Bush 'n Beach Fishing Magazine Location reports & tips for fishing, boating, camping, kayaking, 4WDing in Queensland and Northern NSW
G’day everyone, we’ve had a fair amount of rain and wind over summer, enough to fire up fishing in the estuaries. Broadwater fishing tips
When the weather has been kind, we’ve been running charters and getting some lovely fish for our customers. Broadwater fishing tips
Brad Smith has been catching flathead, mangrove jack, big bream and trevally on Samaki Vibelicious and Pontoon 21 hard-body lures from the Tweed River when the water wasn’t too muddy. Broadwater fishing tips
You can guarantee that autumn and winter fishing will be epic after a wet summer.
The Gold Coast Broadwater has produced a tremendous variety of species over the past month.
Big summer whiting have continued to feature on my wading flats tours, while in the channels my usual tactic has been drifting and jigging Samaki Vibelicious 70mm soft vibes and Ecogear ZX40 lures, or using live yabbies on baitholder hooks with running sinker traces.
The fish encountered have included summer whiting, winter whiting, flathead, flounder, squire, grass emperor, grass tuskfish, tailor, trevally, bream, tarwhine and more.
The trick in the Broadwater is to fish the channels north of the Seaway during a neap tide or close to tide changes and during a bigger tide or in the middle of tide flows, then fish south of the Seaway and up the Nerang and Coomera rivers.
This is when you can drift at a moderate speed and hold bottom without getting snagged too often.
It pays to remember that fish will know where best to locate themselves to have a good chance of ambushing their prey and getting a feed.
If there’s not enough flow, the bait doesn’t get delivered to them, and if it’s running too hard, they spend too much energy holding their position.
We are big fans of the new range of Samaki Vibelicious soft vibe colours, along with our old favourites.
You know you have a good lure when they get as many hits as yabbies while drifting.
The Grey Ghost, Cleopatra Gold and Sandstorm have been my top picks lately.
I can’t wait to test some of the other new colours soon too.
Our tactics when fishing local estuaries are quite simple.
First, we cover the natural bait profiles that our favourite lures imitate – namely baitfish and prawns.
For bait, it’s the previously mentioned Samaki Vibelicious, soft plastics such as Damiki Armor Shad paddle tails, Ecogear Balts and MMD Fat Skippers and a range of hard-body minnow lures, including Pontoon 21 Crack Jacks and Hurricane Slams.
For prawns, it’s Ecogear ZX40s, the new Pro Lure Clone Prawns and Magbite Snatchbite Shrimps.
Vibes and blades work well by tea bagging while drifting.
This means dropping them straight to the bottom and continuously doing very short and sharp lifts and drops of the rod tip.
Soft plastic paddle tails can be either jigged or cast around the boat or shore and then use the old double hop, pause, repeat technique until you get a strike.
With prawn-shape soft plastics, slow your retrieve right down, with longer pauses and more subtle twitches of the rod tip.
Hard-bodies can be cast or trolled – remembering to fish depths where they constantly tap the bottom of the river.
Scents play a big part in our fishing success.
Sax Scent Goldprawn is an excellent choice for prawn-style vibes and plastics, while Squidgies S Factor works great on all of the baitfish profile lures.
We are nearing the end of cyclone season in Queensland, so let’s hope we see more settled weather soon to make being out on the water that much more enjoyable.
To book on a charter with myself or Brad or if you have any fishing related questions, SMS 0432 990 302, email fishingwithclint@gmail.com, find us on Facebook at Brad Smith Fishing Charters or our website goldcoastrivercharters.com
