Newsletter February, 2008

Transcription

1 Southern Brisbane Sportfishing Club Inc. P.O. Box 5057 Eagleby. Qld 4207 Editor: Jeff Maddalena Newsletter February, 2008 Next Meeting THE NEXT MEETING WILL BE ON MONDAY the 4 th of February 2008 at 7:30pm (even if it s a public holiday) at the Beenleigh Bowls Club, 11 Hanover Street, Beenleigh. See access map further on in this Newsletter. Guest Speaker: February guest speaker will be Danny Hughes. Danny is the rod and reel repairer for numerous tackle shops around Brisbane. This should be a very informative night. February trips: Two club trips for February. One local trip and one away trip. This will be the way all trips this year will be set out. So if you cannot get away there will always be a day trip through the month. As the wise men say no - one has time to go fishing, so you just have to make time to fish. A nice Healthy 40cm Hinze Dam bass caught by junior SBSFC member Rachel Ford. Looks like one for the dinner plate. Acknowledgement: This Newsletter was kindly copied by Brett Raguse, member for Forde, at no charge to the club. Special thanks to Mr Raguse for his kind assistance. Mark Veivers will take on his first trip captain role with a day trip in Southern Moreton Bay on the 24 th.the plan is to chase Snapper around the Southern Islands. Give Mark a call on The away trip will be to Borumba Dam and we will be targeting Bass and Saratoga. Borumba is at 67%, so this trip is looking good. John Eldred is trip captain. John has arranged two cabins at Borumba deer Park. Let John know if you intend to go by the February meeting. Call John on

2 KIMBERLEY QUEST II Barra & Pelagic Fishing Off The Kimberley Coast (A warts and all account from a neutral party) By Ray Bricknell It is Sunday 4 November 2007 and I am sitting in the spacious dining area of the air-conditioned Kimberley Quest II as it makes the 4 to 5 hour journey along the W.A. coast from Yampi Sound to our planned fishing destination at Walcott Inlet. It took two days of travel and a heap of money to get this far, just to start the trip. Brisbane to Darwin takes four hours flying time (plus travel to/from the airports at either end), and there is no connecting flight to Broome. So you pay expensive Darwin rates for a room to overnight there. Then you leave your hotel at 5:30am to catch the only flight that day from Darwin to Broome via Kununurra, the direct flight having been cancelled. Then you discover you have left the tube containing your rods back in the hotel room, because you were a bit bleary eyed as you hurried out to catch the 5:30am taxi. What to do now? Well, there are some very helpful people in outback Australia, and our cab driver was one of them. Fortunately, we had arrived the mandatory one-hour before departure a cautionary approach to travel that comes with being almost three score and ten years old. No worries, says the Cabbie. Give me your room number and your mobile phone number and I ll drive the 15 minutes back to the hotel and try to get into your room to retrieve your rods. Well, you think, it is nice of him to try, but reception does not open until 11am, and the key card has been dropped in the box at reception, so he has no hope of getting into the locked room. And getting the rods flown into Broome the next day won t work, because our flight out to the boat leaves before the flight from Kununurra gets into Broome. Well, the Cabbie called about a half hour later. I managed to dig out the caretaker, and I have your rods I ll be there in 15 minutes. If ever an act of kindness deserved a good tip, this was it and he got his due reward. Of course, I also copped a heap of rubbishing from the others on the trip, but that s life when you start having Senior Moments. Broome was quiet in early November, with the wet season about to start. The population of about 15,000 swells to over 60,000 in the winter months. Meanwhile our crummy old run-down motel room with a double bed and two bunks cost us $240 for the three of us and they then had the hide to charge us $22 each for a cooked breakfast (only $19 if you settled for cereal, fruit and toast). So don t plan on doing this trip unless you are prepared to part with a heap of cash without letting it upset you. After our expensive over-night stay in Broome, a place which really does not have a lot to offer the tourist, we were taken out to the airport for our one hour flight to the mother ship, landing close to the boat in Yampi Sound at about lunch time. We were met by a couple of tinnies, which took our baggage to the boat and delivered last week s fishers to the amphibious aircraft. The flight out to the boat was nice, but nowhere near as spectacular as the flight from Kununurra to the Drysdale River up north. The Kimberley Quest II is something else. Talk about luxury fishing! It s nine double/twin cabins are larger than expected on a 25 metre boat, and every part of the boat is spacious and luxurious. Each cabin has an en suite, and they are amazingly spacious. The Kimberley Quest II is neither pretty nor terribly stable. It s a single hull vessel with a shallow draft, purpose designed and built for its area of operations the rivers are sometimes relatively shallow along the W.A. coast, although the channel we travelled up in Walcott Inlet was over 20 metres deep for much of its length and they like to take the boat well upstream on occasions. But it has been built with the comfort of passengers primarily in mind. Air-conditioned throughout absolutely essential off the Kimberley coast in the hotter months the lounge/dining area is very spacious, as is the kitchen, and the bridge, where passengers are welcome to spend time and the crew tends to gather when not working. Each cabin has its

3 own separately controlled A.C. unit. There is also a spacious covered rear deck area and a forward deck with a spa, and there is a helicopter pad on the top. All very luxurious. And it carries a crew of eight: a Skipper, four fishing guides (three in their twenties and one 48 year old on our trip), a 26-year-old Chef, and two young Hostesses (read housemaids and kitchen hands) to pamper its guests. The girls make up your cabin for you each morning during the first fishing session of the day. Our first afternoon was spent travelling from Yampi Sound to the mouth of Walcott inlet at around 10 knots. There are five 4.6m aluminium fishing lighters towed by the boat, four of which were operated by knowledgeable young fishing guides on our trip. The fifth ( the Skipper s boat ) seems to be kept as a safety boat although the crewmembers, including the girls, do use it a lot for fishing. They spend weeks at a time on board the Kimberley Quest II. Incidentally, our skipper was a 28 year old whose wife of a few weeks works on the ship as a Hostess. We managed to fish for a couple of hours that first afternoon, but precious little was caught apart from a few Rock Cod averaging around 40cms long. I never cease to be amazed at the size of their mouths! Dinner was pleasant and was followed by a round of cards with all ten of us playing: Up the River and Down the River quite good fun. Everyone hit the sack fairly early. Monday 5:00am saw all four tinnies on the water, trolling for Pelagics and mostly catching Rock Cod. One Shark Mackerel was kept and eaten as steaks for lunch, and two Giant Trevally each took their typical 20 minutes to get to the boat. About a metre long and weighing probably 10 or 12 pounds, these fish both provided a long tug-of-war for the fishers who caught them. Both were released, along with numerous Cod and four very nice Fingermark Bream around the 38 cm mark (an estimate) just before the Skipper radioed that he wanted the Fingermarks kept for lunch. Interestingly, two of the Fingermarks were caught on the same lure at the same time genuine double-hook-ups! A good indication of things to come? We returned to the mother ship for breakfast at 8am, after which the first Barra fishing took place up in the branches off the main inlet. It was good Barra weather hot and still. Indeed, the vinyl covered padded seats in the tinnies were almost too hot to sit on each time we moved the boat to a new spot. We fished from about 9:00am to 1:00pm, and I caught the first Barra for the trip and the only Barra for that day a 63cm youngster which did just one tail stand and really did not fight any harder than the stocked catchment Barra in Queensland do. The Mackerel for lunch was OK (coming from one who has never been a big fan of Mackerel as a table fish), and most people were back on the water by around 2:00pm. A few of the old dogs stayed in the air-conditioning until about 3:30 in my case 4:00pm treating the trip as a marathon rather than a sprint. The hot wind in the early afternoon was really tough to take, and the blazing sun required extreme measures if serious sunburn was to be avoided. By early afternoon there was a fair sort of westerly wind blowing, and the boat was rocking quite a bit as I typed this section of this trip report. The fishing time therefore averages about 10 or 11 hours per person per day I ll call it 10 to be conservative. By mid-way through the trip evening on Wednesday the total Barra catch was 40 fish boated, and a fair few dropped. But there is a catch to these figures. The Legendary Kimberley Barramundi Ray s 103cm Horse

4 The operators of these trips have a lot riding on the public s perception of the numbers and sizes of fish caught. Hence, if the passengers aren t catching a lot of Barra, the crew fishes fairly intensively for and/or with them and only the total numbers caught are tallied by the skipper, not who caught them. Of course, 40 Barra divided by ten fishers is four each in 3 days of fishing. That s about 1.3 Barra per fisher per 10- hour day. But in truth the crewmembers are very experienced and skilful Barra fishers, so they contributed approximately 1/3 rd of this catch. So the true average to the mid-point of the trip was about 1 Barra per fisher per 10-hour day. The first Barra caught took 40 man-hours of fishing comparable to the 20 man-hours per Barra on the Club Trip in November 2006 at Lake Monduran. Not really a great start. The fishing trip before ours on Kimberley Quest II was also for a week, had 13 people on it, and they caught 66 Barra for the week and dropped a similar number. (Interestingly, and doubtless due in large part to good luck, I have never dropped a Barramundi once hooked. But I do take great care never to give them any slack line, and a few have taken me around trees in Lake Monduran and broken me off.) One Barra per fisher per ten hour day is, of course, better than the one Barra per 20 man hours of fishing in Lake Monduran, but it will shock and disappoint many people who yearn to do such a fishing trip. And when you remember that the all up cost of the trip if undertaken from Brisbane does not get you any change out of $8,000, the cost per Barra is pretty high. Much higher than Monduran, even though the holiday houses there are now very expensive. Of course, Barramundi were not the only fish caught on this trip. There is probably one fish of another species caught for every Barra, including Fingermark Bream, Cod, G.T. (Giant Trevally), Mangrove Jack, Blue Nose Salmon, Threadfin Salmon, Shark, Queen Fish and a fair few fork tailed Catfish. But the other species do not rate and, although some of the fish are quite large, there are also plenty of just average sizes. The key point to note is this: If you go on one of these trips, don t expect to catch huge numbers of fish even though the area where they fish is very remote, and could never be called fished out. Of course, professional fishers do net the creeks and gutters in the area, primarily for Barramundi, but their impact does not appear to be devastating. It is also interesting to note that there is enormous, and random, variation in the fish catches. Often only one of the four tinnies caught fish in a particular session, and often that one boat got quite a good haul. In one session, one of the boats caught seven Barramundi an unusually high number. But they were all tiny around 30 to 40 cms as though they had stumbled upon a Barramundi Kindergarten. No one else caught Barra, and few caught anything at all, during that session. I personally caught one Barra in the first session of the week (Sunday morning), none on the Monday, then two the next day, then none at all until the Friday morning. So I had only three Barra for five days of fishing. Then suddenly, between about 6:30 and 7:15am on the Friday morning, the four fishers in our boat (including the guide, who fished only rarely) caught seven Barra, a 39cm Jack, and a 99cm Queenfish. I caught four of the seven Barra, and one of those was the biggest Barra caught by a guest on the trip 103cms long. (The next day the young Chef caught one 119cms long in that same spot. There were the only two Barra caught during the week that were over one metre.) I have some video of that big fish giving me the fight of my life. On that same morning I got another four good hits by Barra (and one or two more later in the day), and the others got another four or five hits between them as well. A really fantastic session the type that gets talked about when people describe their experiences with The Legendary Kimberley Barramundi. But note that only eight big fish and no small ones were caught in that six-hour session, and even with four from this one session I only finished up with eight Barramundi for the six days.

5 This requires a very high level of casting skill, or a very patient fishing guide or Deckie who is prepared to repeatedly take the boat into the mangroves to rescue caught lures some from quite high altitudes. An 119cm Monster Barra caught trolling by the Chef, Stephen. The outstanding performance was 33 Barra caught by two fishers from the same boat in the six days, so it is possible to average up to 3 Barra per fisher per day if you strike it really lucky. But don t count on it. And that still means three hours fishing for every Barramundi. WOT! No Mangrove Jack? Surprisingly, by the mid-point of this trip only one Mangrove Jack had been boated. Another was caught on the Thursday, and one more on the Friday. By week s end only about six had been caught. This might be a reflection of the lack of casting skill amongst the fishers, and I only saw the two guys in my tinnie cast, so I don t really know how good the others were. The two in my boat were novice lure casters, unfamiliar with bait-caster reels, but some of the others are very keen fishers and should be good casters. I m a poor caster, but by the end of the second day the three of us in my boat were all putting most of our casts pretty much where we wanted them. And certainly the four fishing guides in the crew, plus the young Skipper, are all good casters. So if Mangrove Jack were plentiful in this area, more would have been caught. Interestingly, the Kimberley Quest II also does trips to the Drysdale River. Having been on two professionally guided trips to the Drysdale I know there are plenty of Jack there but they are only caught by those willing and able to cast lures right into the base of the mangrove roots. Incidentally, on my second trip to the Drysdale I caught 12 Barramundi in 8 days of fishing that s 1½ Barra per 10-hour day of fishing. Somewhat better than my rate (and the average rate) for the Kimberley Coast trip. Better fishers would doubtless catch more, but after a day or so of continuous casting I get to the point where I can put the lure pretty much where I want it on most casts, and my retrieval technique is as effective as anyone s was on this trip. ( Too slow is not slow enough. ) I caught quite a lot more fish while casting than did the other two guys in my boat, and no one on the trip reported significantly better casting catch rates than mine, except the two guys who got the 33 Barra so my catch rate for Barra is fairly indicative of what the average fisher could expect on such a trip. Some Memorable Incidents Because I left my rods in my Darwin hotel room, the guys on the trip decided I had to be punished. So they took the rods out of their tube and replaced them with a piece of broken broom handle. Bloody hell! Imagine how I felt when I opened the tube and found my rods had apparently been stolen in transit! After a suitable period of watching my anguish, they all burst out laughing and came clean. Very funny! On the Wednesday morning we had an early breakfast at 5am, and started fishing at 6am. I caught my first Barra of the day on about my third or fourth cast into the muddy discharge from a gutter (drainage channel) in a mud bank. The tides are huge in the Kimberley area. Even the neap tides on this trip were four metre tides, and we were having nine metre tides by the end of the week. Hence, deep channels are washed out of the mud flats as the mangrove swamps are drained. And the lower banks of those drainage channels (gutters) are often devoid of vegetation. The water is quite muddy, and near the bottom of the tide the gutters are quite

6 shallow. So it was that even in the cloudy water we could see the odd Barramundi swim by our boat. Indeed, a pair of quite large ones swam over to check out our propeller at one stage, thus indicating that Barra are not frightened away from a spot by the sound of a prop. Our fishing guide spotted a Barra swimming past our boat about five metres away, and pointed it out. Fortunately, I was ready to cast. So I flicked my lure about three metres beyond the Barra and a bit in front of it, and began my retrieve. It worked! In an instant I had an 87 cm Barra on my line, and it was quite a lot further than five metres from the boat before I could stop it the first time. Great fun. My second Barra for the morning. Bringing my tally to three for the three days. (The second day I caught quite a lot of fish, but no Barra. The other two in my boat caught virtually nothing that day.) A short while later the guide pointed out another Barra swimming past our boat in the opposite direction. It was about ten metres beyond the boat before I could get a cast away. I lobbed the lure about five metres beyond and in front of the fish and began my retrieve and the Barra turned and followed it back to the boat. For the last couple of metres the Barra was at the surface and almost touching the lure. Three times it appeared to get set to take the lure, but each time it hesitated. As the lure approached the side of the boat I slowed it down, jigged it around a little, and even stopped it, but in the end the Barra lost interest and turned and swam off. It actually appeared to nudge the lure with the top of its head at one point, and possibly worked out it was not really edible. It was bad luck to miss the fish, but the four of us in the tinnie had a very exciting and entertaining minute or so watching that big fish checking out my lure. Then a 10-foot shark swam by the boat about two metres away in the very shallow water. It also thought this gutter looked productive! We could not identify the type of shark in the murky water. On the Friday morning, as previously mentioned, one of the guys in my boat caught a 99cm Queenie. Typical of such fish, it had swum right up to our boat to check out the action being caused by the Mangrove Jack on another guy s line which was by then only a couple of metres from the boat. I saw it swim in a tight circle around the Jack and thought it was a small shark. The guide also saw it and recognised it as a Queenie. One of the other guys was retrieving his lure at just that instant, and the Queenie took it not a metre from the boat. A great fight followed, of course, as the startled Queenie took off for Perth. That same morning a 7 or 8 foot Croc followed us into a gutter. The guide started teasing it with a Fizzer lure, and the Croc followed the Fizzer at some speed, right up to our boat. All very exciting I have it on video. Do Wild Barra Fight Better Than Catchment Barra? Who could ever really say? The huge tides along the Kimberley Coast must obviously make the Barra there somewhat fitter than the big fat lazy slobs that cruise around the stocked catchments in Queensland. But the wild Barra don t spend any more time than they can avoid swimming against the huge current flows (the Kimberley Quest II once measured the flow rate at 12 Knots through one of the narrow gaps it traverses the boat has a maximum speed of 10 knots, and the GPS said it was travelling at 22 knots). The current is so fast it causes whirlpools to form in the middle of the wide waterways. Since and including my first trip to the Drysdale River in 1991 I have caught about 25 to 30 Barramundi. Most of them have been in the wild, but I ve caught a few fair sized ones in the stocked catchments. My personal view is: the fight varies from fish to fish, and it s not the size of the fish in the fight; it s the size of the fight in the fish. My first catchment Barra was, from memory, about 80cms long. I caught her in about a foot of water, and she raced across the surface for about 20 meters before diving into deeper water and threatening never to come up. That was

7 spectacular, and a great fight as good as I ve had from any wild Barra of similar size. But I ve never caught a catchment Barra over a metre, and the 103cm fish I caught on this trip probably gave me the toughest and most exciting fight any fish has ever given me. (A G.T. at the Drysdale took me longer to land, but the fight they give is less exciting the big Barra went for several runs when I simply could not stop him. Incidentally, the Kimberley Quest II provides its guests with $750 bait-casters on $250 rods, rigged with 55lb breaking strain braid and an 80lb braid leader. They do this for very valid reasons, of course. They don t want inexperienced fishers getting busted off, and they need a line strong enough to let the guides drag lures out of trees by brute force, when practicable. I was determined to fish lighter on this trip. I took some very thin 22lb b/s braid and some 40lb special mono leader with me on my two baitcaster reels. On my first reel, a Spider SCL 300, the thin braid kept slipping through the groove at the side of the spool, so I had to abandon that (this is something to watch when choosing braid for a reel). And the guides were very keen to get me to use their gear rather than my old Abu Garcia with the lighter braid on it, presumably because they didn t want me getting busted off either. And frankly, when I saw how few Barra were being caught, and how often the strong current washed our lures into snags below the surface as we swam them past (with three fishers in the boat), I decided it really made more sense to fish with the heavier line. And the Shimano Calcutta TE 250 DC bait-caster, with dynamo and computer memory chip in it, certainly was a very easy reel to cast with. It s almost backlash proof. Incidentally, the tinnies all had on board long 20mm diameter aluminium tubes fitted with a coil on the end that looked a bit like an electric jug element. They were fantastic for pushing lures off submerged snags. No one in my boat lost a single lure all week. They had all bought heaps of lures to take with them, of course almost a total waste of money. They mostly used the guides lures, on a pay to replace basis. We had to change lures very often, because the depth of the water was constantly changing at an incredible rate, and the guides had their own preferred lures for different depths. I basically used three lures all week two of mine and one Fat Boy of the guide s. I caught Barra on all three. We did a bit of trolling, mainly when the tide was too high or too fast to make casting worthwhile. I confess that I don t much like trolling: I think it often attests to the lack of skill of the fisher, and the lack of intelligence of the fish. I know many in our club will not agree with me. The last session of the week Saturday evening was spent trolling and casting for Pelagics in the Queenie patch. The Queenies weren t home and neither was anything else worth catching. The Final Tally Our group of ten fishers, complemented by the crew, caught 91 Barramundi for the week and dropped 53, according to the Skipper s tally. The ten paying guests caught about 70 between us, with one boat really cleaning up. The two experienced fishers in that boat landed 33 Barra between them. When questioned, their guide said that whilst they are both very experienced and good fishers, in his view luck played a very considerable part in their large catch. In his opinion they were fortunate to frequently choose spots where the Barra were feeding at the time. The guide chose most of the spots, of course. My own experience on this trip supports the view that luck plays a big part in how many Barra you catch. In one spot we landed four good fish inside about half an hour, and had a few good hits on top of that. We had fished that same spot previously on more than one occasion without any success, and we fished it again at about the same time and tide on the two following days with no success at all. Others also fished that spot several times during the week with little or no success. Indeed, we all fished the same spots as one another at various times, because there was not an unlimited number of spots worth fishing, and the guides all knew where all the spots were.

8 Conclusion 70 Barra caught over six days by ten fishers works out at a fraction over one Barra per fisher per day. Is such a trip worth its huge cost? Well, in the first place I guess that depends on whether or not you can easily afford it. The trip I was on was loaded with multi-millionaires, three of them dentists. They told me an average employee dentist in Australia could easily get a salary of $250,000 p.a. with no business risk and no responsibility. There is apparently a big shortage of dentists as well as doctors right now, as a result of poor planning by the government bureaucrats (as usual). These three dentists were older the age group that employs younger dentists. To these rich fellers, the cost was completely incidental. About half of them do this trip every year, and some do other similar trips as well. I was easily the poorest bloke on the boat, and the cost to me is significant. Incidentally, I was also the oldest on board, although there were two others over 65. Assuming you can afford it, is it worth the cost? Well, it is very nice. It is different. Indeed, maybe it is almost unique. Although I must say I think the Kimberley Coast scenery is very similar to that of the Drysdale River, and only as spectacular in a few places but the Kimberley Quest II also does trips to the Drysdale. Incidentally, in both places the landscape is dominated by 1,800 million year old fractured King Leopold sandstone. The fractures create some fascinating rock formations, and the sandstone varies quite a bit in colour, enhancing its beauty. I asked one of the experienced fishing guides whom he thought was the better area in terms of fish yield, and he said they are about equal. A boat (tinnie) can have seven fish (Barra) days in both locations, and you can have two days in a row with no fish in both locations. This is illustrative. A seven Barra day is obviously considered a really good day. That can often be two fish each for three fishers, and one for the guide. This helps get these trips into perspective. Don t go there expecting more: The fish don t jump onto your line ANYWHERE! Of course, as with all fishing, you do occasionally get a big catch in one day, and they are the days you read about in the fishing and travel magazines. But they are NOT the norm. For old blokes like me, the comfort of the mother ship is really important. In fact, at almost 70 I would not now feel confident to take on a land based Drysdale trip such as the two I did when I was younger. And if you want the comfort of the mother ship you have to pay for it. At any rate, the cost is not hugely different. I paid about $3,000 for my first six day Drysdale trip in Adjusting that for inflation since 1991, it equates to about $5,000 in 2007, compared to $6,860 for the Kimberley Quest seven-day trip. Both costs include a one-hour or so float plane trip each way from a population centre. So for me it is either pay the huge cost of this style of trip, or don t go. The organisers of this trip are pressing me to commit to go with them again next year I am going to have to think long and hard about that, because it is a lot of money for me, and I m not all that big on repeating holidays. It really was a very nice trip different, at times exciting, always pleasant, and the company was good. But, on balance, I think it is too far to travel, and too much money, for not enough difference in numbers of Barra caught. Queenslanders, even Sydneysiders, would be better off heading up Tully way, I think, if they want to go chasing wild Barra. But don t expect them to jump onto your line there either. Better still, go to Darwin for the same airfare or even better, go to Kununurra. They say the best Barra fishing in Australia is now in the Ord River. Jabiru Island trip 16 th December By Jeff Maddalena Not much to report from this trip, as conditions were not favourable. The wind came up about 9am from the northwest and the tide was running in. From past experience Coombabah creek will fish better on the runout tide. I took my wife Rach on this trip. All I had the whole morning was numerous Bream strikes on surface but no hook ups. Got in about 12.00pm all up it was a very hard morning.

9 The Qld East Coast Inshore Fin Fish Fishery Have your say! A number of changes to management of the East Coast Fin Fish Fishery are proposed. A Regulatory Impact Statement (RIS) and draft Public Benefit Test (PBT) is available which outlines these proposed changes. The RIS and draft PBT, as well as a summary of the proposed changes are available on the DPI&F website at The closing date for providing comment on the RIS and draft PBT is Monday 17th March 08. Following the closing date for public comment, the state government will consider the issues the community has raised, and may hold further consultation before developing a final position. New fishing rules for recreational and commercial fishers are proposed for many wellknown species along the Qld East Coast, including bream, flathead, estuary cod, luderick, mangrove jack, shark, tailor, mulloway, and mullet. You can respond to the proposal through a paper response form, the Internet, or by attending one of the many stakeholder meetings that are scheduled. I urge every member to respond in one form or another. Meeting dates/locations for recreational stakeholders south side of Brisbane are as follows: - Tue 29/1/08 Auditorium 1, Southport RSL, 36 Scarborough St. 7pm - 9pm Wed 6/2/08 Function Room, Sharks Sports Club, Colburn Ave, Victoria Point, 7pm - 9pm Lloyd Willmann President SBSFC Hinze Dam update The Hinze Dam Stage 3 (HDS3) project is moving forward as a priority Project. The Hinze Dam Stage 3 Project will see the dam wall be raised from 93.5 metres to approximately metres, and will: Reduce the flooding in the lower Nerang River catchment Increase water supply from Hinze Dam to 225 million litres per day Ensure the dam complies with current safety standards and guidelines Council has appointed an Alliance which brings in specialist private sector expertise to work with GCCC's the Economic Development and Major Projects Directorate and Gold Coast Water in the delivery of this project. Gold Coast City Council's alliance partners include Thiess Pty Ltd, Sinclair Knight Merz & URS Following an extensive consultation process seeking community input, an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) and a Supplementary Report have been prepared. The EIS considers social, economic and environmental issues associated with the Hinze Dam Stage 3 project. The Supplementary EIS Report has been submitted to the Coordinator-General's office and is now approved and waiting federal approval. Pre-construction activities commence in October 2007 with construction work on the dam raising beginning early It is expected the project will be completed by December For more information go to Classifieds WANTED light spin rod 2 3 kg, 6 to 7ft, contact Mark Veivers on FOR SALE upright freezer works well good for bait storage. Phone Jeff $20 To place an ad, simply or give the ad contents to your Editor. jmaddalena@optusnet.com.au

10 JOKE OF THE MONTH Tech Tip- Did you know? There is a 2 letter code used with some colours in the extremely popular Jackall range of Lures from Japan, i.e. HL Gold and Black The letters HL actually mean something, Here is rundown of the letter codes and other info, on Jackalls that may be of interest; HL is Holographic Finish- so the lure throws off a variety of colours when hit with light. NF colours give the impression the lure has a small profile. SC is Shocking Contrast- very different colours are used to gain an aggressive strike from the fish. Ghost colours are a slightly transparent version of the standard colour. As in the case of Ghost Ayu and Ayu. KEVIN FORD If you haven't joined Team Lure World yet, Click here to register. sales@lureworld.com.au Ph/fax Mobile /08 COMMITTEE PRESIDENT: Lloyd Willmann Ph: SECRETARY: Ross Williamson Ph: TREASURER: Tom Wallbank Ph: AST-TREASURER: Dave Rawlins Ph: ANSA REP/Rec: Lloyd Willmann Ph: TAG. OFFR: John Cumberland Ph: RAFFLES: John Eldred Ph: NEWSLETTER EDITOR: Jeff Maddalena jmaddalena@optusnet.com.au A tour bus driver is driving with a busload of seniors down a highway when a little old lady taps him on his shoulder. She offers him a handful of peanuts, which he gratefully munches up. After about 15 minutes, she taps him on his shoulder again and she hands him another handful of peanuts. She repeats this gesture about five more times. When she is about to hand him another batch again he asks the little old lady, "Why don't you eat the peanuts yourself? "We can't chew them because we've no teeth", she replied. The puzzled driver asks, "Why do you buy them then?" The old lady replied, "We just love the chocolate around them." LIIBRARY STUFF The club library has the following items available for borrowing by the members. They are available at our monthly club meetings. A $20 deposit will be required please, just to make sure they come back at the next meeting. ET's Bass and Barra Fishing Gently Does it when releasing fish - booklet and DVD Gillies Introduction to Fly Fishing Squidgy Secrets - Part 1 Basics The Kayak Fishing Video (On DVD) Basic Bait Fishing (DVD) Queensland's Freshwater Fishing Impoundment Guide (NAFA / Tourism Queensland) Queensland's Offshore Fishing Guide (NAFA / Tourism Queensland) Evinrude Etec DVD Zed Lure field test series 2004 parts 1 to 4 Fishing DVD volumes 1, 2 & 7 Flathead Study (cd-rom)

11 Club Logos for Shirts and Stickers for Boats Just a reminder - for $10.00 you can have the SBSFC logo embroidered onto your own shirt. Bring your dress shirt / polo shirt or fishing shirt to the meeting with $10.00 and it will be back at the following meeting. The $10.00 fee includes a $1.00 levy that will go towards reimbursing the club for the $75.00 set up cost. Tom Wallbank has had a number of large and small boat stickers printed, and these are available for sale at every meeting. COST- Small $1; Large $5 USEFUL NUMBERS & WEB SITES: SE Qld Boating Weather Qld Marine Warnings Fish watch Hotline Bureau of meteorology Sweetwater fishing Crab pot Theft Hotline Bonzer imports Brownies coast watch SEQ kayak fishing Southern Brisbane Sportsfishing Club SPECIIAL DEALS Marine Welding Members should note that Jason Small of J & T Marine Welding is a brilliant aluminium and stainless steel welder, located near the Gem Hotel, and is prepared to do small jobs like repairing small leaks and cracks in tinnie hulls. He is a really straight shooter, and his charges are embarrassingly low, based on one member s experience (two jobs). Phone Jason on if you need his help. R.T.L. Trailers Mark builds trailers and repairs them very economically a good tradesman too. 79 Boundary Street, Beenleigh NEW MEMBERS Prospective Members reading this Newsletter will be made very welcome at any Club meeting so please come along and check us out at our next meeting on the first Monday of the month at 7:15pm. NOTE: - The Bowls Club has a Bar. Please remember the gear swap table at the meeting bring your swaps or items for sale. This can be a great club facility if we all use it. Single membership - $58.00 p.a. Family Membership - $78.00 p.a. Student (over 16) - $20.00 p.a. Child (under 16) no parent in club- $20.00 Child (under 16) parent in club- $10.00 Meeting Room Location Map: Danny Hughes -Fishing Tackle Restoration Mobile Ph He also has 2 nd hand good quality reels & rods for sale at all times. He does all the Reel / Rod Repairs for Mossop s, Fish Head etc. Troy Park, Mobile Outboard Mechanic Ph: offers a discount to club members, and has been found to be of good value.

12 Proudly brought to you by Beenleigh Bait & Tackle are open 7 days early til late. The new owners Bill & Joyce have an extensive range of fishing tackle, will take care of your rod and reel repairs and of course have live fresh & frozen bait. Ph Don t forget to show your SBSFC membership card to receive 10% off all tackle at Beenleigh Bait & Tackle. - billbrunswick@mail.dodo.net.au Web- John Cumberland does it again with this great 76cm Snapper. Caught at Potts Point, on a 4" Berkley Gulp Lime Tiger. Just your photos to jmaddalena@optusnet.com.au and your prized catch will appear in the newsletter.

13 TRIPS CALENDAR 2008 Month Venue Date Species Nearest Town Accommodation Trip Captain Mangrove Jack / January Pimpama River 20th Gold Coast Craig Milne Flathead Southern Moreton Bay February 24th Snapper Redland Bay Islands Mark Veivers Bream / Mangrove March Mid Nerang 23rd Gold Coast Jack Kevin Ford April Maroon Dam 20th Bass Boonah May Brisbane River / Mud Island 18th Snapper Brisbane June Peel Island 22nd Snapper Cleveland July Jumpinpin / Marks Rocks (special) Home Trips Jeff Maddalena Dave Dennis John Cumberland 13th - 16th Jew Cabbage Tree Tom Wallbank August Moogerah Dam 17th Bass Boonah Glen Kennedy September Albert River 14th Bass Beenleigh October Logan River 5th Jew Beenleigh Lloyd Willmann November Pimpama River 9th Flathead Gold Coast December Jabiru Island 14th Mangrove Jack / Flathead / Cod Gold Coast Dave Dennis Away Trips Month Venue Date Species Nearest Town Accommodation Trip Captain January February N / A Borumba Dam 22nd - 24th Saratoga / Bass Imbil March Noosa River 23rd Queenfish Noosa Borumba Deer Park John Eldred April Upper Albert & Logan Bass May Lloyd Willman June July Pumice stone Passage 4th - 6th Snapper Donnybrook Neil McNeil August Fraser Island September October Tweed River / Chinderah Clarrie Hall Dam / Top of Tweed River 12th - 14th Flathead/Bream 11th - 12th Bass Chinderah Murwillumbah John Cumberland Jeff Maddalena November Monduran 8th - 15th Barramundi Gin Gin Ross Williamson December