good decision because all we were getting were a few smallish bream, red harries and some wrasse of different kinds. #We continued to burley fairly heavily out of the bucket at the back of the boat and after a couple of hours a few barely legal squire came on board and were returned. To keep myself entertained I started to jig the (now bigger) bait school to get a few slimies to take home to smoke. #First drop returned 6 quite decent sized slimies. So jigged up 20 or so , and then did the obvious thing and put a couple of them out. #Continued to burley and then all hell broke loose. #Jeff and i were bricked twice by unstoppables on 20 and 30 lb gear. #We were fishing the bottom and dead weight just pulled our lines over the reef and broke us off. #We were calling them for kingies , but we eventually landed a couple of much smaller jew (see pic) and decided the big fish were mummas and pappas of these ones. #The biggest we caught was 11kg gilled and gutted and was 1100mm long. #The bite lasted about an hour with both of us missing more #bigger fish. #The almanac didn't look too good and the moon wasn't great, we were midway through an incoming tide, but barometric pressure was 1020+ . #Anyway the bag limit here is 5 with no more than 2 over 70 cms. All of these were 950 plus so we bagged out - and really, thats plenty of fish to fillet and store until the next outing. #Lesson learned? #Don't give up on the burleying a spot too early - there may well be some passing trade if you are patient.

cheers

Tony

[HAZY]

Great stuff tony_n gotta love that north reef and south for that matter have cuaght plenty good fish of both those reefs

Well done,Bullant

[stonecold]

Good on you Tony, heard through the grapevine the boys did well last weekend to ;)

[Smailesy]

iv fished at caos once down there years ago big snapper and massive spottys nice jew havnt got one yet great pics

[Murks]

Nice report Tont and good advice
Brett

[finding_time]

Nice haul tony!! ;) ;)

The other lesson might be to use heavier line ;) :D :DI know you like the lighter stuff though!! What rigs were you using mate?

Isn't it also amazing that that the moon was wrong ,tide bad and almanac poor but you still caught fish , sometimes i really believe we over complicated fishing by thinking about it too much ::)

Ian

[ida]

nice fish tony :)patience is a great thing when your fishing.nice feed cheers ida 8-)

[Tony_N]

Thanks fellas Its always good to get a good feed. For some reason the Evans Classic doesn't seem to have done as much damage as last year.

Stonecold - Yeah i'd been hearing that the jewfish were hanging around a bit longer than is seasonally normal and knew that someone had bagged one at 17kg recently. I think that we were bricked by bigger fish than that. Interestingly the water was 22 degrees where we were. Missus and I had the wings and cheeks of one fish last night for a great feed, fish stock soup for lunch today. Meat sieved from the stock made into rissoles for dinner. I can happily eat fish 2 meals a day forever.

Ian (Finding Time) I'm thinking seriously about the idea of gearing up a bit - but as you imply, it is such a nice feeling fishing with light gear. Some of the bricking was more to do with bad technique rather than being too light. My first disaster was set up because i was set up to floatline for snapper, and I had decided that this didn't warrant any leader material. :P There was very little run and the bait had hit the bottom by the time it was hit. 8-10 kg Live fibre 20lb line, fish at least 2x that capacity on the bottom made it difficult to stop the fine line hitting something down there. I also had uni knots break when my bottom bouncer was hit (twice) with the drag on. The 10kg ugly stik bent almost to the water each time and the knot just snapped at a swivel. In retrospect I should have had it set on ratchet alone rather than on full drag (4kg). So much to learn, so little time. ::)

So in answer to your question, we both had 2 rigs out, one floater and one bottom basher with a paternoster rig. We were attacked on both rigs and each caught fish on both. Livies in every case.

In fact Jeff had 3 rigs out. We had a cobia under the boat that kept coming out and stealing baits. He'd just neatly suck them off the hook (whole pilchards were his preference and he also liked some crumbed whiting fillets I'd salvaged from the freezer. He finally gave us the finger and went on his merry way with a full belly. A bit humiliating really.

[chicken]

Nice fish never caught or tasted a jewie but my time will come.

[Smailesy]

chicken if you could get the rods of the 4wd you might have a chance of getn a jew so try it and leave the bundy at home ;D

[seapup]

Nice feed of fish there Tony well done! ;)

[Gorilla_in_Manila]

Isn't it also amazing that that the moon was wrong



Ian / Tony,
If that was the wrong moon, what would you call the right one for jewies?
Cheers
Jeff

[Tony_N]

Hey Jeff

Popular opinion around here is full moon at night for off Evans. You can often fluke a jewie on any moon - but there were a lot of these, there were some VERY big ones and they were seriously on the chew*, and for mine you don't get that except on the full moon. Though wednesday was only 7 days on from the full moon and I'm told they have been around for a bit longer than the week.

Is there a tad of scepticism in your comment? I'd be very glad to hear other opinions on this. The north coast is part of your hunting grounds isn't it?

I don't pretend to be particularly knowledgeable and while I look at the various moon and weather components, I just go out whenever I can get out .

Tony

* mostly bang and run - but I did have one slow run on the baitrunner with the 2nd drag set at zero, struck after about 20 metres, and pulled the bait out of the fishes mouth. Delicate cut marks in the slimie as though a spaniard had been toying with it. I'm beginning to think that I should be using circle hooks when floatlining.

[Gorilla_in_Manila]

Tony,

Thanks for the reply. Certainly didn't mean to imply any scepticism. I'd really like to know, or at least hear the opinion of someone who obviously can catch some jew. Never caught a decent one myself. Then again, in the past I've only ever really fished whenever I could go and never kept a diary or fish log and have seldom actually properly targeted jewies.

Jew fishing has always seemed to me like one of those mystical endeavours, that the more you ask, the more different answers you get. And those that have worked it out, are generally pretty reluctant (and rightly so I reckon) to share too much information. Even my old mates from Byron that are good jew fishermen, will usually only tell you about catching them well after the event. ;)

Yes originally from Byron, but been living around SE Asia for the last 14 years. Get back to Byron once or twice a year, and of course that isn't necessarily at the best time for jewies. Planning on moving back later this year, so I'm trying to get some theoretical information together whilst my fishing is limited to watching others catch them and post their pics here. :'( No doubt I've missed the boat for this year, but hopefully i'll be better prepared to give it a serious go next season.

I notice you mention full moon for offshore. I've only ever fished landbased or estuary in a tinnie. One of the few times I actually targeted jewies was in 2004, end july for 3 nights down cresent head. Got a couple of good salmon the second evening, but I destinctly remember fishing for 5 or 6 hours on the last night there and a big full moon rising over the ocean; 4 of us could not even get 1 bite between us - no pickers, not a stingrays, nothing. I remember asking my brother in law's old man who has caught plenty of jewies in his time, "do they move offshore on the full moon?" He just shrugged and said dunno, caught them here before on the full, everything looks great but guess they just aren't here tonight. So i guess that's just fishing. They got a few later in the week after I had left, so that would say waning gibeous (like your catch) if someone was trying to reconcile the catch with moon phase.

If I remember rightly, the one 7-8lb schoolie I did land (fluke ::)) off the rocks one other night, it was dark. So been wondering ever since if I was wasting my time chasing them on the full moon nights land based if they tend to move offshore then.

Cheers
Jeff

[stonecold]

Making me hungry Tony.....think I've still got the backbone of the last stinker in the freezer must get that out add some sweet chilli sauce and stick it on the bbq

[Tony_N]

Yeah Jeff, I know the feeling when you think you've got it sorted and then can't turn a scale. I think for me its more luck than good mangement when I get one. Only saw a few people at the cleaning tables and nobody else had jew including the pro who came in when we did. So I think we were just lucky, right place right time and aided by the burley and the baitfish who stuck around in the burley because there wasn't much run at all.

:D Stonecold - Stinker is such a good name for them, isn't it.

[lattic]

Half your luck mate, that almanac isnt always right. Good feed, well done.

muz