North Australian FISH FINDER TM forums

We had this weird experience on sat afternoon of Condor point. We were trolling along getting a few OK macs when we came upon this large school of thread fin salmon hundreds of them. They were on the surface with there heads right up out of the water and appeared to be gulping air. They were very casual and we were able to get in amongst them. They didn't appear to be feeding but there was a bit of coral spawn about. We threw everything we had at them but no luck in the end we were trying to foul hook them. They just kept swirling around on the surface not interested in anything so it seemed. We eventually left them and continued trolling there we some very big threadies in the school.
We had a great weekend over there the fishing was great. Got some nice snapper macs and a PB GT for me. The sea was alive with everything dolphins turtles dugong a large variety of fish and we even got a feed of muddies as well. Plus our weird thread fin salmon experience.

Going out on a limb here as I have seen similar, I reckon they were probably milk fish.

Unless they were threadies smashing really small prawns. Ben Jam and I had that frustration at Shady camp this time last year. They were even belting intot he side of the boats.

I came across blue salmon like that down the perons once, only difference being they at everything we threw at them - olives, bits of rag, fruit, lollies, bottletops, even bare hooks.

jabsy wrote:I came across blue salmon like that down the perons once, only difference being they at everything we threw at them - olives, bits of rag, fruit, lollies, bottletops, even bare hooks.

That must have been awful. Haha

seen the same thing over there beginning of october but we were at camp point……We joked about the school looking like massive mudskippers..

Saw some big Powertail doing that a few weeks ago up Sadgroves. They were sucking up tiny prawns off the surface

I would hazard a guess that the ones off Condor and Camp point were Chanos Chanos (aka milkfish) as Dannett suggested. I have seen acres of these fish feeding off the scum on the surface around those two points, exactly as BarraBob said that he saw them.

These fish are one of the true prizes of the fly fisherman. They suck scum off the surface and convert this raw protein into their huge muscle bulk. Even with bread flies, scum flies, every bl..dy type of fly known to mankind that will target milkfish, the ones that we saw didn't even batt an eyelid at our offerings.

They are commonly targetted off Doctors Gully (outside the restricted zone naturally) on the incoming tide using bread flies on a full floating line. We had a ball at the end of the last wet season with many hookups but not too many landed.

Cheers

Swoffa I think you and dannett are right we thought they were threadies because of the tail shape but now looking at milkfish tails I think this is what they were. There was scum on the surface and they did appear to be sucking or gulping with there heads up out of the water. There were some bl..dy big ones amongst them well over a metre would have been good to hook one. Are they any good to eat ?

BarraBob wrote:Swoffa I think you and dannett are right we thought they were threadies because of the tail shape but now looking at milkfish tails I think this is what they were. There was scum on the surface and they did appear to be sucking or gulping with there heads up out of the water. There were some bl..dy big ones amongst them well over a metre would have been good to hook one. Are they any good to eat ?

To my knowledge they are a pure catch and release torpedo like sports fish.

Yep - definitely milkfish. Quite a common sight over around the Tiwi's when there's a large algal bloom (aka 'coral spawn').

Did you give any of the creeks a crack Bob? (any jewies off Condor??)

BarraBob wrote:Swoffa I think you and dannett are right we thought they were threadies because of the tail shape but now looking at milkfish tails I think this is what they were. There was scum on the surface and they did appear to be sucking or gulping with there heads up out of the water. There were some bl..dy big ones amongst them well over a metre would have been good to hook one. Are they any good to eat ?

ask the Filipinos mate, they love them oven baked in Milk. Bangus is what they call 'em.

I've tried it once and I think i'd prefer to stab myself in the eye with a blunt object than eat that cr@p again.

unreal sports fish though, great way to burn your palm catching them on a fly rod.

Slug the reefs on sat were hot on the bite with everything on and off a bit but we kept moving around and kept getting back on to good fish threw back heaps of plate size snapper spangled emperor indo snapper stripey's etc but no jewies and we only went into the creek to drop our pots as we were having too much fun on the reeefs. Got a couple of nice bucks for our effort. Sunday was quite rough a decent swell running and blowie so we couldn't bottom bash but the macs were about so we trolled and got some good size macs 1 absolutely smoked us and I got the GT. A fantastic weekend for me and my mate who's from Pine Creek and doesn't get out much so he was stoked.