Dave_

Unfortunately I didn't have the mat that day but I reckon it would've been 45+ and that's probably underestimating it. Biggest I've seen in person, it sure is a lot bigger than the 2 42cm I've caught in the past.

G'day all, Long time no post for me. I went back to NSW a few weeks ago to visit family and of course I went for a fish at a couple of my old favourite spots. Picked up my old trolley and hit Stocko wall and it didn't disappoint. Got heaps of fish and a lot of weird stuff too. Jewie were on, seen 3 20+kg ones get landed right beside me and a lot of big bust offs. Yakkas and slimies were easy to get so fresh cut and whole live baits were the go. Got the Bream, Snapper and all the other rock fish on cut baits and the Jewie on a live crab, good fun on 6lb gear. Big gear and livies didn't get a hit. Almost every cast was a decent fish, not always easy to pull 'em out but heaps of fun. Note: The massive Bream wasn't caught on the wall, the Mrs caught it 2 days prior back home in QLD. It was released. Just thought I'd give you a look. Cheers

Thanks fellas. Now I'm real keen to snare a big one.

I caught this in my cast net today in a creek up here on the Gold Coast. I haven't seen one before. Juvenile Milkfish or Giant Herring? Or maybe something less interesting.

There's a weir on Kerkin Road.

G'day everyone, My young fella and I have been trying our best to finally land a Mangrove Jack lately and we finally found a few as well as a few surprises. I tried a spot on the Pimpama River at a weir that looked very likely for Jacks. We got there at low tide and there was plenty of bait and structure and some surface activity so it like promising. First throw of the cast net yielded all manner of bait including Herring, Silver Biddies, Mullet and a few Prawns. Awesome, love cast nets. First cast with a small live Herring and I got a nice Bream at approximately 30cm. Good start. Another Bream of about 26cm followed. Soon after that, my young bloke had a fish on only for it to run immediately into a snag. He free spooled it and the fish swam out and he landed his first Mangrove Jack! Just a little feels but I was stoked for him. He got another one soon after. I then got a small Jack and we were really confident of getting a big one but things went a little quiet with only another Bream of about 25cm and a few small Moses Perch to keep us interested. High tide came and with it came 2 more small Jacks. I seen some sporadic surface activity so I flicked out a bigger unweighted live Herring and it got nailed. It was ripping some string and my new Daiwa black label v2 2-4kg was loaded up nicely and I'm saying "please be red, please be red!" but it wasn't the big Jack I was after. It turned out to be a small GT, a first for me and needless to say I wasn't too disappointed. Quite surprised at that one. I also had a crab pot in and scored 2 nice Muddies as a bonus. 5 little Jacks, a few nice Bream, Moses Perch, a GT and 2 good Mud Crabs in total. All fish taken on live Herring. Fresh Mullet was used in the crab pot. It's a shame the Jacks weren't bigger but at least I'm getting them. A big one isn't far away. Cheers, Dave

Yeah mate, it's the Pimpama river. Fought very well on the Bream rod.

Hahahaha! Sorry guys, I double posted this topic and removed the one with the photo.

G'day everyone, I caught this Trevally today on the Gold Coast. I'm thinking it's a GT but I'm not entirely sure. Definitely not a Big Eye, Silver, Golden, Diamond or Bludger. Trevally can be hard to identify at times. Report to follow. Cheers, Dave

G'day everyone, Been super busy lately as usual so I haven't posted anything for a fair while. This is a compilation of my trips during the last couple of months. Let's just say the only way is up from here. I've had the biggest run of bad fishing luck I've ever had with the last 3 weekends in particular being absolute shockers. Being prime Mangrove Jack season up here (and a damn good one at that) it's been my goal to get one of these brawlers at all costs. Now, the problem isn't finding these bad boys, landing them is the hard part as plenty of these Jacks are getting up over 80cms in the estuaries here on the Gold Coast. After much searching, I found a good spot on the Coomera river with plenty of bait to collect (poddys, prawns, gars, herring etc, gotta love cast nets) and I've hooked some truly unstoppable beasts...but I'm yet to land a Jack. I'm learning more every time and I definitely know I need to keep that drag super tight now, fair dinkum, it's all over in 2 seconds if you're not on the ball. Anyway, back to my tough 3 weeks. First of the 3 weekends saw me snag my cast net on an unknown immovable object under the water resulting in total destruction of my net. $120 down the drain. Oh well I thought, this net had well and truly paid for itself many times over in the past 5 years. The following weekend, I bought a new net at $120. Soaked it overnight in fabric softener and took it with me the next day to a very familiar spot in which I usually get 20 baits in one throw. First cast in a spot I've thrown nets 1000 times and I snagged the new net on the plug of the ocean. I went for a swim (not fun in the dark in waters with known bullies present) but I couldn't free it....brand new net gone along with another $120. Absolutely shattered. Ahhh well, the following weekend (this one) was a long planned trip to Noosa worth my young bloke to go out on a full day fishing charter...something to look forward to at least. The plan was to head up to Noosa on the Friday, camp in the canopy of my ute and head out on the charter on the Saturday and come home Sunday. I was keen to pack up my car on the Thursday arvo so I could shoot straight to Noosa after work on the Friday...well...I got stuck at work until 9pm on Thursday so it was a frantic rush to pack the car up on Friday arvo so we could make it to BCF before it closed so we could get yet another 10' cast net. Packed the car on Friday and rushed to BCF with 5 minutes to spare. Got the net...another $120. Just as we hot back in the car, the phone rings. Charter cancelled due to strong winds. Typical perfect QLD weather all week and rubbish on the weekend...shattered. Ahh well, we were packed and ready to roll so instead of putting our heads down, we decided to go for an all nighter chasing jacks again on the GC. Found a quiet spot near a boat ramp that was sheltered from the 30 knot southerly that is known for big Jack and Jew. Got out of the car and walked down the ramp to assess the conditions and I suddenly looked down to see a big snake that I was one step from treading on! A bloody snake on a boat ramp at night! Close call. I was really annoyed at this point to say the least. I wasn't letting this snake destroy my fishing trip after all the trouble I'd already gone to. I built up the courage to remove said snake from the ramp. I was fishing that night and nothing was stopping me. After a quick lecture to the young bloke about not messing with snakes (do as I say, not as I do) we began getting the gear out of the car. I got the tackle out and he was getting the rods out as per our usual procedure. I've instilled the old "take pride in your gear" sentiment into my boy and he's super careful with our gear. Anyhow, I had my back turned as I was prong my shoes on when I heard the door slam. I quickly spun around to see a heartbreaking sight. My boy had the most devastated heartbroken look on his face...yep, the strong wind had blown the door shut and snapped both my Shimano T-Curve Tournament 7' 2-5kg ($350 many years ago from memory) and my G-Loomis SJR843 IMX 7' 8-15lb (still $450) clean in half. What do I say? It just killed me and I felt terrible for my son. We didn't say a word for a good 15 minutes. Needless to say, we went home shattered. My 2 best rods are now destroyed and I'm too afraid to go fishing again for quite some time. That's about $1000 down the chute in the last 3 trips, not to mention the sentimental value held by the little T-Curve in particular. Apart from this, I've caught a few Bream and me and a mate got some good flatties up to 70cm one night. Got my first Estuary Cod and got smoked by some unstoppables. Just need to save for more gear now. Sorry about the long post. This sucks. Thanks for reading, Dave

Nice mate, land based makes it an even sweeter catch. The Jacks are on big time down the GC in the Coomera River. I'm really torn between focusing on Jacks down there or Threadies in Brissy River...

Definitely a Thready, there aren't many if any Blue Salmon in the river that I've heard of. Whiskers are too long to be a Blue. Well done on a few nice fish, land based too by the looks of it. I've just moved to the Brisbane area myself and haven't tried the Brisbane river yet. Livies or lures?

Congrats on your first legal king but I gotta say, +1 on being more impressed but the 57cm Silver Trev. I thought Lord Howe was the only place they got that big but more and more 50+ fish are showing up. Nice work

Nice healthy looking EP. Good stuff

I also use 60lb FC in both Yozuri HD Carbon and Black Magic tough and I thought the same thing about the tag end. I leave the tag end a little longer and pull it with pliers to tighten. I haven't had a drama with it. Wet the knot and tighten well and you have pretty much the strongest knot around.

Palomar for mine. Easy to tie and one of the strongest knots. If you want a knot that retains most of the lines rating, this is it. Mixing inferior knots with your Palomars only creates a weak point imo.

Can't say I've ever heard of Yabbies under rocks on the shoreline at Glenbawn. In fact, I've never seen a wild Yabby at Glenbawn period.

Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think there's a record for Big Eye on bait. Hmm...

Nice catch as per usual mate. You certainly know your area well. I wish I knew mine that well haha

G'day again everyone, I woke up this morning feeling sorry for myself. My fishing luck so far in my new state has been bad and to make matters worse, my 20's are now a thing of the past. The Mrs randomly says "let's go to Noosa". I said "Noosa? You wanna drive all that way just for the day?". I honestly didn't realise it was only 2 hours from home, it still amazes me just what I have at my fingertips now, especially coming from a country town in NSW. Awesome. Got there at 9am and wow, what a nice place. Unreal. I got some frozen prawns just for back up as the plan was to net some livies. I had a look at the end of the rock wall near the sandbar and it just looked too awesome for a Whiting so I threw a prawn on the Bream/Bass rod. It was the last of the run in tide but the current was still ripping in hard. I had my first cast and I was kinda daydreaming and taking in the sights when suddenly the Mrs yells "look at that!". A big bust up was happening right in front of me and a bunch of large herring literally launched outta the water and one landed on my foot. These were BIG baits. I was shocked and started to bend down to pick one of them up when my little Luvias 2000 starts screaming. I knew this thing was big because of the size of the baits and it was ripping serious string. Knowing the odds were heavily against me, I tried not to panic and I got down close to the water to extend my rod as far past the rocks as possible. I hopped rocks like a madman until the fish went deep and used the strong current to it's advantage. Stalemate for 10 minutes, what a strong fish. It wouldn't budge and I didn't trust the 8lb leader but I had no choice but to put some more hurt on. I started to win and after a few tense moments up come a nice Big Eye Trevally. Top net shot by the Mrs. Stoked. Nice 20 minute battle. I turned around to find that I'd amassed crowd of around 30 people so thankfully I didn't choke. Instead, I was met with an applause fit for a champion hahaha. The Big Eye went quiet, only rising once more and disappearing too quickly for me to get my popper into the fray. When the tide began to rip out hard, I went around further to the beach and got a few nice Whiting up to 30cms. They went quiet so I went back to the rocks and dangerously casted in close and let the current take my bait right up under the overhanging rocks. I picked up some nice Bream and some really hard fighting Happy Moments or Black Trevally (they really go). I picked up a lot of other strange northern species too. I was back in form! Top day overall and I was glad to finally have some luck, especially given that the odds were against me with the Big Eye. Stoked. All fish released. Cheers, Dave

I was telling an old bloke I used to work with that I'd been catching a few eels on hard bodies while fishing for Bass. He asked me to bring him a few "little skinny green ones from fast running water". I believe he poached them in milk or something.

Sounds like a plan mate. I'm always keen.

Beautiful Yellas mate.

G'day everyone, Now that I've settled in after my recent move to QLD, I've started having a look at a few land based spots that I can try until I get a few things sorted with my boat. I must say that my fishing form has dropped of considerably since coming up here, hopefully that's just due to the fact that I'm still learning the area. Anyway, the Mrs and I gave the Gold Coast Seaway wall a go twice over the last week. Reports that the wall is incredibly hard to fish due to the fact that the rocks extend a long way out and strong tidal flow didn't deter me and were somewhat exaggerated. It's not that hard to fish, I didn't have one bust off due to snags. The first day was a little frustrating, a few undersized flatties between 36-39cm (40cm limit here) and a small flounder for me. My wife hooked up to a small Queenie on her second cast which done a few backflips and she done well to land it on the Bream gear. It was cool to see a new species for both of us. Not much else after that. Today was tough too. We got there at first light, about 2 hours before high tide. Perfect for surface feeding pelagics or so I thought. Spun metals for a couple of hours on the big gear for no result. No bust ups so I was only prospecting. I tried a few ganged pillies on the big gear and plastics on the small gear but only a small ray for me. My wife hooked a nice Silver Trevally which fought well and she got a nice Tarwhine not long after. Not much else after that. So all in all it was really good to get into it and cool to see a new species for us. I'll do better with more knowledge and time spent fishing the area. I've been doing my research and both this and the northern wall consistently produce cracker fish for those in the know. A true mixture of Northern and Southern species like Big Eye and Giant Trevally, Queenfish, Tarpon, Mangrove Jack, Estuary Cod, School and Spotty Mackerel and Cobia are around at certain times of the year along with species we're all more familiar with like Tailor, Salmon, Jew, Bream, Flathead and Kings. I plan to sort my boat out and get into some of these fish that I now have on my doorstep and post some better reports. For these who are unsure, this is a Lesser or Double Spotted Queenfish. Apparently there are quite a few of these around the area to 70cm Cheers

Thumper. Well done