I moved to the Gold Coast early in 2012, I was a full bait fisho as it was all I had known since the age of under 5 when I started fishing. 12 months of going down youtube rabbit holes of guys chasing the elusive & hard fighting Gold Coast mangrove jacks on artificials and I was hooked, this fast became my sole mission in life. Workout how to catch these fish on lures consistently.
After a number of patchy summers of small numbers of jacks I slowly started to get better at casting, working out tides & weather patterns that worked in my local system. I also started to think I was catching the same fish from time to time. So I started tagging through the suntag program which confirmed this pretty quickly.
Now a normal summer looks like between 50-70 jacks caught, with 20% recapture rate.
I love all types of fishing but jacks are the toughest & hardest fighting fish closest to home for me.