Wonky Holes are underwater springs exiting from the sea floor. They were given the name wonky holes by the northern trawlermen who used to lose their gear and sometimes capsize their boats. This occurs as the otter boards dig in, pulling from the outriggers and over she goes. Hence, they can often be found near trawler wrecks.
Wonky Holes spew out a lot of rubble etc., and deposit it all around the hole. This in turn attracts soft corals and sea ferns to grow on the surrounding seabed and then comes the baitfish, squid, octopus and then of course predators like red emperor and large mouth nannygai.
The wonky hole shown in this sounder series is one of the deepest ones I have ever found at 33 metres. They are a popular haunt for big red emperor, gold spot cod and large mouth nannygai. The main school showing in the sounder series are large mouth nannygai and the bigger blobs around the bottom are red emperor or gold spots.
How fish interact around the wonky holes can be seen on our underwater footage. This can especially helpful to assist with your sounder interpretation of what you see around wonky holes.
Some years they can stop running and virtually fill in but can start running again following a good wet season. Some are small and can be easily overfished, but you will generally find that after you catch a few fish off them the rest will spook, which is kind of a good thing. So the secret is to find quite a lot of them so you can move around instead of sitting in one spot waiting for fish to bite again which may take hours.
Wonky Holes are found anywhere from about Bundaberg north to Cape York. You can google them and learn a fair bit about them but finding them, especially on a regular basis, can be very very tricky and time consuming.
We have released a comprehensive e-course with all the secrets to finding Wonky Holes plus additional sounder/sidescan skills which can be accessed via our Fish Smarter website.
However, if you like’d like to have a crack at finding Wonky Holes yourself, take a look at the recorded replay of our Wonky Holes presentation.
It was filmed at a BCF Deeragun club night and was attended by over 700 people! Yes they are the flavour of the month right now!
To view a video of the presentation simply click the yellow button below;
As always we love to help so please feel free to leave a comment.
Cheers Ryan.
