Dream catch at Alva
but the food chain didn’t stop there.
Nothing loves a feed of doggie mackerel more than a bigger mackerel – a spanish mackerel to be precise – and that’s just what the keen fishing couple were hoping to snare when they floated a large garfish.
“We always put out a bigger bait when we are chasing doggy mackerel, just in case any spaniards turn up,” Ken Davis said.
“The mackerel took a blistering first run taking over 100m of line off Karen’s Saragossa 10,000 reel.”
The battle was an epic 20-minute affair before Davis could secure his partner’s catch, a mackerel that could have weighed significantly more than its 19kg had it have been in better conditions.
However, weighing in at a dressed (gilled and gutted) weight of 17.6kg on fishing club scales, the mackerel proved Karen’s new PB.
Experienced big mackerel specialists know only too well the value of trolling large baits to secure the big hook-up and despite neap tides this weekend. I’m betting there will be a few hopefuls pinning wolf herring and legal size doggie mackerel to chin guard rigs and doing just that at the West Point “doggie” grounds.
Awesome catch Karen!
’Buster’ shares his tips
Bream and mudcrabs are filling creels when estuarine anglers test rivers and creeks to the south of Townsville, the Haughton River and Barratta Creek system among the most productive, but local anglers need not travel that far to find similar catches.
Brett “Buster” Smith and mates are using their vast local fishing knowledge to pull similar tasty catches from Cleveland Bay waters, the 80-year-old South Townsville resident tips Bully readers. Smith says younger anglers should show a bit of grit, pull an extra jumper on and head over the Cape Cleveland and fish the rocky foreshores between Lighthouse Bay and Cocoa Creek to catch some monster bream during the dark hours.
“Fresh prawns and yabbies, you can’t go past them,” Smith said when asked about bait, “but it’s the rig that’s important – otherwise you’ll be re-rigging and tying knots all night.”
Smith said using a pea size sinker and allowing it to run freely right down on top of a 2/0 Tru Turn hook has done the trick for him for as long as he can remember but says some mates add a small amount of cork to the shank of the hook to float the bait clear of the rocks. “I just rather leave the fish to find the bait … and they do,” he says.
The old timer said fishing from the top of the tide to about half out was a tactic he liked and one that worked for him last week when he caught 13 bream, each well over the 25cm minimum legal size, most 30cm or better.
“And I pick up my crab pots on the way home and usually have two or three big rusties inside,” Smith said.
The cagey angler would not be coerced into telling me where he set his pots.
Black jew off limits
Black jewfish remain a no-take species for both recreational and commercial anglers for the remainder of the 2020 season.
That advice was issued by Fisheries Queensland only weeks after the season opened this year and commercial fishers had attained their TAC or Total Allowable Catch.
Accidentally caught black jewfish by recreational anglers have to be released.
Mick Stevens let a solid 120cm fish caught in local waters swim free last weekend.
Hinchinbrook fishing guide Ian Moody says the channel is lousy with black jewfish at the moment.
Congregations of the species thwart plans of fishing particular spots for fingermark or golden snapper.
“I’d rather not fish and risk hooking black jew because in all but the shallow waters, they don’t release real well,” Moody says.
“We got one about 90cm accidentally last weekend but fortunately it went straight back down after immediately dehooking it in the water,” he says.
“I changed tactic and decided to fish some structure quite a few miles from where I saw the jew on the sounder and now they are out there as well.”
Moody rued the restriction surrounding the take of the jewfish but supposed research currently being undertaken might shed some light on stocks and the sustainability of the fishery into the future.