Page 60 - Bush 'n Beach Fishing mag

PWlenty of options for a festive fish
ELL, it’s this will see less boat the night is an awesome that time of traffic and fish more way to target barra, year again willing to feed. with loud visual takes
Gladstone Region
by GARY CHURCHWARD
when the jolly old fel- On the fishing front, to get the blood pump-
low in red will soon be around to see us.
ment and frustration – if you drop the boat in the water and it doesn’t start or worse, a dodgy wheel bearing may be the cause for not getting to the ramp at all.
is not the place to be unstrapping and getting your boat ready.
Awoonga Dam is fir- ing, with multiple bar- ramundi per session the norm and sessions of over 10 fish becoming more common.
ing.
As the sun gets higher,
Many people have their annual holidays around this time, which means the waterways will become extremely busy over the festive season.
If you do this, you could hear a few un- friendly words meant for your ears.
The fish have been of good size too, with plenty in the high 80s and a few unstoppable fish running anglers through the timber.
try to fish slightly deep- er with weedless soft plastics, hard-bodies or vibration lures.
For a number of peo- ple, this can be one of the few times their boat sees water during the year, so my recommen- dation is to do a couple of basic checks at home before heading to the boat ramp.
Boat ramps will be busy, and people will need to be patient with others who aren’t as quick as they are, though a helping hand can get things moving quickly.
With the additional traffic on the water, you may find fish a little more reluctant to bite or that you’ve been beaten to the spot you want to fish.
These fish will con- tinue to grow quickly and fish over the magic 1m mark will be more frequent in future.
In the rivers and creeks, mangrove jack will fire up with the warmer tem- perature and bite better early morning and late afternoon.
These checks could save you embarrass-
Make sure you are ready to go when wait- ing in line to put your boat in or to retrieve it.
During this time of year, I prefer to fish early in the morning, late in the afternoon and into the evening, as
Fishing topwater early in the morning, late in the afternoon and into
Heavy structure, whether it’s fallen trees, rock bars or artificial, will hold better num- bers, though don’t ig- nore smaller isolated structure because these will commonly hold bigger lone fish.
The top of the ramp
Phil had a little luck chasing tusk sh, this one tak- ing a vibe.
Fingermark have been common and Sam scored this one on a Zerek FishTrap in the Calliope River.
Surface poppers and stick baits can be dy- namite when fish- ing structure with strong current pushing through it, and a sur- face lure will allow you to get right to the back of the snag and pull it across the top.
When fishing struc- ture, concentrate most of your efforts on the pressure points, as fish sit facing into the cur- rent waiting for the bait to get pushed to them.
Baffle Creek Family Fishing Festival
* from P58
In between swim- ming, we caught all sorts of things on yab- bies, but we couldn’t catch whiting to save our lives.
berous excellent fish caught during the competition.
We struggled to find any numbers of flat- ties there and it took me a few days to land our first legal one.
mittee did an excel- lent job keeping the kids entertained and the beers cold for the adults.
We ended up with 22 species of which 17 were legal – that’s a lot of varieties to catch in one system.
Only one barra- mundi was captured though – probably due to the clean water – but solid jack up to 56cm were caught, along with excellent grunter.
We ended up hold- ing onto the crab sec- tion and my daughter Amelia also got an award for a mystery length bream.
We all had a great time staying at Rocky Point Retreat and our kids are very keen for the next adventure.
We didn’t know what was going to turn up next.
Plenty of nice flat- head, whiting and bream were also land- ed.
Plenty of cash and prizes were given away at the presen- tation and the com-
If you’re looking for a great week away, check it out next year.
There were num-
We might see you up there.
Page 60 – Bush ’n Beach Fishing, December 2020
* continued P61 www.bnbfishing.com.au
By speeding up your retrieve, you’ll get jack into reaction mode and a weedless soft plastic worked a bit quicker across the face of a snag will work well.
The ever-present fin- germark will still be around but in deeper water and fishing where the current has been disturbed by structure will give the best re- sults.
This could be bridge pylons, headlands or submerged rock bars but anywhere out of the