After dark worth the effort
HI everyone, hope you are all having a nice week. We have had a bit of everything in weather on the Gold and Tweed Coasts this week from hot days fuelled by northerly winds to a cool southerly change dropping the temperature down and pushing the swell up. Good news for the weekend at this stage, Saturday is looking like the pick of the days to head out with light winds and plenty of sunshine. There may be some left over swell hanging around if you are thinking about heading offshore, just make sure that you have the most up to date forecast before planning your trip. Let’s have a look at what’s been on the bite.
Last Friday night I ventured out with good mate Wayne Young and my daughter Jess for a night Whiting session up the Nerang River, which is always exciting. Wayne had put in all the hard work the day before making sure we had the best quality live bloodworms for bait. We ventured up the river just before sunset to try our first spot. This was Jessica’s first night Whiting fish and she did well landing a nice 37cm fish on her first cast. After that the school must have moved on and things were pretty quiet with small Whiting stealing the baits.
We ended up moving multiple times during the night trying to locate better quality fish, picking off a few each move. In the end we ended up with 25 Whiting between us for a great feed for both families.
If you are thinking about have a fish at night, it pays to have a good lighting set up that particularly shines near the rod tips so you can see when you are getting bites and also make it easy for other boats using the river to spot you at anchor. Another tip is to paint your rod tips white making it a lot easier to spot when you get an inquiry from a fish. Also I like to use a landing net just in case the fish are lip hooked, which can be a bit more common with the larger fish, to avoid disappointment boatside when you put so much effort into organising a trip.
As per my last article the gear of choice when targeting Whiting is a longer 7 to 9ft light estuary rod with a very sensitive tip, matched with a small spin or alvey reel spooled with 6 to 9lb mono, a long 6lb fluoro carbon trace with a running sinker rig consisting of either a 3 to 5 ball sinker depending on run and a size 6 short shank baitholder hook for worms or size 4 longshank baitholder hook when using yabbies.
With the weather starting to warm up as we get closer to summer it’s a great time to start looking for the hard fighting Mangrove Jack that the Gold and Tweed Coats are famous for. I have seen a few fish being caught the past couple weeks which is a good sign of things to come. We get some big Jacks on the Gold and Tweed coasts, given the large amount of structure there are plenty of areas to try your luck. When targeting Mangrove
Jack look for bait in the area you are wanting to fish, early morning or night sessions are usually the prime time especially in busy traffic areas. The best areas to try your luck are natural rock bars, fallen trees that provide a spot to hide, around the edges of rock walls, bridge pylons, jetty posts, pontoons and around moored boats.
These areas should also hold bait like herring, garfish, pike, mullet, silver biddies and prawns to name a few, live bait is a great way to target a Jack and can be a lot more productive than lure fishing.
The gear of choice I usually use when bait fishing is a 5-10kg rod, reel spooled with 20-30lb braid, 40lb leader with either a single or double hook rig made of size 6 Black Magic or Mustard big gun hooks that are nice and strong. For the lure fishos prepared to put in plenty of casts, when the fish hits it is very rewarding. Soft plastics around the 5-inch size range, rigged on heavy duty jig heads work well with white being a popular colour. Hard body lures from around 10cm in length or surface walkers and poppers are also worth a go depending on the conditions.