Fishing success around Bribie Island has picked up considerably in the past month. October’s bad weather, and the windy days that followed, have given way to fairly regular evening storms. This has seen an increase in bait-fish numbers, along with enough water turbidity to make it an easier job to entice the fish with your hook.
Rising air pressure often makes fish keener. Bream, in particular, are sensitive to rapid weather changes and like high air pressure after 2-3 days of south-easterlies. Rick managed to pick up a 38cm bream, south of the bridge, using squid. Jimmy and Charlie enjoyed a good day out, bringing with them some good bream. The best of them were found near Turner’s camp, also using squid on a falling tide. If these regular afternoon storms become standard through into summer, bream-fishing is going to be good fun.
The flathead are hungry, and you can find them all through the Passage. Squid and pilchards have been the favoured baits for flathead but soft plastic lures are certainly working, in spite of the murky water. The better areas to use lures are around the creek mouths; cast out during a light outgoing tide and the flathead should be waiting there for you.
There have been some good flathead catches around the bridge, again on the turn of tide. The fishing at the bridge has been pretty consistent over the past couple of weeks, as can be seen by the number of fishers casting over the side! We’ve had reports that there have been good schools of trevally under and south of the bridge. Plenty of bream and whiptails have also been caught there. Whiptails are those lovely slender fish, with a tinge of blue and a yellow stripe along the side. Apparently not bad eating, they never grow very big; around 25cm would be the usual size we see around here. That’s probably the main reason why they’re not so popular, although there is no size or catch limit. They don’t mind a bit of squid and if you catch one there’s a good chance you will catch a few.
Talking of squid-bait, there have been big squid taken lately, 3ocm and more, on standard fishing set-ups. A lot of the squid have been around the bridge or just south of it, near the jetty.
Jacko has been telling us the mangrove jacks have been keeping him busy, up in Ningi and Elimbah Creeks. There have been some biggies among them – 30-40cm in length.
Also further up the Passage, there have been some really good catches of summer whiting. It seems the further north you go, the better chance of getting onto a school of whiting and they are already good sized ones.
Further north still, Richard, Ron and Stuart went a out a bit off the north end of Bribie, ocean-side. Ron came home empty-handed, having only hooked a red emperor that was 10cm short of legal. However, the other two caught a 4kg snapper, a 7kg cobia and a nice bag of varied reef-fish.
Sand crabbing has continued to be a bit erratic; lots of hopeful pots out in the Passage but not often good news when they get pulled up. With the big tides , especially over the recent new moon, a few of the pots began to wander from their original positions. It can be very difficult to find your pot, if you’ve dropped it in one place and it decides to move on! Make sure you have plenty of line out to the float and try not to leave the crab pot where the strongest tidal flow moves. It’s also a popular (and not silly idea) to pop half a brick in, to weigh it down. Lastly, remember the tag – if it is clearly marked with your name and phone number, it might be returned to you, if it does get a little lost.
Claudio and his mates knew where to put their crab pots - south of Pacific Harbour.