Hi Everyone, hope you’ve all had a great week, it’s been pretty windy so far on Tweed and Gold Coasts, finding a spot to hide out of the wind has been the key to enjoying some quality fishing time. The weekend is looking good with some lighter winds and sunshine on the way. Let’s see what’s been happening.
Last weekend Gold Coast Fishing Fanatics Facebook Page and My Catch Australia held the Tilapia Busters comp at Robina backed by the Gold Coast City Council Wow! What a great day! 404 participants attended today’s event and contributed to catching 347kg of Tilapia. An outstanding effort in conditions that weren’t exactly favourable. Keep your eyes out for the next comp and do your bit for our local waterways.
Local Fisho Alex (see photo in report) did well managing to drag a hard fighting Mangrove Jack out of structure while fishing live baits at night in the Nerang River. Customers have reported that numbers of Jacks being caught is increasing as the weather heats up, they really like those humid conditions switching on their feeding pattern making them very aggressive. We have plenty of great spots to target Mangrove Jack from either land based or by boat from the Tweed River, Currumbin Creek, Tallebudgera Creek, Nerang River and the Canal systems south to Broadbeach, Runaway Bay, Paradise Point, Coomera River and Logan River all being prime locations. At the moment the Coomera River has good numbers of bait schools of Herring and Mullet moving around, this is great news as the predators like Jacks will be around in good numbers. Lure fisho’s have also been doing well tempting some top quality fish on a mixture of 3” to 4” soft plastics and hard body lures. By catch like Trevally, Cod, Jew Fish and even the odd Barramundi (keep in mind its closed season to target Barra) are awesome fun if the Jacks are slow. Just mix your methods and try either day time or night time sessions and I’m sure you will come up trumps if you put in the hours.
Customers caught some good sized Whiting and Bream off the sandbanks east of Cobby Passage this week, also the Logan River, Western end of Tiger Mullet Channel, Jacobs Well and the Bedrooms are worth a look. Yabbies and Worms are great bait.
Sand Crabs have been around in good numbers from the Southern Broadwater all the way to Russell Island. Target a few depths of water until you find better numbers of Crabs. Fresh fish frames work well and also whole Mullet are great bait.
Smithy from Brad Smith Fishing Charters reports on the Tweed considering the amount of seriously strong winds this week the fishing was fairly good. Both casting and trolling Pontoon 21 crackjack lures across the front of drains and feeder creeks on the run out tides produced some nice school sized Flathead and 2 fish over the 70 cm mark. Trolling the deeper channels of the river is still consistent for finding some small but hard fighting Giant Trevally. We played one monster fish for over 40 minutes to unfortunately lose it right beside the boat. We found protection from the wind in a couple of shallow sea grassed bays on a mixed things up by casting some MMD splash prawns on the surface and cranked some shallow running lil mate lures. This produced a lot of fun with some nice Whiting and a lot of Bream eager to play the game.
Clint from the Gold Coast reports some interesting catches on my boat this week includes Mangrove Jack, Mulloway, Giant Trevally, Tailor, Flathead, Squid, Whiting. Best areas in the Broadwater were Labrador and Runaway Bay in the three metre depth. Best time to fish during bigger tides is last two hours of the run out and first two hours of the run in. Nerang River has been very inconsistent during the daylight hours, due to the long term lack of rain. Fishing structure and doing the miles to find bait schools is the way to go. I’d recommend night fishing for jacks in the upper reaches while the tides are still bigger, then the middles reaches as we move into the neap phase of the moon. Tim, Steph, Grant, and Soba noodle toy poodle booked a jack trip on Sunday night. We moved spots several times after Tim caught a big bream and tailor, eventually finding his first ever Jack for him way up river on the start of the run out tide. I have been using live baits for Jacks but we are getting more hits on well-presented dead baits such as mullet and bonito fillets. Jacks will hunt in shallow water in the evenings. Don’t go too light on tackle and line/ leader. The bigger models will smoke you, there are some 70cm plus fish in our local rivers.
Hope you all have a good weekend and get out for a fish, if you have any great catches or photos you would like to share, please email us and let us know how you went.
New fishing regulations now effective fisheries Queensland http://statements.qld.gov.au/Statement/2019/9/1/new-fishing-regulations-now-effective
Fisho Tackle and Coomera Houseboat Holidays now have Hire Tinnies follow the link to view http://www.coomerahouseboats.com.au/our-fleet-type/hire-tinnies/
Seabreeze is a great website to access a local forecast http://www.seabreeze.com.au/graphs/
If you have any great catches to report or fishing photos please email them to brett@fishotackle.com.au Good luck with the Fishing. Brett
