Zuks find fish

[bassyac]

Zuks find fish, If this gets a lot of views maybe adding nice stuff to the forum,like fishing????????

[Moonlighter]

Nice shot of the sounder screen. Did you convert them into the ice box?

Mine found some big squid yesterday. Will try to post a couple of pics.

Here we go:





The biggest one vandalised the inside and outside of the boat when we netted it. I couldn't see the sounder screen as it was covered in ink. Took me and my son Brendan (in photo with me) an hour to clean the boat when we got home. Ink everywhere......

But we got revenge last night. Calamari for dinner!

[bassyac]

Tried for flounder, Could not get the hook to the bottom, past all the Black Sea Bass. We took home 3 to 6lb threw the rest back. Can't eat more than 4 days in a row. Nice Squid, We can not get them that size here. The fish store sells smaller ones at the same price as Maine Lobster.
John

[Auburn02]

***, I've never in my life heard of people catching squid recreationally Moonlighter. Very cool. Where are you located and what do you guys do to catch them?

I also wish my sounder screen looked half as good as bassyac's picture. I know I have a cheap one and maybe that is itself the problem (Lowrance Elite-5), that or either my transducer location is poor or I just don't know how to set it up, but I have never once seen a well defined bottom or a fish arch on it - granted I fish very little so I'm usually on the chart screen, but I tinker with it from time to time, end up just getting annoyed and go back to the chart.

edit: why in the world does this forum edit out the word "w o w"? That's what the *** at the beginning of my reply was when I typed it.

[Moonlighter]

***, I've never in my life heard of people catching squid recreationally Moonlighter. Very cool. Where are you located and what do you guys do to catch them?

I also wish my sounder screen looked half as good as bassyac's picture. I know I have a cheap one and maybe that is itself the problem (Lowrance Elite-5), that or either my transducer location is poor or I just don't know how to set it up, but I have never once seen a well defined bottom or a fish arch on it - granted I fish very little so I'm usually on the chart screen, but I tinker with it from time to time, end up just getting annoyed and go back to the chart.

edit: why in the world does this forum edit out the word "w o w"? That's what the *** at the beginning of my reply was when I typed it.

Mate, we love fishing for squid here in Australia! But the Japanese are absolutely fanatical about it.

I am located near Brisbane, on the Australian east coast. We got the squid pictured offshore from Mooloolabah on the Sunshine Coast, 2 hours drive north of home. In about 30ft of water. It was so clear we could see the bottom, and most of the squid we sight-cast to.

Google "squid jigs" and "egi rods" (Japanese name for squid is egi). The jigs (lures) look kinda like prawns about 3-4" long with a weight under the chin and a double row of ultra sharp spikes on the tail. Usually bright colours. Pink, rainbow, copper colours are my favourites. I've got maybe 20-30 of these jigs. Will be bringing some more home when I visit Japan again later this year.

You flick the jig out, let it sink near the bottom, then give it a couple of sharp jigs upwards, then let it sink back down. The squid mostly grab it on the sink and they get stuck on the spikes. You then wind them in steadily. They fight kinda weird - just surge away using their jet propulsion. The big ones really go hard.

We fish quite light spin rods, I use a 7ft 4-6lb rod and Shimano 2500 size reel loaded with 8lb braid, and run a 12lb fluorocarbon leader about 10ft long, jig is then tied to the end.

The fun starts when you get them close to the boat. They can shoot out a blurt of ink that can turn everything within 20ft into a black slimy dripping mess, so you have to lift them in with the jig and drop into a bucket and slam the lid on before they explode! If you're not fast enough, or they touch anything as you lift them, they go off instantly then you've got a huge mess.

Cleaning them after you get home is just as messy. Remove the head and guts in one go, trying not to rupture the ink sack is the trick. Then remove the wings and skin, turn the tube inside out and clean any remaining guts out, and you've got a perfect squid tube ready to eat.

We don't do them in rings, we cut them into strips about 1/2" wide and then soak them in pulped kiwi-fruit for an hour or two. The kiwi fruit has an enzyme in it that tenderises the squid. Then, rinse it clean, then flour, egg and panko crumbs with some garlick and salt and pepper seasoning. Deep fry for about 1 minute until ****en.

Mmmmmmm! Good!

The heads, tentacles and wings get frozen for reef fish bait. The big squid pictured have heads the size of softballs, so they make great baits for big red emperor and sweetlips when we go fishing later this month up north to the Great Barrier Reef.

Google "Town of 1770" and you'll be drooling because that's where we base ourselves for a week.

[bassyac]

You got a handsome young man there. Yes the Japanese love squid,that's what drives up the prices here. If you stand on the shore you are able to see the squid boats gobbling up all of them. In answer to Auburn02 it took a few trials with the transducer to get it, however I loose bottom after 32 MPH. I had to lower the transducer 5/16 below the bottom of the boat to get it.
Grant; I hope you saw the temperature gauge reading 131 degrees, that is after running 4100 RPM's for about 40 minutes. They still can not figure out why it blasts the overheat warning, on idle. Suzuki rep will be on boat today,I hope.
Trolling season coming up soooooon.
John

[Moonlighter]

Hi John

Yes I saw the temp. Nothing abnormal about that, weird that the alarm is going off. Hopefully the tech will be able to figure out what's happening.

I will try to remember to post some pictures up of our 1770 fishing trip after we get back. It is truly amazing country up there in the reef.

[bassyac]

I would buy a houseboat, and never leave. That looks like it has the most beautiful water on the planet. Green with envy!!!
Have a great time
John

[Moonlighter]

OK, we are home from our fishing trip to Australia's Great Barrier Reef.

Our launching point was the Town of 1770. Near Bundaberg, Queensland. I was crew for my mate Rod, we took his Seaswirl Striper 2301 on this trip. DF300 Suzuki on the back. Lowrance HDS12 Gen 2 with Airmar SS264n transducers.

6.5 hrs drive north from my home near Brisbane.

We go there every year with our fishing club, Power Boat Anglers Club. This year, we had 17 boats and their crews tow their boats up the highway to our base in 1770. Good mob, take safety seriously so if weather is too rough comp is off, or if boats want to stay out on the reef overnight, Club rules are that there must be 2 boats staying near each other.

It is 33nm from the boat ramp to the reef area. Another 5 miles out to the deeper drop offs into 110m of water.

We got some nice reef fish. Although there were a couple of days where the barometer was dropping and the fish had lockjaw, we could see them in the sounder so but they just wouldn't bite. So very tough fishing.

The main "prize" species we target is Red Emperor. Scientific name is Lutjanus sebae.

These are a extremely hard fighting, top grade table fish and everyone wants to get a big one. School sized fish are regarded as up to 10kg, anything over that is a good fish.

I was lucky enough to catch my PB Red Emperor, 12.65kg (28lbs) and the same fish was also the largest Red weighed for the week so won me the best fish trophy plus the $ jackpot in the friendly unofficial competition: Everyone put in $10 and the best Red and the best Coral Trout split the pool. So I won $160.

Shouted the crew who stayed at our house to dinner last night from the winnings, good time had. Knocked over most of a bottle of Wild Turkey Rare Breed bourbon. Mmmmm!

Some photos below.

Warmed up with a pair of small reds, about 11lbs each.


The winning fish in these two photos:




Maori cod below, also a great table fish. Bulgy eyes from being pulled up from 100m (330 ft)

[bassyac]

Grant
The big smile on your face says it all... Good Times.
I googled the location, beautiful. Some nice fish, reef fish are about the most tasty. how far from shore and how are the seas.
The other owner(wife) and I went offshore about 70 miles southeast of New York city, about 35 miles from my home port, created a monster, she caught her first Blue-fin tuna. no pic's camera was full of grandson
Glad you had a great trip.
John

[Harper]

Nice lookin' fish, Grant. Those reds look a lot like the red snapper (Lutjanus campechanus) that we catch here in the Gulf of Mexico. They're really good eating, too. Usually run between 10-20 pounds in deeper waters, and 30+ pounds are not at all uncommon. Anything beyond 9 miles from the shoreline is federal waters, and the feds control how many days we get to fish for red snapper out that far.....usually about 11 days in June. We can catch 'em inside of nine miles, but they're not nearly as big as the ones out beyond 40 miles or so.

[Moonlighter]

Hi Mike

Yes, they look quite similar to your red snapper. We get several Lutjanus species here, and all of them are very good on the table. The Red emperor are the largest, although their close cousins the large mouth nannygai are not far behind.

My fish was caught in around 33m (110ft) which is quite shallow for them. Generally, the seabed inside the GBR ranges between 20-40m depth, and the main reefs and coral cay islands are just inside the shelf. So it drops off just outside the reefs to 100m very quickly and then to 300m not much further out. I haven't been out further than that because there are no reds out there!

We have an "in possession" limit of 5 red emperor per person here, a minimum legal size of 55cm, and there is no jurisdictional difference between State and Federal waters - the same rules apply. "In possession" doesn't mean a daily bag limit, it means than any fish you have anywhere in your possession, including at home in the freezer, count. But in practice if you get checked by a Fisheries Patrol on the water, they just want to see what's in your icebox. It's only if they suspect you of illegally selling fish on the black market that they might look in your freezer.

The combination of minimum sizes and possession limits here applies to most species of fish, and we are fortunate to have some of the best managed fisheries in the world. Virtually every species is classified as sustainably fished, and the few that are overfished have tighter restrictions on them and are recovering nicely.

(The big gripe we have is with rediculous Marine Parks that, in the GBR, mean that 30% of the total area of the reef is closed to all fishing, despite irrefutable evidence that all reef species are sustainably managed thru the existing size and bag limits. Thanks to the likes of the US based PEW extreme green groups and their mates we now have more anti-fishing "green" zones where fishing is banned than any other place on earth. The extreme green idealists have a rediculous amount of influence here with our politicians, and in the last Federal Parliament, they had the balance of power so anglers got shafted yet again.)

There are 2 or 3 short (10 days) total fishing closures on the Great Barrier reef each year around the full moons in October, November and sometimes December, as these times are the known main spawning times for many of the coral reef species. This covers not only the Reds, but every other coral reef finfish species as well. But apart from those short periods, you can catch them whenever you like.

The big DF300 on my mate's Striper averages about 1km/litre. A day trip out to the reef and back usually consumes about 170 litres, at about $1.40/litre.