Mangrove jack mayhem

G’day crew and hello January, you gorgeous humid sticky month you.

I did say to my wife this time last year that we should just leave the tree up because it would be Christmas before we knew it – but it’s 2025, already!

Last year flew by so quickly, now it’s time to bring on the new one.

So, with these hot and balmy days, you know we are going to be talking about catching mangrove jack, don’t you?

Name a better thing to do than spending a day fishing a mosquito and midge-filled creek catching a swag of red bream.

From all reports, the fish are firing.

There have been some absolute belters caught over the past few weeks.

 

With a number of fish over the magic 50cm mark.

As always, if you wish to soak a bait, fresh and local is going to be the best approach.

Whether you grab some of our locally supplied flicker mullet or catch your own, fresh is best.

Some 4/0-8/0 suicide hooks (or a circle hook of the same size) and a 60lb fluorocarbon leader to a main line of 20-30lb should see you in with a good chance of boating a few jacks.

But, as most of you know, you will need to be on your toes because by the time they’ve hit the bait, they are halfway home.

When lure fishing, I believe you can fish a little lighter on your leader.

This is mainly because you have the rod in your hand and are already retrieving your offering.

 

When skip casting, I prefer to run 30-40lb Sunline FC Rock fluorocarbon leader.

But when skipping frogs, I tie a mono leader, due to its buoyancy properties.

For most of my lure fishing, be it soft plastics or hard-bodies, I will always use fluorocarbon in the salt – unless I’m fishing topwater with frogs or poppers.

For most of my hard-body fishing for jacks, I’ll run 40-50lb fluoro.

On the leader front, if you weren’t aware, fluorocarbon will sink and mono will float, or very slowly sink through the water collum.

Fluorocarbon is a denser material and has better abrasion resistance than mono leaders.

As always, mixed in with jacks are the good old estuary cod.

 

These fish are not fussy, as many of you know, and if it will fit in its mouth, cod will have a crack at eating it.

Good catches of blue salmon up the creeks were also reported, with fish in the 50-60cm range being caught.

While not thought of as the best eating fish, if you bleed, brain spike and put them straight into an ice slurry, they are pretty good chewing when fresh.

I tend to find catching them on vibes a great way to target this species.

I’ve been using plenty of 85mm and 100mm Samaki Vibelicious lately.

Vibes are a great way to prospect a creek, especially in slightly deeper holes.

For those who have managed to get offshore over the past few weeks, the fishing was good from all accounts.

Anglers had catches of snapper, pearl perch, big grass emperor, loads of tuskfish and good hussar.

Fishing the Taipan Star saw some nice numbers of cobia come from the midwater, along with some nice jewfish and nannygai.

Back inshore, the crabbing has been red hot.

A-grade quality mud crab bucks have been in abundance in most of the local creeks and out on the flats.

We spent an evening walking one of the local flats close to spot X a few days after the full moon and managed to pick up a nice feed of premium crab.

It was also good that we caught a heap of not full but legal crabs, meaning that there’s good recruitment in our local systems and the future is looking good for a feed of muddies.

Norman Point has also been fishing well for the land-based fishos.

 

Pumping a few yabbies on the falling tide and fishing them with the making tide has resulted in some nice catches of whiting, golden trevally, flathead, bream and tarwhine.

If you’re here on holiday, this is a great place for a fish with the family and, if the kids get bored, they can simply chase a few soldier crabs to burn off some energy.

Another good place to sit and soak a line is Crab Creek.

Like Norman Point, you can pump a few yabbies on the sand flats and chase a feed of bread-and-butter species.

There are also barbecue facilities, toilets and a playground to keep the kids busy if they’ve had enough of fishing for the day.

Anyway, that’s it for me for this month.

The team at The Chandlery Bait and Tackle thank you for your ongoing support in 2024 and wish you a happy new year.

Tight lines.