Traditionally FAD fishing around South-East Queensland can be a bit hit and miss, with the hits not that great anyway! Since the build of our new vessel “Good Company” and more so the addition of our large oval live well we have been able to apply techniques used in other countries that have had FADS for a lot longer than us here in Australia. Since implementing these techniques our results have skyrocketed. Slow trolling a mix of various live baits ranging from small herring to very large bonito has showed us the calibre of fish that is not usually seen in these areas by regular fishos. Another technique used is throwing live bait for burley. Normally only practiced in America this has certainly turned very shy fish into prop munching monsters that will not let our baits get more than 10 feet from the transom. Needless to say, I believe that we in Australia are very sheltered from alternative techniques and could certainly crawl out from under the rock that a lot of people fish under and make some results happen.
Now, frequent results for us fishing FADS that are regularly hit by boats are 20-30 Mahi, ranging from 1kg to 20kg. Most occasions we see a handful of fish over 7kg which is awesome going in anyone’s book anywhere in the world. We originally started fishing our large baits bridled with circle hooks which were intended for billfish however quickly learnt the XL Mahi climb all over them with similar issues seen in places like Panama, fishing for black marlin. We definitely haven’t been complaining about the bycatch though and instead have moved on to target the XL Mahi with the marlin now the bycatch! With alternative bait catching techniques targeting larger baits and now actually being able to keep them alive for long periods of time to run to our chosen locations, we only anticipate our results to continuously improve and find out what really lurks below our game fishing FADS here in South-East Queensland.
