Box Head Wide

[antonywardle]

My weekends fishing started with a drive by @zmk1962 house to meet another raider and to check out his boat. Very nice bloke and his boat is in pristine condition. Zoran lives close to my Friday work, so calling in was easy. We swapped call signs and were all sorted for some radio chat the next day. After a nice chat, I head home and Pennant Hills road was terrible. It took me more than an hour to get to the M1 and this is only about 12 Km from Zorans house.

After I got home, I got a call from a friend who wanted to go out in his boat and needed a deckie, so my plans changed and we met up for a 5am start. We head out wide from box head to about 54 metres but the flathead were hard to find. I eventually got on to a few before getting my first Morwong. I also got a whiting in 55 metres on half a pilchard. Didn't know they were out there and I'm still yet to register a legal whiting.

The block pilchards that I had were very soft, and small, not sure what was going on so I think its back to my local tackle shop for the IQF's. We were still in phone reception and I was able to exchange a few texts with Zoran, letting each other know how the catches were going. I think he ended up a bit better than me. The water was glass like with some pot holes. No idea where they came from, but no chance of me berleying up breakfast. We decided to have a got at trolling on the way back and picked up some tailor on some small skirts. I'd never used them before so that was a new experience for me.

I probably should have stopped there, but I tried to go out the next day and trolled again but did no good, and then came inside to Brisbane waters chasing whiting, but ended up with nothing. The wind got up so a pulled the ping and went home at midday. A long weekend but it beats working!

 

[Scratchie]

Sounds like a good weekend on the water to me! Definitely beats work! 

Cheers scratchie!!! 

[GoingFishing]

Any day fishing is a good day. The fishing season is warming up and you should be coming home with a better feed  

ps- whiting in 55m, probably a red spot with no legal size limit. You can keep those.

[antonywardle]

@GoingFishing Thanks for the info, I'll look them up. Good eating or better for live bait? This one was quite small, and might explain the lack of flathead if they were eating the mushy pilchards before the flathead got a chance to grab my bait.

 

 

 

 

[GoingFishing]

Great eating... as ive recently discovered. Even the smaller ones. Can also be used as live bait for big flathead and snapper.

you will rarely catch one over 23cm and i think the lrgest on record went 32cm

i have found that wherever u find the red spot whitings, u will usually find flathead as they love eating them

[zmk1962]

Cheers Antony.... thanks for stopping by last Friday and the compliment re my boat - great to have met you.

Yes I got out on Saturday  - accompanied by my buddy Wayne and our good wives. I was busy Sunday so a bit late in posting my report so I'll add it to yours here as we both fished Broken Bay offshore - pretty much same playground.

Saturday's plan was to repeat the previous weeks success with flatties...so we headed due east from Barrenjoey hitting the marked wrecks and stopping at 30-40-50-60m depths to fish on the drift.  We found the flatties in the 40-50m range and ended up with 14 flatties with most being in the 45-55cm range.  The bite was a lot slower and the fish were further apart  compared to last week. 

We fished 2 hook paternoster rigs and mixed it up with a variety of baits - small squid, pilchard halves, prawns and 5-6in Gulp Jerk Shads (Chartreuse Pepper Neon) until we found out what was working that day. All the baits landed a fish but the pilchards and Jerk Shads were the pick on that day - the Jerk Shads accounted for most of the bigger fish landed. We also picked up a few of fish that had the body shape of a whiting (but were a darker more mottled colour) all about 22-25cm - so released them as they seemed under sized until I could confirm what they were. (If they were a type of whiting I have never caught whiting at those depths before!)

As you say water was glassy, the NE breeze (made the otherwise hot weather really pleasant) and also pushed us south - so by 3pm we were a few km off Avalon and called it a day. We trolled 4 hardbodies along the headland back to Barrenjoey for zip.

But all in all a fantastic day out with our ladies. 

We met up with some blokes at the fish cleaning tables who had a good haul of mixed reef fish - but they were very "mum" about where they fished - perhaps not "fishraiders"  he he he.

Here's a few snaps from our trip (I also included a picture of the Jerk Shad that did the damage ... and our half share of finished fillets.)

Cheers

Zoran

 

 

Edited November 27, 2017 by zmk1962
additional pictures

[GoingFishing]

Sounds like an awesome day out Zoran with good company and a great feed

legal sizing of whiting is relatively straight forward. The only species of whiting to have a size limit is the sand whiting.... all other whiting species have no size limit.

PS - how high is the gunnel on your boat !!! Looks almost chest height. 

[Guest Guest123456789]

Thanks for sharing Antony and Zoran. Good to hear you both got onto a few.

what were the temps at? How were the currents? What was the water clarity like?

[zmk1962]

1 hour ago, GoingFishing said:

Sounds like an awesome day out Zoran with good company and a great feed

legal sizing of whiting is relatively straight forward. The only species of whiting to have a size limit is the sand whiting.... all other whiting species have no size limit.

PS - how high is the gunnel on your boat !!! Looks almost chest height. 

Thanks for the info re spotted whiting GoingFishing ! ... I have only been familiar with sand whiting.  Good to know.

Re gunnels: guess it just shows most of us on board were short arses- thanks for pointing it out so subtly he he he. Chest high  --- depends on the crew. My wife is 5'1, Wayne is 6' - so I guess the gunnel is more appropriately sized for Wayne. 

Cheers Z

[zmk1962]

1 hour ago, flatheadluke said:

Thanks for sharing Antony and Zoran. Good to hear you both got onto a few.

what were the temps at? How were the currents? What was the water clarity like?

Water clarity - you can see the deep blue in the photos - that was about 12km out in 60-65m. Water temp 20.8C....current was light.

Cheers Z

[rickmarlin62]

great report guys  sounds like a nice day to be out there...rick

[Guest Guest123456789]

2 hours ago, zmk1962 said:

Water clarity - you can see the deep blue in the photos - that was about 12km out in 60-65m. Water temp 20.8C....current was light.

Cheers Z

Thanks Zoran, yes looks a beautiful blue colour. Let’s hope that upwelling gets pushed West and not East!

[antonywardle]

I noticed that the the water didn't really get too blue until we were further out. Usually you seem to run over a "bump" and the water goes from green to blue. I actually mentioned this to the bloke I was within case my eyes were playing up. Great report @zmk1962, do you rig the shad just on a wide mouth hook like a pilly?

 

Thanks for the info about the whitting @GoingFishing Might be worth trying some if I ever get another one.

 

[zmk1962]

17 hours ago, antonywardle said:

do you rig the shad just on a wide mouth hook like a pilly?

I made the paternoster rigs with red 2/0 suicide hooks. Thread the hook thru the “mouth” of the shad and out through the slit in the belly. 

I typically put the shad on the bottom hook and the half pilly bait on the top hook. Keep the rig moving. If pickers smash the pilly then it just creates a bit of burley. 

The shad is tougher so stays on like a bit of squid or occy bit it too often comes up with chunks chewed out or bitten off.

Anyway this set up works for me. 

Cheers Z

Edited November 28, 2017 by zmk1962