Offshore

 If the lure got to the bottom before the boat drifted over the top of it, we’d give it a few bounces before bringing it up to go again. We found that the feeding fish were nowhere near the bottom and all plastics were hit on the drop from the cast. Most of our big fish were caught on plastics, with …

This year adults will compete in a variety of fish categories including snapper, pearl perch, mulloway, tailor, kingfish/cobia, amberjack/samson fish, whiting, bream, blackfish, flathead and bass. For cadets, there is a range of offshore and inshore categories including snapper and mulloway, bream and flathead to target, while juniors can fish for the usual estuary suspects of flathead and bream as …

THE Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority has taken steps to prevent a twice-convicted commercial fisher from engaging in further illegal fishing by barring the fisher from anchoring in a green zone. A series of restrictions have been imposed on the fisher through an enforceable direction — the first one to be issued by the agency. The fisher has been …

THE Queensland Government will deliver on its election commitment and move ahead on the implementation of three net-free fishing zones in Queensland before the end of the year. Agriculture and Fisheries Minister Bill Byrne said Cabinet had considered the feedback from more than 6300 public submissions received during the recent consultation process. “Ninety percent of submissions were in favour of …

NSW Department of Primary Industries Fisheries officers are appealing to anyone with information on the alleged spearing of a grey nurse shark near Mona Vale Beach on Sunday, August 2, 2015 to call the Fishers Watch Phoneline on 1800 043 536 or report online. Two males were allegedly seen leaving the water with spearfishing gear and drove away in a …

We recently went to Double Cone Island and found huge schools of longtail tuna, with some fish weighing over 15kg. The noise of these schools sounded like a waterfall and we laughed with excitement at the sound and spectacle. Throwing small silver and chrome slugs at the bust-ups proved the only successful technique and we boated four fish in quick …

On our last drift before anchoring we boated a good red and pearlie, with yours truly hooking up to a noah. We decided to anchor on this little patch and on the first drop another red came aboard, then another. But then the tax man moved in and we lost a big red before our baits began getting walloped every drop. The …

At this stage the broomstick actually has a noticeable bend in it and instinct says you need to either reach for the gaff or the landing net fairly soon. Anyhow, George was up to all his favourite tricks around Fitzroy and it was no big surprise that on the first few days he managed to land the biggest coral trout …

Mud crabs were running after the rain, with the kids getting the adults a good feed of four to eight crabs each trip. We had a visit from NSW Fisheries officers, which was unexpected, as someone who can’t count or doesn’t know the new rules for NSW must have made a complaint. I suppose having 17 traps stacked up may have …