Fresh flushes out flathead

Welcome to final edition of Bush ‘n Beach Fishing.

All good things come to an end and rising costs signalled the end of this great magazine.

I’ve been writing for BNB for approximately 22 years.

I started off as a very keen fisho in my early 20s.

Before I started writing for the publication, towards the end of each month, I would be at the newsagency waiting for the magazines to come out.

I was fishing four to five times a week back then – I had a lot more patience than I do now.

When I started obsessing over mangrove jack, I would spend hours casting a variety of lures at the same snags until I’d get a bite.

I definitely don’t do that these days.

 

Back in the early days of writing for BNB, I spent a lot of time at fishing competitions.

My first-ever article was about the Flathead Classic, yet I rarely fish any comps these days.

Most of my fishing time is spent chasing flathead, jewfish, threadfin salmon and mangrove jack locally with my family.

I’ve met a lot of people through the magazine, some of whom have turned into lifelong friends.

Unfortunately, I was never great at getting my stories in on time – hence there’s been no shortage of reminder emails and phone calls over the years.

The crew at BNB have always been very patient and a pleasure to work with.

That’s enough reminiscing and rambling…

Let’s have a look at what’s happening around Brisbane.

The rain has been relentless, keeping most systems fairly dirty.

 

This has resulted in some really good fishing towards the mouth of the Pine, Caboolture and Brisbane rivers.

Flathead were the main species caught and have been in great numbers.

And the Caboolture River has produced the better-quality fish.

It does struggle to clear after rain and always takes longer than the Pine River.

When the clean water pushed in towards the top of the tide, the fish were feeding.

I’ve landed a few plus 70cm fish there over the past few months, with one stretching out to 79cm.

Bigger fish like that are few and far between in the Pine and Caboolture rivers.

Plenty of big fish were at Bribie Island, though they don’t come into the Pine and Caboolture very often.

Sharks have been thick, and they aren’t going anywhere in a hurry, particularly while nothing is being done about them.

 

It’s getting to the stage where it will be almost impossible to get their numbers under control.

The smaller ones are eating machines.

They swim around all day with their mouths open, chomping everything in their way.

Mangrove jack will be feeding well with the dirty water around.

The rivers in Brisbane don’t have much structure towards the mouth, so once the water cleans up a little, the fish will be pushing back into the snags in the upper reaches.

The Brisbane River will have plenty of snapper feeding on the bait schools.

Jewfish will also be close by and there’ll be good schools of threadfin salmon hanging around the wharves at the mouth.

I’d like to thank you all for reading my articles over the years.

Thanks to Ben and the crew at Bush ‘n Beach Fishing for putting up with me for so long – I wish you all the best in the future.

Hope to see you on the water.