Big red emperor fun off Double Island Point/Fraser Island…sounder shots included – Nov 2011

some of the less qaulity pics below were snap shots taken off the cam recorder which reduces resolution and clarity.

We headed out the wide bay bar with flat sea’s and stopped about 20km out to try jig some bait and to float some baits down on isolated reefs surrounding the area.  This accounted for a nice squire, Pearlie’s and Maori cod before we headed out wide in search of reds.

 After a good half a day sounding around and very little to show for our efforts I eventually ran over a large pinnacle and the sounder screen filled up with massive amounts of bait and predatory fish surrounding them. We all had a bit of a laugh knowing we were about to get mauled by some big fish and the old man was first to have his rod buckled up and line screaming off his reel. The next half hour resulted in some brutal fish smashing our baits and the conversion rate in landing these big fish was poor as fish after fish took us back into the reef and busted us off. We still managed to pull some nice Samson fish and Amberjack but we soon got sick of losing fish even though it made for some good footage. 

 

I moved onto another area before finding another nice pinnacle with a great show of fish on it. I said to the boys that there were some good reds close to the bottom among a school of what appeared to be hussar. 

The current was strong so I positioned the boat well forward of spot and told the boys to drop their lines. Straight away their large mullet fillets were taken and the boys had some serious fish on the other end of their lines. Dad was first to have his fish up and it was a beautiful red around 12kg and Foxy was confident his fish was a much bigger. He played the fish carefully and a cracking red hit the surface and into the net. It was solid fish and later weighed at 15.1kg so we were all happy with such quality fish and to have filmed the show on the sounder all the way through to landing the fish.

Next few drifts resulted in more big reds hitting the deck along with some of the biggest hussar you had ever seen.

The hussar started driving us mad so with moved on to an old mark I hadn’t fished in a while and I pulled a Blue Maori code followed by some more nice reds.

With the sun starting to disappear I headed to many other areas I had and fished the small isolated bumps with bait schools on them and pulled a few more fish including another nice red. I anchored up and hit the sack as the current was roaring and completely unfishable. In the morning the current had dropped out and we started pulling a parrot, hussar, moses perch, spangled emperor and a red bass but no red emperor so I pulled the anchor and went in search for new ground. 

20minutes later I found a nice rise and we had a drift.  This spot produced another red, big parrot, hussar and moses perch.

After that I decided to head back to where we had caught the big reds the day before. Both foxy and I hooked up straight away and struggled to move the fish off the bottom. I got mine coming while foxy on the other hand keep the pressure on waiting for the fish to tire so he could begin to move it in the right direction. Eventually we had both our fish in the boat and they were once again good quality with the biggest going 14.2kg. With the morning getting on and happy with the fishing results and the great footage we had captured I started making my way in.

On the way in I ran over a tiny rise on the sounder with a small speckle of fish on it. Now this spot looked so small and insufficient but knowing that I ran over it at 25 knots assured me that when I went back over it that it would appear a lot larger in size. As you can see in the below pics taken off my cam recorder  the first shot is at 25knots, the second shot was when I sounded back over it at 6knots and the third was taken while drifting over it. Not even a second after that third pic I hooked up to a solid fish and the camera swang around from that sounder shot to me buckled over the side with a nice fish. It was a red around the 11kg mark and a perfect example of how small isolated areas that don’t look like very much can produce good fish. Without a good sounder/transducer set up that can read well at speed you would never see these small isolated bumps.

sounder shot at 25knots

same spot at 6 knots

same spot at drifting speed and hooked a good red a second after this shot.

The red from the sounder pics above

Greg Lamprecht.

 

Some other pics of the trip