Moreton Bay Tuna Hat Trick

On Saturday the 17^th April at 11am, Henk, Carl and I launched Henk’s boat out of Moreton Bay, Brisbane. This was the first launch I had made since I immigrated to Australia in March. The plan was to just have a bit of a look around the bay and see if there were any interesting spots.

Henk knew the area and stopped at a few marker beacons in the bay. I opted for a set of sabikis, Carl was casting a small spoon and Henk had a soft plastic. We caught a few small snapper and yellowtail scads (I don’t have a clue what the local names are yet) before moving towards Amity point on the northern point of North Stradbroke Island. The weather was beautiful, and there was basically zero swell, so Henk suggested we head to sea through “The Bar”. It’s the gap between the Moreton Island and Stradbroke where you need to weave your way through the sandbanks and breaking surf. Similar to the gap between Benguerra Island and Magaruque. It can get really dicey when the tide is running out.

With the flat sea, it was an easy crossing. We stopped on an old ship wreck on one of the sandbanks but despite our efforts with lures and live baits, we didn’t get any pulls so we headed south to a well-known pinnacle. There were great showings, but they were mainly small goatfish and some weird little fish that I had not seen before. After a while we decided to pull a few rappies around and we had not gone 50m when a reel went off. I took the rod and managed to get my first Aussie yellowfin which we bled and put in the hatch for sushi. With no more action on the we trolled deeper to another big pinnacle. As the structure started climbing, there was a big midwater showing on the sounder. Just then a reel went off with what turned out to be a big kawakawa. I made another turn and the surface lure went on. Carl caught a small skippie which we released. Its not often that you get 3 tuna species in a day, so I thought it was pretty good. I continued making turns around the spot and we had continuous action from skippies and another yellowfin. At 4:30 we called it and made the 60min run back to the boat ramp.

I am really looking forward to “ABF” arriving. There seems to be some potential in the area and it will just take some time to figure out what’s going on.

Thanks to Henk for that great day out.