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View Full Version : Try Again - Nth Straddie Surf 7/11



straddie
08-11-2005, 11:39 AM
With school holidays fast approaching I decided to make a quick dash over to straddie yesterday before I shut down my beach fishing for the summer. Average forecast, but the big swell warnings from the gold coast had me keen.

Arrived at the causeway just before high tide to find 15-18knots of southerly and not much else other than wind slop, big swell? ::) where? hmmm might be a little bit slower than I was thinking.

A scan from the dunes didn't show anything great in the way of gutters close by so grabbed a metal and started to throw that around straight out from the exit for no result. Ran into a guy and chatted with him for a while that was telling me he had been getting into GT's from the rocks and had knocked off a 14kg model the day before. Tide had turned so went back to throwing metal which brought a solid hookup, got him just to the beach break where an easy 50cm + tailor jumped out of the water and threw my lure back at me ::) . Next cast brings a chopper of just under 40cm which was going back till I gave up trying to retrieve the hooks from down his throat and gave him some surgery. Hook up 1 more good fish and another smaller one with the hooks pulling from both.

Enough beach now to drive on and I wanted to do a good recy and find a night spot to fish. Headed back toward the point finding only average gutters with the first I stopped at producing a hookup and lost fish :o . Turned and headed toward the pin, finding mostly wind blown mush till I got to 20km south of the causeway. A deep nasty gutter with a thigh deep bank had me punching out bait and metals while fighting the southerly for no result had me heading back toward the causeway.

A few K's down and there are some birds working in close so threw a metal in, which was swooped on by two terns, with one hooking up :o #%*&# grab towel from the car while the turn tries to go higher and higher, get him down and he actually behaved letting me get the hook from the hard part of his top beak with ease. Didn't bother about a second cast and headed back to the causeway.

The pick of the average gutters now had two guys fishing it so wandered a few k's further along to the second pick. Looked darty, so a pippi gets thrown out the back, bite, bang, felt like a 500 gm dart holding in the current then as it came in it felt like it dropped in size, 38cm silver surf snapper ;D aka bream ::) ah well I'm here now.

Next half dozen baits get taken without feeling anything, before finally working out what they were doing and hooking a few dart, and losing lots more. Very funny bites made harder to feel with the washy conditions and varying 10 - 20 knot cross wind that didn't seem like it was going to ease off.

Anyways total catch 1 tailor 1 bream 4 dart with lots more hooked up and lost. I had had enough so pulled the plug at 7pm and back in time for the last barge.

jackash
08-11-2005, 12:40 PM
Good report and some good fish there.... awesome bream. What rocks did the bloke pull the GT from?
Cheers
JAckash

Jason173
08-11-2005, 12:59 PM
Good to see you getting amongst 'em. 8-)

Cheers,
Jason

fritzy
08-11-2005, 02:00 PM
Mate,
Bummer about the lost tailor. I love catching them on lures at Fraser Island, but the exact same thing has happened to me several times, on really solid fish. Get em to the last wave - they jump and the tension in the line pulls the lure out of their mouth. I have tried big single and double hooks (rather than trebles) but still the same thing happens. Do you or anyone else have any tips for preventing this??
I was thinking maybe put rod down lower when fish is in close - takes the angle and pressure away from the fish but am yet to try this tactic.
Cheers Fritzy

rando
08-11-2005, 03:50 PM
Try circle hooks, Just a thought,might work!

outsiderskip
08-11-2005, 04:54 PM
nice fish for the surf
nice fillets a good feed



cheers pete

Vic1
08-11-2005, 05:45 PM
Fritsy

Try a slider lure, just a slug with a hole through the guts of it. When the fish hits it slides up the line, leaving the fish only fighting the hook (less leverage means more likelyhood of the hook holding). The inventor Lindsay Kline made a study of the results at his home north of Noosa with the local tailor population. His take is that he looses far less fish than using traditional lures due to the lack of leverage afforded to the fish during the fight

straddie
08-11-2005, 09:06 PM
Jackash, sorry I didn't ask for specifics on where he was getting them but he said he had been getting into them aound the headlands, talk turned to the bay and I spent more time telling him how to catch snapper in the bay.

Jason haven't seen you post for while, how the fishing been going?

Fritzy, losing that first tailor was operator error, he changed direction and I lifted the rod upright without thinking. I usually get my rod down low to the side from very early in the fight with tailor to stop them doing just that, so I got the result I deserved.

Rando, circles probably wouldn't be a good choice with tailor because of the habit they have of usually only nipping at tails.

Vic1, I have contemplated in the past adding a very short trace like they do with the deep water AJ lures but haven't tried yet. That's a good concept but bite offs on the exposed line and losing the lure would be a problem. A hollow length allowing a crimped splitshot inside to hold the lure in case of a biteoff might be good.

NeMo84
08-11-2005, 11:37 PM
hey straddie nice report mate and some very tidy fish ;) seein as i always fish landbased i think i might get into the surf fishing, ive got some long rods and a 4500 size spinnin reel, and i've been a few times and done well in the past but for some reason i've only fished rivers(mainly the brissie), canals and jetties and the seaway basically cos they're easy to get to(no car :() i have gone to great lengths to fish without transport and reckon gettin to a surf beach may turn out to be worth the extra effort. Anyway best of luck on ya future trips... ;)
Carlos.

straddie
09-11-2005, 12:18 AM
Heya NeMo84

Unless there is some nice weather before they start, that might almost be my last trip till school holidays finish in Feb. But if you could make yourself available on reasonably short notice and didn't mind tagging along with a rusty old fart I'd be happy to take you for a run over there some time. I'm no guru but might be able to find us a fish or two. ;)

NeMo84
09-11-2005, 10:23 PM
hey straddie sounds great to me mate [smiley=thumbsup.gif], im pretty sure i'll be fishin down at Byron this weekend, so i'll see how i go, do u know if its easy to get fresh pipi's on the beach down there? Mate whenever u wanna go for a fish just pm me, i log on quite often, or if u want i'll pm u my number.

Carlos.

straddie
10-11-2005, 08:20 AM
I'm no help with Byron it's been a long long time since I was down that way.

Monday, Tuesday is looking possible so check your PM's Sunday night. :)