Jellyfish - do they matter?

[MainframeJames]

Hi Raiders, sometimes I see a few or a lot of jellyfish about. Is there any information their presence/numbers provides? For example, if there are a lot of jellies will the fish be elsewhere?

[Ojay Samson]

From my personal experience everytime i see a lot of jellyfish about (the clear glass looking ones which don't seem to have any stingers or trailing arms), I pretty much don't catch anything in that session or at the very least in my mind dont seem to get the frequency of 'action' if they were not around. This is fishing the harbour and parra river system.

[JonD]

My daughter photographed a turtle eating bluebottles at Montague island a couple of hours ago, they are pretty important to turtles!!

 

[jeffb5.8]

1 hour ago, Ojay Samson said:

From my personal experience everytime i see a lot of jellyfish about (the clear glass looking ones which don't seem to have any stingers or trailing arms), I pretty much don't catch anything in that session or at the very least in my mind dont seem to get the frequency of 'action' if they were not around. This is fishing the harbour and parra river system.

I find the same thing, lots of jelly fish not much action.

the clear ones don’t sting in the Parra river  as we have jelly blubber fights when we are in the water.

The red ones sting but for me it’s like a blue bottle but not as painful.

[big Neil]

13 hours ago, JonD said:

My daughter photographed a turtle eating bluebottles at Montague island a couple of hours ago, they are pretty important to turtles!!

 

That's interesting Jon. The replies seem to indicate that lotsa jellyfish = poor fishing. bn

[JonD]

1 hour ago, big Neil said:

That's interesting Jon. The replies seem to indicate that lotsa jellyfish = poor fishing. bn

 

When ive seen large amounts of jellies in our lake it's been after the lake has been cut off from the ocean for a while and they seem to have a population explosion. This explosion has been in the cooler months when the fishing has been quiet so I can't say I've seen any difference in catch. When we do night dive surveys in Narooma river we often come across plaques of jimbles ( a close relative to the box jelly) these live on the bottom through the day so unless you dive in deep sections of river  in daylight I doubt anyone would know if they were around or not.

I haven't noticed any change in catch while outside fishing, in fact our snapper fishing turned on as the pink jellies turned up in numbers a few weeks back. Offshore I've come across extremely dense highways of bluebottles ( which we've also dived among). These big thick patches of bluebottles have all kinds of small fish among them as well as bigger predators such as striped tuna, so I'm far from put off by finding bluebottles.

Yesteday I fished hard with some very skilled anglers onboard ( sponsored tournament anglers) .We fished Montague with just about every plastic, micro jig and bait you could wish for, there were no singns of any jellies and almost no fish. After around 6 hrs we gave up and headed for home, halfway back I spotted a brydes whale in 30m of water so headed over for a look.

When I got to the area I had seen the whale there was a highway of bluebottles and the sounder lit up from the bottom to just under the surface. My first thought was leather jackets and keep the lines out but the sponsored guys onboard soon had plastics down among them only to have small gentle pulls I still believed to be jackets. These guys certainly new their stuff and claimed it was squid, where soon enough they were poling squid after squid into the boat ( something I've never seen in such numbers in my life ).

There were also slimey mackerel taking the squid jigs and even good numbers of kings that simply wouldn't show any interest in anything we offered them ( think they were to full). Drifting off the patch was no problem as we simply kept heading back to the bluebottles, it turned a disappointing day into one of the most fun ones ever ( partly trying to avoid the ink wars).

 

[wizza]

Interesting as usual Jon. Is the temp there 16 /17 ?And is the water green/brown? Cheers 

 

[MainframeJames]

If I had to guess, these "highways" of blue bottles are probably riding a current? A current would be carrying along lots of other things, so maybe that's why there would be so much action around them. 

What sparked my question was seeing the jellies under the Hawkesbury train bridge on my commute. Not sure what kind they would be, maybe pinks?

[JonD]

4 hours ago, wizza said:

Interesting as usual Jon. Is the temp there 16 /17 ?And is the water green/brown? Cheers 

 

It's quite green in close but starts to get better once you get a few km out, water temp was mostly around 19'c.

[big Neil]

Thanx as always for your very informed reply Jon. Cheers bn

[Welster]

Thanks for that info John it great hearing about your experiences.

 

In regard to lake systems we holiday at Smith’s Lake near Forster for 1 week each year.   The years the lake is closed the jelly fish numbers really do shoot up a lot.    We don’t fish it much when it is closed.   The lake fishes well when it’s open. 

Edited November 25, 2017 by Welster
Spelling.

[robrooster]

Seeing heaps of jelly fish around cooks river breakwall.

Salmon and tailor still bustin up. Whiting and flatties around but no bream. 

its just annoying when you jag the jellies.

[MainframeJames]

Thanks for all the replies everyone, very helpful.