Mangrove Jack

G’day crew, I trust everyone had a belter of a holiday and got out to smack a few fish over the past month or so. Can’t say I’ve done too much over the past couple of weeks because the shop has been pumping and I’ve not been able to get out – but hey, that’s retail for you. Plenty of …

G’day crew, I cannot believe it’s January 2023 and I’m writing the first fishing report for the year. Last year was a wild and quick ride for most people, and this was no different in the shop – where did the year go? On the fishing front, 2022 wasn’t the easiest year on the water. The weather didn’t let up …

December is upon us, which normally means lots of hot weather. So far this spring, the temperature has stayed relatively low. This has kept the water temperature down, which can keep certain species quiet. Mangrove jack are one fish that thrive in a higher water temperature. Thankfully the lower-than-normal water temperature hasn’t stopped them from causing havoc among anglers. All …

October is an excellent month to be on the water in southeast Queensland. Mangrove jack are getting very active and the flathead season continues around the Gold Coast and Tweed areas. Bull sharks will be very lively in the upper reaches of creeks, harassing herring and mullet schools. This month, flathead generally slow down in the local rivers on Brisbane’s …

THE Kolan River on the north side of Bundaberg was and still is a fantastic river system. This river system is very close to where I grew up – one of the first places I got the bug for chasing mangrove jack and barramundi. Kolan jack Head north towards Agnes Water from Bundaberg and turn off to Yandaran, then follow …

LOOKING back, 2020 was an awesome year for the fishing and boating industry, as well as for fishers. Talking to many of the boat manufacturers, it seems they are going to be building new boats for quite a while. The boat yards are selling boats faster than they can get them. Tackle shops, who this time last year thought things …

HEAT, humidity, mozzies biting, cicadas singing – this spells the beginning of the mangrove jack and mud crab season to me. There’s a few mud crabs on the move now but they will only improve as summer progresses. They are in varying degrees of fullness at the moment, with some big rusty ones being caught and some green empty ones …

WELCOME to 2021 and a happy new year to all Bush ‘n Beach readers. Last year was a pretty wild ride, but thankfully the fishing side of things wasn’t affected as much as other activities. Summer started with a bang and a nasty heat wave ripped across the eastern side of Australia and pushed the temperature gauge over 40C in …

THIS month we’ll be looking at part two of our Hinchinbrook tinnie trip. The morning after our epic mangrove jack session, we took dad out to end of Lucinda Bulk Sugar Terminal. Almost everything lives around the terminal, so you never know what’s going to eat your lure next. I landed a small coral trout on a Zerek Fish Trap …

TOM and I were motoring up a small side creek on the electric against a slow run-out tide. The waterway was barely a cast wide but had already produced a few feisty barramundi and a couple of bumps from big blue-lipped pikey bream. Overhead, the tops of the mangrove forest were buffeted by typical dry season trade wind but only …