jordan.widz Posted June 26, 2011 Share Posted June 26, 2011 (edited) hi all, went out to texas reef yesterday with my dad and his mate, tony, the day started off good, beautiful weather, flat seas and a kingy on my second drop but it wasn't landed.... as soon as I get it near the surface, a bloody seal turns up for a free feed anyway this trend continues for most the day for us and many other boats out there as well. Every ten minutes you would hear a yelling and screaming from another boat followed by a "F***ing seal again!!!" then the bloody thing would sit 20m from your boat taunting you while it tears your fish apart, throwing it in the air... you can probaly imagine the fustration out there on the weekend. After all that we tried moving to another part of texas to get away from the seal, but we still couln't loose the jackets. After hours of jigging I hook up to what would have been my pb king, it was going hard and slugging it out near the bottom but I had the upper hand using the stradic 8000 and deepjig 200 with 65lb braid, so after a few good runs I was able to start gaining some line on it and had it a stage where I was confident I would land it, but noooo, jackets decide to snip off the king I had worked so hard for All was not lost though, my dad managed to skulldrag an 82cm king in before the seal and jackets got to it and we got plenty of bonnies for bait and burley. And on the way in we found a school of 4kg+ salmon at the pips and had some fun with them on light gear and plastics and watching their areobics (I reckon they go every bit as hard as kingies pound for pound) And its a shame that all the good jigging spots around Sydney also attract all marine life that cost us fishermen fish and money but I guess thats just part of the sport and hopefully later on in the season the jackets will thin out and that seal will piss of... (hopefully) And by the way what do you guys think these are that showed up on the sounder, sometimes it was stacked 60m high! but I don't think they were kings or jackets because we jigged through them many times but didn't get any hook ups or snipped off. Cheers, Prawn Star. Edited June 26, 2011 by Prawn Star Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Terms Posted June 26, 2011 Share Posted June 26, 2011 Looks like bait fish. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Basil D Posted June 26, 2011 Share Posted June 26, 2011 Looks like bait fish. Long way to go and find Jackets and seals at least you got out Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dfishin Posted June 26, 2011 Share Posted June 26, 2011 hi prawn star I have been jigging up kings on a reef on the far south coast lately. i have found that that cloudy type school showing on your sounder is school of jackets or maybe nannigai. the kingies seem to be more spread out lines on top of each other. this is just what i have worked out on my sounder which is a hummingbird 898. i have found that when i see that cloudy type school i will foul hook small nannigai and leatherjackets, tomy roughs stuff like that ( small rubbish ) the kingies definetly not in these schools but not far away. another interesting thing. last trip we caught a 90 cm kingie and the trip before we got one that went 100cm+. Both these fish when cleaned we looked at what they had been eating.both the bigger fish had some small red fish inside there stomach. i think they where small gernard or tommy roughs and there was 4-5 in each fish. definetly changed my way of thinking of kingies. Anyway what do you think. Dave Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Little Hooker Posted June 26, 2011 Share Posted June 26, 2011 Prawn, I had friday off and was planing on a jig session up that way but we decided to head south to find some reds. Most of the wrecks and reefs we went too had a seal or 2 which would steal our fish Couldnt do anything with them around. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
little marlin Posted June 26, 2011 Share Posted June 26, 2011 Hey prawn star unlucky mate against those seals and jackets and i think were all feeling the pain. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mrpasqualie Posted June 26, 2011 Share Posted June 26, 2011 I had a similar experience south of Texas, and that show of fish is definitely yakkas, we found them on every reef in close and out wide. The jackets got us at the flathead grounds over sand. Salmon were thick as well.All the best. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mike82 Posted June 26, 2011 Share Posted June 26, 2011 hi all, went out to texas reef yesterday with my dad and his mate, tony, the day started off good, beautiful weather, flat seas and a kingy on my second drop but it wasn't landed.... as soon as I get it near the surface, a bloody seal turns up for a free feed anyway this trend continues for most the day for us and many other boats out there as well. Every ten minutes you would hear a yelling and screaming from another boat followed by a "F***ing seal again!!!" then the bloody thing would sit 20m from your boat taunting you while it tears your fish apart, throwing it in the air... you can probaly imagine the fustration out there on the weekend. After all that we tried moving to another part of texas to get away from the seal, but we still couln't loose the jackets. After hours of jigging I hook up to what would have been my pb king, it was going hard and slugging it out near the bottom but I had the upper hand using the stradic 8000 and deepjig 200 with 65lb braid, so after a few good runs I was able to start gaining some line on it and had it a stage where I was confident I would land it, but noooo, jackets decide to snip off the king I had worked so hard for All was not lost though, my dad managed to skulldrag an 82cm king in before the seal and jackets got to it and we got plenty of bonnies for bait and burley. And on the way in we found a school of 4kg+ salmon at the pips and had some fun with them on light gear and plastics and watching their areobics (I reckon they go every bit as hard as kingies pound for pound) And its a shame that all the good jigging spots around Sydney also attract all marine life that cost us fishermen fish and money but I guess thats just part of the sport and hopefully later on in the season the jackets will thin out and that seal will piss of... (hopefully) And by the way what do you guys think these are that showed up on the sounder, sometimes it was stacked 60m high! but I don't think they were kings or jackets because we jigged through them many times but didn't get any hook ups or snipped off. Cheers, Prawn Star. Unlucky mate! We had very similar showings on the sounder at the peak on sunday. I would suspect they were small baitfish as we jigged through these schools for hours and didn't lose any jigs to jackets!! Scored a few kings, 5 to 10 Meters off the back of these schools so it was well worth while on a slow day. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jordan.widz Posted June 27, 2011 Author Share Posted June 27, 2011 Hmmm sounds like I should have put more focus into jigging around that bait ball. I've never seen anything like that show up on the sounder at texas before so there must be a fair bit of bait around. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spirodem Posted June 27, 2011 Share Posted June 27, 2011 We were at Texas on Saturday and the seal was there too. We caught a 1.1m Kingy and lost 3 - one was pulling drag off a Stella 10000 and we could not stop it. Eventually the bad knot gave in before the fish did. When i got home I cleaned the Kingy and checked it stomach - found this - Bellowfish also known as Snipefish The sounder had a similar pattern as yours but they were about 50feet from the bottom Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jordan.widz Posted June 27, 2011 Author Share Posted June 27, 2011 We were at Texas on Saturday and the seal was there too. We caught a 1.1m Kingy and lost 3 - one was pulling drag off a Stella 10000 and we could not stop it. Eventually the bad knot gave in before the fish did. When i got home I cleaned the Kingy and checked it stomach - found this - Bellowfish also known as Snipefish Good job with the 1.1m kingy mate, nice fish. did the seal happen to get any of yours? And yeh I always check th stomach contents of the kings we get at Texas and usually find sauries and pilchards so it's interesting to see that their eating those The sounder had a similar pattern as yours but they were about 50feet from the bottom Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spirodem Posted June 27, 2011 Share Posted June 27, 2011 The seal was there too. All the fish we were catching and releasing the seal was taking. We know to always move, but the bugger follows. There was a huge pod of dolphins south of Texas ( on our way out) and heaps and heaps of birds diving. We thought we struck gold with tuna - but no luck. Good day though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Noodles Posted June 29, 2011 Share Posted June 29, 2011 I was out on Saturday as well and we met guys at the cleaning table who told us about seals stealing all their quality fish but letting them hsve the Bonito. We too were plagued by jackets at the flathead grounds in 50 metres. 2 double hookups on the first drop then jackets chopped lines before reaching bottom. So we move a little way and catch Flatties on the first drop then jackets again. Ended up with 7 nice lizards before we gave up and went back in closer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
knuckle Posted June 30, 2011 Share Posted June 30, 2011 Great report thanks, Noticed you were running your sounder on 83kh not 200kh do you find this works better at that depth? Cheers Knuckle Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jordan.widz Posted July 1, 2011 Author Share Posted July 1, 2011 Great report thanks, Noticed you were running your sounder on 83kh not 200kh do you find this works better at that depth? Cheers Knuckle Yeh mate 83 is way better at that depth. I usually switch it over to 83 whenever I deeper that 50 - 60 meters and it gives a much better reading of fish holding tight to the bottom. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jordan.widz Posted July 1, 2011 Author Share Posted July 1, 2011 I was out on Saturday as well and we met guys at the cleaning table who told us about seals stealing all their quality fish but letting them hsve the Bonito. We too were plagued by jackets at the flathead grounds in 50 metres. 2 double hookups on the first drop then jackets chopped lines before reaching bottom. So we move a little way and catch Flatties on the first drop then jackets again. Ended up with 7 nice lizards before we gave up and went back in closer. Yep, exact same thing happened to us, lost three kings to the seal and landed four bonnies, WTF. And if u want to get past the jackets while fishin for flatties. U can buy single strand wire in thirty meter roles from most tackle stores. Just tie two roles together and u can fish in 60meters without worrying about jackets. Be sure to use an overhead real tho because the knot in th wire will damage th roller in spin reels and use an old rod coz th wire screws up the eyes. The only problem with wire is that there is no stretch in it so ur buggered if u get something big on but should be alright with most flatties Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bentstik Posted July 1, 2011 Share Posted July 1, 2011 And by the way what do you guys think these are that showed up on the sounder, sometimes it was stacked 60m high! but I don't think they were kings or jackets because we jigged through them many times but didn't get any hook ups or snipped off. Cheers, Prawn Star. I reckon they are bait fish either slimeys or yakkas Cheers Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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