FISH AROUND LOW ROCK AND SOME SNAPPER

With a forecast of 10-15 knots today I was excited to get up early and head out to Long Island for a fish but when I woke up at 5 am it was windy as. I decided to go back to bed and see what it was like when I hoped up, I checked the weather report and it changed to 15-20 knots and it didn't look like it was going to calm down.

I ended waiting till 1 pm to head out and I decided to go out from Shute even tho it was blowing straight into the Harbour. I went straight to Low Rock and did a few drifts on the east side along with the wind in about 20-30 meters of water. The first pass I got baited and on the second pass I caught a small Sweetlip. I decided to anchor up in about 15 meters of water and floated a Pilchard out the back and dropped a piece of squid down the bottom. In 2 hours I ended up with one 55 cm Reef Flathead and a 50 cm Grassy Sweetlip among a fair few little sweetlip.

I kept the larger Grassy Sweetlip for dinner because something had a go at him on the way up and he had a large chunk missing out of his tail, He tasted really nice. I then had a Barracuda take of on my floating Pilchard he jumped a couple of times and spat the hooks near the boat, He was only small I would say about 40 cm or so. When I go fishing at night I tend to catch really large ones around Low Rock and also just out from the jetty. They are a lot of fun to catch on light tackle. There is a local guy that works at the bait and tackle shop that has a Australian record for a 3.6k Barracuda on a 1 kg line check out some records on http://www.qgfa.asn.au/record.php.

I moved to one of my favorite spots that I keep secret sorry, Here there are 1000s of Small Mouth Nannygai and every now and again you can hook up on a Large Mouth. Today I only ended up with a bunch of Small mouth around 40-50 cm that I let go but they are heaps of fun to catch. I have never seen anyone else fish this spot and I found it by accident its a permeant structure and there are always lots of fish around it. I have caught large Cat fish, Nannygai, Indo Snapper, Snapper, Mother In Law Fish and many others and this spot I don't think a lot of people would even think about fishing. Next time you go out from Shute and its windy just try some spots that don't seem like a spot you would normally try you never know your luck.

Today we caught 4  Snapper which I didn't know you could catch in the Whitsunday's and the sounder showed bigger ones below. There is a photo of my mate holding one 

Well that was my Sunday out, I am going to try to get out one night this week and maybe have some drifts around unsafe for some Reds and have a fish around the Moles to see if there are any Jews around. Let me know how you went this weekend and send any pics into fishingwhitsundays@hotmail.com