TAILOR IN A GUTTER NEAR YOU
HI EVERYONE, hope you are all having a nice week and had a good Labour Day long weekend.
It has been a pretty decent week weather-wise on the Tweed and Gold Coast so far, seeing fairly light winds and a just a few showers giving fishos a good opportunity to hit the water for a fishing session.
As we look towards the weekend and Mother’s Day, at the time of writing it looks like we will see yet another southerly change move up the coast bringing strong winds and an increase in swell, making sheltered waters the best option to get out.
Fingers crossed it does not hang around too long and we can access the offshore grounds again. Let’s check out what’s been happening on the fishing scene this week.
It was good to see some quality flathead caught the past few weeks. During May they normally start to show up in better numbers throughout the local rivers, Jumpinpin and the Broadwater as the water cools temp starts to cool down.
Majority of the fish are around the 40-55cm range with the odd big girl like the 90cm fish caught and released during the Pirtek Fishing Comp two weekends ago.
It will be worth looking around the North Bedrooms, Gold Bank, Kalinga Bank, Tiger Mullet Channel, Canaipa Passage, Jacobs Well, Brown Island, Currigee, Nerang River and Wave Break Island. Trolling hard body lures like Zerek Tango Shads can be a great option to find the fish.
Casting soft plastics around the 3 to 5 inch with a 3/8 or 5/8 jig head will be very productive. Also working Metal or Soft Vibes in 1/2 to 3/8 of an ounce in the deeper water will do the trick. Trace line around 10-14lb depending on lure size is recommended as they have a very rough mouth and can rub through your leader even after a small fight.
It has been good to see a few nice tailor being caught from the surf gutters along Broadbeach, Main Beach, The Spit and South Stradbroke Island the past week. This is great news as we head closer to our winter months, which are prime time to target tailor.
Once the winds ease and the swell drops it will be a great time to hit your local surf beach and find a gutter to target. You will also start to see some bigger greenback tailor school offshore on the local reefs. These schools will tend to move closer to the mainland and into the gutters to feed. Try using a set of 3 x ganged 4/0 hooks with a 20lb mono trace and start with a matched 5-ball sinker or a weight suited to the sweep on the beach you are fishing.
Best baits are whole WA pilchards along with bonito and mullet fillet. If the Tailor are thick and on the chew you may need to change to a wire trace to stop bite-offs, but try mono first as they can be quite tentative at times and your bait will present much more naturally on mono.
I have had reports of a few smaller tailor being landed in the main Broadwater and Jumpinpin channels on the last of the run-in tide. Try towing some smaller hard body lures around and if you see birds diving or some top water action try throwing metal slugs for a result.
If you have great catches or photos you’d like to share, please email us.
brett@coomerahouseboats.com.au or brett@fishotackle.com.au