Catching and Tagging Mangrove Jack

May 7, 2016

AS you may already know, I absolutely love chasing jacks, and fortunately I know how to catch mangrove jack thanks to many years of persistence.

I recently shot out to chase a jack with good mate Ryan and my dad. After launching my Sea Jay Creek Masta we headed upstream in a local creek.

On the first cast dad hooked a little blackspotted cod, which made for a promising start to the day. Ryan followed by hooking a flathead on his second cast and really getting our hopes up.

A bit further upstream we came to some structure that was an obvious jack haunt. I predicted that a jack would be in there and quickly had my brand-new Wilson Venom 8kg rod and Daiwa Tatula HD 200 reel in my hand and ready to go to battle.

I cast the faithful Atomic Shiner 75DD and within four turns of the handle I felt the distinct hit of a red dog and it was game on. The 4am starts are well worth it when a beautiful red fish slides into the net.

It was not my biggest mangrove jack but any jack is a good one and this particular fish was the first jack taken out of my new tinnie. After a few quick photos, a gently inserted tag and a quick swim the jack proudly glided home sporting new jewellery while I yelled: “Go you good thing!”

I was very happy to say the least. I didn’t care that I didn’t land another fish for the rest of the morning; catching that jack will stay with me for a long time.

You’ve probably noticed from my articles that Dad and I tag most of our fish. Don’t get me wrong, I like eating fish and there’s nothing wrong with keeping a feed. It’s just that from time to time our tagged fish get recaptured, and some of the information gathered from these recaptures is very interesting.

One of Dad’s tagged mangrove jack was recently recaptured after being at liberty for 1544 days. In that time it grew from 29cm to 44cm, and it was recaptured in the same creek. If you end up catching a tagged fish, please make sure you record the length of the fish and the location where you caught it, and ring the number on the tag to relay the information.

Smoking drags and sore arms.