Fishing tips

Managed to get out pretty quickly with no photos and no scene Andy.

awesome Freeride.
curious - a fish that size, good eating? I'm guessing obviously so, or you wouldnt keep it.
and the processing/consuming - you use the whole fish? you know, use the frame for soups/stock etc. different types of fillets? best parts?

I haven't processed/filleted yet but it looks. very healthy so I'm assuming A-grade food.

I'll use as much as I can.

Heaps of meat on head and wings- I'll cook those separately- probably make a big fish head soup- and a stock.

Just the carcass left which will be fed to chooks/butcher birds/kookaburras who all love a bit of fish.

Jeebus. Gonna be hard to top that one.
Fish of a lifetime.

I enjoy a great Man v Beast , Old Man of the Sea type story , where every man , woman and child and every animal in the village , celebrate a feast .

Especially the animal that was going to be dinner !!!

An Oldie , but a Goldie !

That is an absolute beast @FR. Epic effort!

excellent. I'm envious, now that I'm eating heaps more fish following the alpha-gal thing.
I am hoping to get back into a bit of fishing and hopefully a bit of catching to reduce the fish bill, it's not cheap hey. But I reckon I'd be a long way off catching anything like that for a while. I enjoy hearing of your successes. Good luck.

Cheers gents.
142cm. 29.4kg.

I'm going to try and eat the swim bladder, apparently a delicacy.

Far canal, that's impressive!

freeride76 wrote:

If you told me I would get my PB jew off the stones in the 1st week of December on a mid neap tide, I would have laughed at you.
Phwarrr what a horse! Bravo!

Unreel FR a well deserved fish no doubt!
Jewies, like cobia generally get better eating as they get bigger

142cm. 29.4kg. Insane!

The only luck involved in that was the fish taking the bait. To get that beast in off the bricks solo is pure skill. Unreal fish!!!

Awesome Fish Steve
Still remember about 5 years ago we were surfing Boulders You said the water smelt like Jewies You ou hoped out Went to your car got out the rod
And went home half hour later with a Jewie

What time of Day was this one

Between 5.30 and 5.50.

FR - may I ask how long the fight took ?

The fish looks stronger than me , so guessing the rest of the day and some of the night , probably .

I bet it was very tasty , to !!!

About 20 minutes.

The filleting/processing/vac bagging/clean-up took 2 hrs.

amazing fish freeride ,

Freeride

So that is what fishing is really like , when catching monsters .

20 minutes of War and 2 hours cleaning up the mess :)

Like a real war .

Was thinking it might be a minute per kilo fighting time .

Then thought , an extra 5kg of fish , probably is an exponential thing .

NFI really .

Then 60 minutes eating .

Fantastic , a Real Adventure , thanks for sharing !

That's a cracker Stevo. Loved the fight description with its twists and turns. It usually doesn't take much to lose a big fish. Sometimes everything can seem like it's going wrong yet, the fish ends up on the stones. Sure makes for a memorable catch.

Smoking surface bite on chunky greenback tailor yesterday.

Fish a cast. They were chockers with frogmouth pilchards (Aus anchovy).

Gave a couple to my mate and kept a few for fresh fillets.

freeride76 wrote:

Smoking surface bite on chunky greenback tailor yesterday.

Fish a cast. They were chockers with frogmouth pilchards (Aus anchovy).

Gave a couple to my mate and kept a few for fresh fillets.

Freeride76. That’s a very impressive looking fish, looks very healthy. Kudos to your skill in looking after the fish and landing it. Bet you can’t wait to eat some of it. AW.

Did you take out the pearls Free?

Apparently they're like tree rings and you can estimate the age from them.

Any luck with the lures?

Lots of luck with them Zen, cheers mate.

I'll donate the head to DPI and they will remove pearls and calculate age.

Awesome. Glad to hear.

Sick fish well done, never caught one but ive only ever targeted them for a period when I lived at Fraser Island and a few were getting caught.

And then when i did i was fishing on dusk 15 metres away from some holiday tourist that were fishing when the next minute they wind one in, it wasn't that big but still a proper Jewie and not a Soapy and they were freaking out having never caught a fish that big and they didn't even know what a Jew fish/Mulloway was.

freeride76 wrote:

Lots of luck with them Zen, cheers mate.

I'll donate the head to DPI and they will remove pearls and calculate age.

I’ve donated a couple to the RAP FR including a 15kg 115cm fish caught on a plastic. The thing that got me was the variation of ages for a given length. My fish was only 8 years old but for fish of that length the range was 6 to 16. If I were to have a stab I reckon your fish will be mid teens.

Yeah, I'm really interested in growth rate post 3 La Niña years Andrew.

This fish was fat, very well conditioned, hardly any parasites.

RAP angler newsletter made a point of the differing growth rates with some of the Northern Rivers fish being much faster growing than Hunter/MNC fish.

Ones I've donated (mostly 8-12kg fish) have all surprised me with how young they were.

I went for a fish in the river the other day at a flathead spot, and ended up catching a stack of undersized jewfish- which was awesome- hopefully points to really high juvenile recruitment from La Niña years.

Interesting! Quantitating growth rates from otoliths is an emerging field in fish biology, but mulloway are considered the Barra of the south so you’d expect their growth and reproduction to be tied to flow. You are onto it mate!

Oh yeah and I’m sure northern NSW is benefiting from the size change Qld enacted in 2010. 45cm to 75cm has definitely increased number of fish that get to spawn at least once

Andrew P wrote:

Interesting! Quantitating growth rates from otoliths is an emerging field in fish biology, but mulloway are considered the Barra of the south so you’d expect their growth and reproduction to be tied to flow. You are onto it mate!

Oh yeah and I’m sure northern NSW is benefiting from the size change Qld enacted in 2010. 45cm to 75cm has definitely increased number of fish that get to spawn at least once

Andrew P & Freeride76.
This discussion about otoliths and age is very interesting, please keep posting more as things develop. Thanks AW.

Yeah, I think so.

Lets hope all the combined strategies of the Mulloway Recovery Plan in NSW and QLD's size and bag limits help fish populations recover.

freeride76 wrote:

Yeah, I think so.

Lets hope all the combined strategies of the Mulloway Recovery Plan in NSW and QLD's size and bag limits help fish populations recover.

Fr76. I sent you a parcel, just been notified by AusPost it’s awaiting collection at Swellnets Kingscliff LPO. AW

That looks tasty. My mouth actually started to water a bit when he plated up. Time to rustle up some dinner.
ps. Be plenty left for the freezer

Bagged out Tailor in just over an hour this morning
Heaps of dart hitting the lures as the water was thick with whitebait took home 4 dart
All off the rocks using a 40gm lure
A couple of guys were throwing metal slugs but getting 1 for every 3 i landed on a shallow diving hardbody
Merry FishMas everyone

Rockwall the beach's haven't had many decent gutters this year
This morning
Went off the causeway at 5am till 6.30 today,
didnt get a touch one guy lifted 2 or 3 further down the cliff and that was it

I think I have been touched by the fishing Gods lately.

First cast yesterday a'noon, hooked and landed a very big greenback tailor - close to 3kg- way bigger than I like to keep to eat but it was hooked too deep to release.

Downsized the lure to try for a smaller fish and hooked another very big tailor which got off.

Downsized to an even smaller lure and hooked a giant tailor- easily the biggest I've ever hooked.
Multiple big runs and massive head shaking leaps.
Managed to steer it through the low tide pools and get it up on a cunje ledge and release it.

This fish was 6kg+ - absolute monster.

Went home.

Was probably a 20 min session tops.

Ha, @freeride76, reminds me of GEM Skues short story I came across in a 1978 Readers Digest Fireside Reader, found an 8min reading of it, and a random summary:

There are some big ones around smashing the bait schools at the moment

How late in the afternoon was that Steve?

5.30

The water has a funny green tinge to it around Lembongan at the moment and not many fish around according to locals but on the NE coast of penida they are spearing doggies on a regular basis.

Shiza. They catch fish like that spearing?

seeds wrote:

Shiza. They catch fish like that spearing?

Yeah mate , it’s becoming a well known spot internationally unfortunately. Really dangerous waters though with radical down currents , it’s claimed 1/2 dozen lives over the years .

How do they land em? Boat them? Amazing!!

Never speared anything like that, but a lot of boats these days have transom doors that would make that job pretty simple.
If not, I guess you tail rope it and haul it over the gunwale, maximum effort, unless you have a gantry and a boom.

Nice greenback catch too btw FR. You're on a roll for sure.

Supafreak wrote:

seeds wrote:

Shiza. They catch fish like that spearing?

Yeah mate , it’s becoming a well known spot internationally unfortunately. Really dangerous waters though with radical down currents , it’s claimed 1/2 dozen lives over the years .

Hey supa, the down currents you mentioned… are they simply what it says they are? Currents that go down towards the ocean floor? I’ve never heard of it

They are stud doggies.

Had another nice surface sesh on greenback tailor this morning.

Water looked green, cold and dead but they were there and hitting poppers aggressively.

Interesting fishing side by side with a bloke throwing a metal spinner - I was outfishing him by a wide margin.

goofyfoot wrote:

Supafreak wrote:

seeds wrote:

Shiza. They catch fish like that spearing?

Yeah mate , it’s becoming a well known spot internationally unfortunately. Really dangerous waters though with radical down currents , it’s claimed 1/2 dozen lives over the years .

Hey supa, the down currents you mentioned… are they simply what it says they are? Currents that go down towards the ocean floor? I’ve never heard of it

From what I’ve been told by friends who are dive masters, you can be cruising along at 18 metres and a sudden downward current will have you at 30 metres within seconds. A friend when he first experienced this watched as a air bubble went down not up and luckily he was close to a cliff face which he immediately grabbed on to and hung on for dear life . He managed to climb up but it really rattled him and he won’t dive there anymore. A local legend freediver felt himself being pulled down and dropped his weight belt and managed to get back to the surface and also won’t dive there anymore . I’m not sure what causes them but if you ever go there in a boat you will be amazed at how the water moves around. You’re on the edge of the Lombok strait looking across towards desert point from penida . Whirlpools are common and it’s just really scary looking water . Fishing around there is pretty good though when conditions allow, besides doggies there’s huge GTs , sailfish, wahoo, mahi mahi , the odd black marlin and great barracuda which scare the shit out of divers . Yellow fin used to be in abundance but haven’t seen them for more than 25 years now. Sharks are also scarce as they got hunted out for the asian shark fin soup market . A quick internet search will answer your questions GF . https://scubadiverlife.com/everything-need-know-currents/

Far out supa that sounds nuts. That would be fucking scary!!
Sounds like a crazy area for diving/fishing.
You getting many waves over there?