Way to lure fingermark
of nt he e le ries es s s, d thin ets. Todd O’Shaughnessy after he and son Malcolm fished Morrissey’s Creek last weekend. O’Shaughnessy told how he and his son cast lures for mangrove jack within the upper reaches of the popular system, but for poor results.
He said the fish just weren’t hungry with only a few fish taking lures.
“It was really dry. No humidity, and that’s when I luck out most,” he said. “The fish were just half- hearted although Malcolm did hook probably the biggest jack I’ve ever seen.”
Malcolm apparently couldn’t help himself when he spied a likely looking snag well ahead of the boat and lobbed what was a perfect cast at the structure.
The problem was though, the lure was immediately eaten by a monster fish and the young angler could do nothing but hold on as the red demon traced a path back to the same snag from where it ambushed the artificial bait.
“He had no chance and I guess that’s part of the learning curve … when to cast and when not to. We were way too far away to have any chance of holding that fish out ( of the snag),” O’Shaughnessy said.
When I asked if he thought the fish was better than 50cm, O’Shaughnessy upped the ante suggesting the mangrove jack might have stretched past 60cm. Truth is, Malcolm’s got a tale to tell and it can be a big as he wants … no one can prove otherwise.
Whopper of a tail to tell
AND Kirk Gibbons has a tail to show – literally!
The builder fished wide of Townsville’s Myrmidon Reef last weekend with great mate and tackle store owner Dale Weldon, hooking a monster marlin.
Weldon tells the yarn and it’s one that I’ll have trouble fitting in the space here.
Gibbons, Weldon and crew enjoyed great fishing conditions with ideas of hooking a large black marlin in deep waters beyond the outer Great Barrier Reef, the group of mates spending the first day of three luring large scad baits and rigging in readiness of an all- out assault on the biggest fish they could find.
“I drove Kirk’s boat, a nice 36- ft Luhrs and set the baits in short ( off the stern). That’s where I like them,” Weldon recalled.
“A big scaly mackerel was skipping nicely, Kirk on strike, and this thing, a marlin, came up and ate it. It was a monster.”
The marlin was easily the largest Weldon had seen in nearly 30 years while fishing wide of Townsville.
“It jumped away from the back of the boat three times before doing a hard right hand turn,” he continued. “Then it straightened up and jumped low, twice, almost gliding over the water, the line still pointing the other way. There was a big belly in the line and that’s when I think the marlin got tail- wrapped.”
Gibbons fought a good fight with the drag on the 60kg class reel set to maximum, yet the fish dived deep and was never sighted again until the end of the fight.
“I backed the boat steadily towards the fish and Kirk was still fighting hard and it was coming up backwards… an incredible sight and the biggest I had ever seen in these waters,” Weldon said.
“It was so clear and then everything went hazy. That’s when the sharks got to it.”
Weldon lamented the fate of the fish and Gibbons’ bad luck.
“We got the tail back and three of us really struggled to drag it aboard,” Weldon said.
The experienced game- fisher slash boatdriver was modest calling the fish a 950- pound ( 430kg) specimen after consulting with game boat skipper Dave Pemberton.
Pemberton says a 50cm girth measurement at the wrist of the tail indicates a 1000- pound fish and at about 49cm, measured four days after capture ( the first not refrigerated) and allowing for shrinkage, Gibbons’ fish might have been awfully close to that mark.