Plenty of reports coming in at the moment from all over SE QLD. Because of our wet summer, there has been plenty of bait all over the estuaries, bays and offshore areas. This in turn has been great for local fish populations with masses of smaller bream, snapper and sweetlip around. There are plenty of larger fish to be caught as well and things are looking good for the winter season.

Locally in the southern bay areas there have been plenty of tailor chopping into bait schools around Coochiemudlo, Macleay and Peel Islands. Most of these have been the 35-50cm size range and have been most eager to tackle a surface lure from small stuff like Jackson RA Pops or Prial Pencils, through to bigger lures like FCL SPP110 or Smith Saruna minnows.

Squid have been very active on the shallow ground in 30-60cm of water of late. The day time bite on a rising tide has been exceptional some days with catches of 20-30 good tiger squid not uncommon. Some of the most productive jigs have been natural prawn patterns in green, brown and orange from Yamashita and Sumizoku and the Breaden 2.5 shallow with red tape underneath.

On the canals around Brisbane and the Gold Coast, bigeye and giant trevally have been making their presence felt. Dawn, dusk and into the evenings has been most productive spots have been around the mouths of channels and lakes. Noisy surface poppers are great at night, but more subtle lures like stickbaits and suspending twitchbaits are perfect for daytime work.

For tuna addicts, the middle and northern reaches of Moreton Bay have been the place to be for longtails, while good catches of fat mack tunas have been made just off the Gold Coast seaway and landbased off the headlands around the NSW border. Traditional winter species like snapper and pearl perch are starting to become more common offshore in SE QLD, however, there still are some of the summer species like mackerel and wahoo to be caught on the shallow reefs.

Bream haven’t been caught in great numbers as yet this season, but they are due to increase in both quality and quantity over the next few weeks.