Fishing with Paul

I'm one happy chappy this month, with the weather providing the expected perfect winter days. I hope you're all filling your esky with the bounty from your days exploring our beautiful home – Moreton Bay! 

I’ve been lucky enough to venture out three times - all to Caloundra-wide. First trip took us to the southern end on a northerly wind, fishing wasn’t great, as expected in a northerly, but we got enough for a good feed. Nine in the ice box, including a beautiful tuskfish caught by my mate’s son Cooper, using a slow pitch jig. Cooper doesn't always catch many fish, but he always manages to get the fish of the day. He's got the feel for lures and only fishes with them. 

Day after the full moon was our third trip out, heading to the northern end – and a daytime fish. Spectacular weather, whales playing around us, who cares if we catch nothing. Plenty of undersized fish, including a 44.5cm Maori Cod. Doh! They need to be 45cm, oh well - that's fishing. Nabbed a hussar, a pigfish, and seven very goodtuskfish. Great day considering the moon phase. 

Now, the second trip was an exploring day. Having been to the central area (I've never heard of anybody fishing there) we decided it was time we did. Quick look around the area showed a lot of wire weed, gravel and a few small lumps. Plenty of fish showing and we found a patch in 68m that we had to drop a bait on. First drop, two paternoster rigs, four fish came on board – two keepers. We decided to add 5cm to the accepted legal size slowing up the intake of fish allowed to go on ice. With our new size of 43cm for pearl perch instead of 38, saw a heap of caught 42cm pearl perch find their freedom. Not complaining though - finished the day with 18 fish, bag limit of pearlies, three each of moses perch, snapper and tuskfish, plus a very nice 57cm Maori cod all before lunch. We might have got lucky, but it could be that it’s a very little fished area. Managed to have this little piece of fisherman paradise to ourselves - not another boat in immediate sight, other than boats at the north and south end at least two miles away in each direction.  

Stay tuned, I'll head out there a few more times, see what the results are. There may be 160 acres of mostly untouched ground out there. 

I mentioned a patch of ground east of Hutchies last month. The mark for that ground is S 26 56 726 E 153 30 785. It's only 1.5km from Hutchies and is a great area with loads of different structure down there. Bottom slopes quickly to way beyond 100m. If you want to venture into some deeper water, you could do worse than starting here. Mark is on a 66m bombie, just work east from there. I've put a photo up of my sounder on this mark, GPS position is in the photo, but may be small, hence I'veadded it in this post. 

I hope you're getting plenty and the weather stays perfect. Tight lines.