SNAPPER GETTING IN EARLY
HOPE you’ve all had a nice week and managed to get out any enjoy the great weather over the May Day long weekend. Conditions this week have also been wonderful, so let’s see what’s been happening around the coast.
May has seen a drop in current and water temp which has helped stir up a few early season snapper.
Some great eating size snapper have been showing up along with a few big trophy models. Being on the water early is a must. Find your spot and start a berley trail before sun up to take advantage on the sunrise bite time.
Feeding down lightly weighted WA pilchards, whole large squid, mullet fillet or live yakkas is a great method to temp the big snapper. A few spots that produced are the local 18, 24 and 36 fathom reefs off the Gold Coast Seaway and Nine Mile off the Tweed. Customers have also scored a feed of pearl perch, tusk fish, moses, trag and some good sized jew fish.
Some nice sized tailor have shown up along the surf beaches from the Tweed Coast north to the Pumping Jetty at the Spit, the morning and night time high tides have been the best time for tailor.
The Broadwater, Jumpinpin and rivers are also fishing well with some big tailor showing up. Keep your eye on the sounder for bait fish, birds diving on the water and also splashes from schools of fish feeding on the surface. Best baits are whole WA pilchards, mullet fillet and white pilchards work well in the estuary. Tailor will respond well to trolling diving lures, surface lures and metal slugs.
The cooler weather has fired up some good catches of flathead in the Tweed River, Broadwater, Jumpinpin and joining estuary systems.
Customers have reported catching quality late season mangrove jack which is great, Sam (see photo in report) did well last Friday night scoring a big jack using a whiting for bait in the Coomera River. Reports of nice fish have also come from Tallebudgera Creek and the Tweed River.
On the Tweed, Smithy from Brad Smith Fishing Charters reports similar to last week’s report with the mid to upper reaches of the river still producing the goods.
Flathead are taking vertically jigged vibe lures in the deeper holes. We are still getting the odd jewfish as well around the tide changes on vibes and plastics and juvenile giant trevally.
Clint reports there has been good variety of great eating fish in the Broadwater but it pays to move around constantly and slowly to find fish, as they are always moving with the tides to find food.
We have been catching some beautiful tuskfish this week as well as flathead up to 76cm, squid, flounder, whiting, tarwhine and bream up the back canals at Benowa.
The trick is to find areas that hold bait fish or jelly prawns which show up as patches or scattered dots on the fish finder. Then drift at no faster than 1 knot and no slower than 0.4 knots. Best areas this week have been Southport, the Spit, Hollywell, and North Currigee.
Happy Mother’s Day to all you wonderful mums, I hope you have a great relaxing Sunday. 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, please email us and let us know how you went.