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Well I had one of those great days during the week where you can forget about the past couple of bad trips and never look back, at least until the next time. Our day started with the first fish caught in the first half an hour of fishing, a massive 116cm fish that ran over 200 meters through the lake, we were fortunate that this fish went for the deep water and left the wooded areas alone. We went on for the next two hours fishless but on sunset the fish came on the bite my client was on to his first fish a fish around the 1 meter zone but shook the hook right at the boat. Within a matter of casts he was on again we hooked another fish around 1 metre that took forever to get to the our brand new Skeeter Boat running out for the deeper water and sounding deep. The fish finally came to the boat measuring a massive 119cm, a few high fives and back to the water and the casting. We re- tied the rig on the rod that just caught the fish and resumed casting and on the third cast he was on again another long fight endured, with a fish of 117cm hitting the floor of the boat, a few photos and back to the water again. We resumed fishing once more only to hook up again within a matter of casts this was incredible another fish to the boat another 115 cm fish. So in what seemed 10 minutes of casting which would have been over an hour of fishing, after returning the fish to the water, we caught three of lake mondurans big babes, unreal fishing. We continued on to hook another one, which through the hooks almost instantly. In all we caught 4 barra over 1 metre and hooked 6 great 4 hour session on Lake Misery. The rig used was a Berkley Hollow Belly with a ¼ oz jig head and a hook from 7/0 to 8/0. I use the bigger hollow bellies and the smaller 100mm ones on days when there’s not much happening. I tie my main line with a bimini twist forming a double, using a cat’s paw, I loop the bimini double over a lethal leader the only leader to muscle the
October 2008-10-03 Fishing has been brilliant at the Dam. We are fishing the points with soft plastics in the afternoon to catch some great barra. We fished two afternoons in a row and we caught 5 fish the first day and 3 the second. Tommy my son caught his first fish casting a soft plastic with the fish measuring 102cm. All fish were over 100cm with the biggest being 115cm. Call now to take advantage of the great fishing. Rob wood 0427590995
Topic Date 3/09/08 SEPTEMBER 2008 Welcome back to spring when the fishing escalates with fish such as billfish and barramundi hunting in the warmer waters. Barramundi fishing is already picking up, I recently had one afternoon catching five fish 2 over 1 metre working the shallows and having over seven miss hits from uncommitted fish. It’s a great time of year to see the fish at the moment with the fish moving up into the shallows with their backs breaking the surface of the water as they move through the shallows. One shallow bay I recently moved into revealed over a dozen fish that we spooked, they steamed out of that bay showing a big boil on the surface and an amazing v shaped pressure wave that continued for over 20metres before descending into the depths. The first two questions that I often get asked is what lures do you use and where did you catch the fish. The first thing I feel is fishing is a game of luck with the best way to beat the odds is to have your lure in the strike zone. This is where the pros do well they maximise the amount of time that their lure is right up in the shallows. The idea is to have every cast right up there, no good being short with a lot of the better fisherman putting in the work on their lure for the first 5 metres and then high speeding the lure back to the boat. This maximises the time the lure is in the shallows as this time of year most of the fish will strike within seconds of landing in the water. This isn’t for all situations and times of year but this works well with shimano stiffy’s and shallow style floater lures with the weather warming the shallows in the first part of the season. One way to modify your hard bodies is a) to upgrade your hooks and split rings and b) use double split rings which will make your lure swim better, and free’s up your hooks. It also keeps the hooks well away from the lure increasing your hook-up rate. Soft plastics also work well, there are many combos that work well; my advice is try to work through the bullshit. The best lures that I have tried for this time of year are the slower moving paddle tails or anything that works slow with minimal weight. The 7/0 gamagatsu worm hooks adding your own weight works great with some of the 4 to 5 inch paddle tails. Some lures can be tuned to work at lower speeds by reducing the amount of weight and reducing the physical size of the body just before the tail by cutting with scissors longitudinally along the sides to increase tail movement at slow speeds. Lures such as Berkley power mullet, storms and squidgies all work but be warned these lures do often fail to hook up regularly as the hook doesn’t stand out enough from the plastic. Barra often inhale these soft plastics in milliseconds expelling them just as quickly making them extremely hard to hook without striking, so hook exposure can become a big issue. Some of the new lures are modified with a treble hook added free swinging from the bottom. Most soft plastic lures can be modified to incorporate trebles that reduce their effectiveness in timber areas as they often snag up. I hope I haven’t over complicated the soft plastic issue but this will give you plenty of room to experiment with these lures. Main thing to remember is to work them slowly, with minimal weight, twitching also works. To over complicate it even more high speed retrieves also work well at times. So try everything, anything goes with fishing as usual. Frogs or toads work well with top water fish, they also fail to hook up regularly, but are an exciting visual way to fish but only works in special situations. GAME AND SPORTS FISHINGThe northern end of the spit that runs for some twenty nautical miles north of Sandy Cape is a hot place to fish this time of year. Sailfish and Small Black Marlin haunt the bait schools and can be found all along the spit and around Rooney’s Point. Sailfish are the first to turn up in September and are usually found in water above 22 degrees C and in depths from 20m to 50m staying around in good numbers until the end of November. If the northern areas like Townsville and the Whitsunday’s have a good season we usually have good numbers of fish turn up here and so far things are looking good. The small blacks usually turn up in as close as 10 miles from the township of 1770 in August and have been there this year thus far offering great light tackle fishing for trailer boats. November sees the heavy tackle fish turn up off the gardener banks and the 200metre line working south from Lady Musgrave Island. Large Blacks and Blue marlin cruise the canyons and the shelf and fish over 400kg can often be encountered. Large XOS Wahoo turn up on the North East corner of the Gardener Banks and along the 100 metre line, also yellow fin tuna, dolphin fish, cobia and the odd dog tooth tuna litter the waters from 10 metres to shelf and beyond. For the travelling game fisherman we have some of the best east coast anchorages such as the lagoon at Lady Musgrave Island and Rooney’s Point at the northern end of Fraser Island. The Hervey Bay Game Fish club hold their annual tournament in November over three days. Boats from all along the east cost of Australia visit the area for this tournament that offers three day fishing and mother ship and fuel barge. REEF FISHING The reef fishing as always is great of Bundaberg at the moment and always improves as we move closer to summer. The good fishing is due to the restrictions put on fishing with the green zones implemented by GBRMPA which compiled with fuel prices have put the professionals out of the industry. The fuel prices have also made it very restrictive for the amateurs making long-range offshore tripe a luxury. In direct relation to the lack of pro fisherman along our coast we have extremely high seafood prices. This has increased the imported seafood from third world countries with most prawns and fish you eat in you local restaurant or even sold by our local seafood market imported. Maybe we got it wrong somewhere. Another reason to fish or maybe they will outlaw that also because of cruelty or some other trumped up charge. Rob Wood www.bundabergfishingcharters.com.au Email thq1@bigpond.com
Topic: FEB BUNDABERG OFFSHORE REPORT BY the time your reading his you will be back at work and well on your way into 2007 so I’ll start by wishing you all the best for the New Year and I hope you succeed with all your New Year goals. Its not a bad time to sit down and work out what you want out of life and to work out where you want to fish and what type of fishing you would like to do in the year ahead. It’s no secret I love my game fishing and this year I intend to fish with my eight year old son in Port Stephens and Monduran Dam I love this place once again because its at my back door but we will catch fish usually right through to March April. So you have still plenty of time to come and see us in Gin Gin and take of advantage of one of the best dams to fish in Queensland Monduran. Fishing this season has been slow to start with weather temperatures not reaching the maximums they did last year. Last year the wind was primarily from the north so this warmer weather pattern created warm water but this year so far we have had predominately south easterly patterns which have kept the water temperature a couple of degrees lower than last year. Last year plenty of fish were caught by trolling around the deeper section of the dam this year this has not been as successful but that’s not to say that we might reach the stage through January and February. Most people seem to like to hunt and cast for their fish and this has been a very successful way of catching fish but a lot of the beginners find this hard work. So if your coming this way expect to put I some big days but there is a good chance that you will catch a barra over the one metre mark. If you coming up you can book a camp site at the park with Rob and Kelly at the dam or maybe you can upgrade to one of the cabins. You have the opportunity to catch the courtesy bus into the Gin Gin Hotel at night to cool off after a hot day in the sun and enjoy a cold drink and one of Queenslands greatest steaks. You can also stay at one of the motels or hotels in Gin Gin and have a short drive to the dam every day. If your new in town you can see me at the Gin Gin Hotel or Rob and Kelly at the dam to see what’s biting and where. I suggest the best thing you can do is save yourself some money by using a guide it saves in fuel and time. You mightn’t always catch a fish but you will be ahead of the pack in knowing where the fish are and the technique used to catch. There are three charter operators working the dam the are yours truly Rob Wood of Bundaberg Fishing Charters or Adrian Kemp who operates from the dam just see Rob and Kelly at the Kiosk or you can call Brett Jones at Still Water Charters. So use the facility it doesn’t cost as much as you think. Offshore report Well I can start by saying the weather has been the worst with only a small window of opportunity to fish over the December period. We also had the closures for coral fin species during the month but we did manage to stagger out from time to time. We are still catching great numbers of black marlin along the coast with anglers catching as many as 22 fish for the month of December. This has to be one of the greatest places along the coast to catch billfish, as we seem to be able to catch them all year. On a recent trip we trolled around Rooney’s point and had a double hook up on small black marlin and then after we released the fish we had another 100kg fish trying to pull the teaser out of my hand and we managed to switch it onto a lure after unsuccessfully trying to feed it a garfish. We continued to fight this fish for over 2 hours on 8 kg what a day it was awesome to see this fish greyhound across the sea puling line off the screaming reel at an un believable speed. I just returned from another unreel trip out to the spit and we were blown away by an 82 kg fish that fought for three hours on 15 kg . I know that sounds a bit ordinary on the angling but this fish just never gave up and if you consider we got this fish to the boat but this was on a gamagatsu fly fishing hook that normally straighten with 5kg of pressure. We had bites from small marlin everyday one morning we had eight bites before lunch. On the way home we saw something on the surface it turned out to be a sailfish circling bait in about 6m of clear water. I felt like I was in the gulf of mexico with the water gin clear and the background the lightest aquamarine colour and as a contrast to this we had a sailfish all lit up on the teaser with indigo and dark blue colours flashing from its sail through the water. Awesome. We hit the wreck and our first fish was a small mouth nannygai around 10kg with another two big cod straight after around 15kg. it is the only place I ever fished were I can guarantee you a bite of a fish over 10kg in under 30 seconds. The reef fishing has just been as good with big red fish such as Red Emperor and Coral trout hitting the floor of the boat on reef trips. The jigging has been exceptional with large amberjacks smashing lures. We do have a high mortality rate with the sharks though. GT’, have been awesome on the full moon fishing the shallow reefs such as the shoals and trevally alley. Our wrecks sites that produce the really big fish 20 kg plus have been firing on all cylinders with some magic big fish coming off them. I’m just getting ready to do another trip now and I can’t believe how excited I still feel in expectation of another great fishing trip. Rob Wood Bundaberg Fishing charters
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