Features 8 16 20 26 30 40
Getting Wrecked The Once a Month Club Anticipation Cattle Creek Just Magic Scallops, Lobster and a Skinny Latte to go 48 One of Those Days 54 The Red Earth Coast 70 Three's a Charm
Regulars 4 6 60 62 66 76 82 84 86 88
Editorial Straight Shooter Spearing Sydney Fish in Focus GreatShot Rock Hoppers Handbook Young Guns Travelling Spearo Marine Tech New Products
Extras 64 End Of an Era 80 Defend Kaui
TOC: Dale Brisbane with a westcoast Dolphinfish
Dm 12
Dm
13
Dm
30
by Darren Tierney
Dm
31
Dm
48
Not for the faint hearted, these fish take a lot of knowledge and understanding to find... and then you have to get close to them.
Mangrove jack are a wide ranging species that are revered by Spearos and Fishermen alike. Starting out life in shallow creeks and river mouths, little is known of movements of the bigger adult fish. Tim McDonald is one of a few elite spearos that spend hours of research and effort to find these ellusive and wary BIG Jacks and on one magic day it all fell into place...
H
ave you ever had one of those days where things just come together? Well recently, I had one of those days. Looking back on it now seems like a dream, almost as if it had not happened at all. Not because it was unbelievable, but more the fact that years of research, trying, hard work, planning and many days of seeing amazing fish and diving my butt off to only come home empty handed, finally all fell into place. It was while on a local dive, hunting a fish that I have chased a number of times. Not just any fish, this day we were chasing Lutjanus argentimaculatus, the Mangrove jack. These weren’t just any jacks, but big ones, REALLY big ones, from a school I have chased on many occasions. There are a number of places in SE QLD and Northern NSW that these big jacks can be found. All of them have similarity in structure, terrain and conditions; They are surrounded by deep scary water, often getting reasonable current and with the deep water comes the green dirty thermocline that rises and makes
diving difficult at the mere mention of a Northerly breeze. At one of these locations, a little North of my home town of Brisbane, a couple of years ago, I witnessed something that I can never forget. A school of these big Mangrove jacks that were so big that it is difficult to imagine! With 25m vis, the school spanned as far as I could see either side of me and 10 fish thick that were all significant size. I took aim at the closest fish, just an average fish from the school; it weighed in at 10.5kg. How many fish were in that school…… I don’t think a couple of hundred would be an exaggeration! The particular school of jacks we hunted that day had the biggest fish I have seen anywhere. Fish close to the 20kg mark were spotted. Fish over 10kg have been hunted without luck on many occasions. This school has the added attraction of being really smart 99% of the time. You can get lucky on a dumb one, but it still takes a fair dive to get “lucky”. To make it tougher, is the fact they easily slip into deep water and can lure a diver beyond
their capability. A few divers have pushed their limits too far chasing these fish and come up the worse for wear. I have seen this school on many occasions over a number of years, spending hours in the water hunting them and trying different approaches. I have spent even more time with my dive buddies talking tactics on how we can shoot these fish. With all this effort, we have come home many times seeing great fish but with an esky devoid of the big red toothy creatures. But on every one of those occasions, we learnt fresh lessons on where they sit and how to approach them! This day was to be different, the conditions we had been waiting for, were finally upon us and even though the surface conditions were to be a little rougher than we would have liked, we headed out to our destination. Two of my usual partners in crime were with me this day, Bryson Sheehy and Gareth Lowe, better known as simply G. After meeting at G’s place, we headed for the ramp and put the boat in. It was a bit of a punch out in the boat as there was a
Dm
49
Bleachy Conner, WA is the best state when it comes to Spanish mackerel!
Billy Krstanoski with a Maori seaperch from the Solomon Islands. Jarrah Tutton from team The Mad Hui's with some Coral trout madness.
Kelly-Rae Hodgetts with a ripper Common coral trout.
Dale Brisbane boating a Cobia.
Dm
66
Gareth Janes; These cool photos are of a Painted cray, what an amazing creature!.
Jake Gliddon the big white chin gives this away as a Baldchin groper. A species endemic to WA.
Dale Brisbane big WA Wahoo.
Leigh Pritchard passing up a big Breaksea cod.
Dm
67