We’ve been struggling to find any decent snapper in the bay but the opportunity for a Sunday morning session at Goat/Peel in near perfect conditions was just too good to miss. We crossed a glassed out bay in the dark, with a big moon behind us, to arrive at our spot just after low tide and just before first light.
It was so calm that I had to throw a surface lure. After about ten casts with a frenzy popper I was rewarded with a serious swirl under my lure. I felt weight and tried to set the hook but I was too slow. Another short pop and all hell breaks loose with the lure being hit repeatedly before a good sized tailor cleared the water on the hit and graced the deck of our boat shortly after…
A little while later I managed a silver trevally and Kyle got a hook-up to a serious snapper that pulled drag easily before spitting the hook. We leccied over to a sandy channel between the reef edge and the deep water drop-off where Kyle felt that fish would cruise by regularly. Almost as soon as we got there he scored a 30cm snapper on a flutterstick. True to his prediction the odd tailor school went past and we managed another four of them in the next half hour, all on fluttersticks.
I hooked up to something that seemed big and cranky and pulled much drag on some screaming runs before the fight stopped entirely. I wound in to find a small snapper that had been ‘mackeralled’ with a big triangular section of his gut missing. Surprisingly it swam off strongly to die somewhere else…
We headed over to the eastern side of Peel, fishing the reefy flats in about 1.2m of water when Kyle got an air knot. While he was sorting it out he spotted some minor surface action and directed my cast. I was using the frenzy popper again (another colour as my earlier one was snipped off by a sharp toothed critter) and it got monstered 3m from the boat. Kyle called it for another tailor but as it got closer I could see it was a nice snapper. It went 40cm on the mat.
We managed another tailor or two, a bream and the ever-present pike before we called it a day around 10.30am. My only drama was learning to back the new vehicle (Isuzu MU-X) down the ramp to retrieve the boat.
A lovely still and overcast morning on Moreton Bay…
Cheers
Pete & Kyle
PS Also added a pick of a 41cm snapper I got at Goat last Saturday on a solo run...
