IDEAL TIME TO SNARE SNAPPER
HI everyone, hope you’ve all had a great week. It looks like the summer storms have arrived early this year with some wet and windy weather moving through the Gold Coast.
An early start to the day has been the key to catching fish before the storms.
A good weather window early on Tuesday morning gave Wayne Young a chance to head offshore for a look east of the Gold Coast Seaway. Wayne reported some good numbers of snapper being caught from both the 18 to 24 fathom reefs floating out whole WA pilchards.
Float lining is a great and simple method to present your bait. I use a three gang of Mustad 7766 5/0 hooks with swivels between the hooks and just run the sinker straight to the top of the hooks. When you drop your bait, hold the line in your fingers and control the speed your bait descends, the more natural looking the better chance of a bite.
Snapper are renowned for grabbing the bait on the drop so be ready to strike if the line starts running quickly through you fingers.
It’s great to see our Coomera Houseboat Holidays customers scoring a good feed of whiting as the weather warms up. Some good spots to try are Coomera River North and South Arms, Pimpama River, Logan River, Nerang River, Green Bank, Eden Island, Cabbage Tree Point, Jacobs Well Shoals, Paradise Point and Wave Break Island.
Fishing the tops of sandbanks on the high tide can be very productive. Once the tide starts to run out, move into the deeper water to target schools of fish feeding.
A running tide is a must as they do tend to shut down as the tide slows to turn. Worms and yabbies are the best baits.
Brad Smith Fishing Charters has reported some nice jewfish and whiting being landed in the Tweed River. Clint has been working Zerek Fish Traps in the Northern Broadwater scoring his customers a good variety of flathead, tusk fish, flounder, pike and bream.
Coomera Bait and Tackle customers have scored some nice sized flathead this week. It’s great to hear the snot weed has started to clear up making trolling hard body lures much more enjoyable.
Some extra-large female fish in the 80 to 90cm size range have been landed around the Seaway and Jumpinpin Bar entrances.
Once you locate a big fish the normal rule is work the area as there are normally plenty of smaller males in the area with are a great target if you’re chasing as feed. Drifting baits or working vibes and soft plastics will do the trick.
At the time of writing the forecast looks like we will unfortunately see plenty of wind and rain over the weekend. Friday will see strong E/SE winds which will hang around Saturday, Sunday and hopefully start to ease Tuesday.
I always recommend you have the latest weather report before you head out.
Coomera Houseboat Holidays/Coomera Bait & Tackle now have hire tinnies. See www.coomerahouseboats.com.au. Seabreeze is a great website to access a local forecast http://www.seabreeze.com.au/graphs/.
Hope you all have a good weekend and get out for a fish. If you have any great catches or photos you would like to share, email me at brett@coomerahouseboats.com.au