Fishing prayers answered

We are into another year, and my prayers were answered – if only for a short spell – they were still answered. Fishing prayers answered

Just before Christmas, there was a lovely run of weather but that of course didn’t last long. Fishing prayers answered

The remnants of ExTropical Cyclone Seth have me sitting at home again – lucky for me it means time for writing an article. Fishing prayers answered

The pre-Chrissy weather allowed me to push out wider to search for pelagic action on the surface.

I wasn’t left begging that’s for sure.

Hungry mackerel and tuna were chasing bait as you would expect in summer.

So amazing that there has been so little activity inshore.

I hoped that as the weather started to come a bit more from the east, that the fish would move closer in.

They did but then they decided out wide was where they preferred to be – even though there was bait plentiful in close.

What can you do?

In chatting with acquaintances about the pelagic fishing, we all have noticed the lack of activity in close.

We are not too sure why – potentially I think the La Nina cycle we are currently in maybe the answer.

How it may affect the current and fish movement is beyond my knowledge, but it’s worth considering.

We’ve had an extremely wet season here and once you get a bit further afield, the water is not quite the colour you would expect.

It’s not dirty but instead of a deep blue, it has more of a greenish tinge.

It brought to mind sessions on marlin where once I found that ‘nice’ water, I found the fish.

Those situations may have only lasted a day or two before returning to normalcy, but it serves as a window into how this may be a factor.

When weather doesn’t allow getting out a bit wider, we had to fish inshore.

Even my trusty lure-stealing school mackerel were proving lean on numbers.

I often use these fish to teach basics and while catching them we encounter other species.

Lure fishing deep around the Roy Rufus Artificial Reef proved handy at times.

However, it isn’t a style of fishing that is very easy for novices to replicate.

It takes focus to keep the lure in the zone without snagging up every drop.

Add to that a bit of breeze and big current most days.

Then the subtle takes aren’t very easy to detect either.

But some good fish can be caught if you put the effort in.

Mostly it’s reef fish such as grass sweetlip, cod and coral trout.

On one of my days off, my good friend Nathan asked me to come try some shallow water reef fishing.

He didn’t have big expectations though neither did I.

I was just happy to have a flick with a friend – if I got a couple sweetlip, I would have been stoked.

So out we went, in the wind and light rain.

We worked some inshore shallow reef with plastics and hard-body lures.

I had heaps of attention on my little soft lure and soon had one sweetlip for dinner.

Quite a few little reef fish kept me smiling.

With plenty of snags too, which were not as hilarious and fun.

It was certainly not easy ‘point and shoot’ fishing.

Nathan worked a hard lure and cracked a solid trout.

He had to fight it strong to prevent a bust-off or bricking because that coral is nasty and will cut leader very easily – braid would have no chance.

Though was a short session, we both had a laugh and took home a nice feed of reef fish.

If only it was as simple as that every day – it would make for a happier less jaded guide.

If you’d like to book a charter with Tri, visit the Fraser Guided Fishing Facebook page or website.