Things have been pretty slow on the Noosa River of late.
In the daylight hours that is.
The extra people on the water at this time of year is horrendous, as you could well imagine.
Virgin boaties, interstaters, arrogant uneducated fools, the list is endless.
Most of the locals hit the water at 3am or so and are off the water at 9am....... or they fish at night.
Night time of late has been firing.
Jacks, tarpon, cod, trevallies, bull shark etc., have all been on the chew.
Especially the Mangrove Jack. Substantiated catches of 10 and 8 have occured in the last week. Good fish too, up to 53cm.
Thinking we'd give it a shot last night, a phone call was made to a mate and we were on. Seeing we were in my boat, he had the deep end of the net!
With some top livies in the tank, we were off. Poddy mullet, whiting and herring, all sweet lollies for the intended target, mangrove jack.
We found the bombie we wanted to fish and deployed the baits. Beautiful night, no wind, 3 hours to the top of the tide, small current, things felt good.
After an hour or so things started to happen. We had constant hits on our baits all night, with some very busy activity at times.
At one stage after I pulled a Jack of 40cm, we were trying to take a photo.
I'm holding the fish up and zzzzzzz, my other rod goes off! Put the jack in the tank and hookup to a solid fish. After a sec he bites me off, Bull Shark we think. Back to the photo.......hold the fish up, then James's rod goes off, put fish back in livewell to net a little soapie jew. Ended up returning the Jack to the water without a photo! No big deal.
Was a great night on the water with final tally being, 4 Jacks, 3 Catties, 1 little Jewie with 3 bust offs to Sharks and other pulled hooks etc.
At holiday time, this little river of ours, the Noosa, is heavily fished and heavily utilised by holiday makers from all over the place.
For the locals, we stay away and fish the river at night.
Makes sense to me.
Cheers, Jeff.