We’ve seen fairly standard summer fishing so far this year. There has been a big variety of fish caught, lots of them just a little too small to keep but enough really nice ones to keep us interested. Great for families on school holidays, when it’s all about the fishing and everything is going back in anyway.
The weather bureau is still talking about the “possible onset of La Nina,” which brings frequent rains and stormy weather. Well, it looks like La Nina weather already—only six days of the first twenty in January have been rain-free, almost all have been fairly overcast, and most of our strongest winds are coming from the north.
The rains have been regular but not often heavy enough to flush out the creeks, so the flathead has gone off the radar a little. We have still been getting the very occasional biggie, but they’ve been hard to find lately, although there has been some luck using lures. The water being very warm (more than 27 degrees), fishing for flathead on the sandflats hasn’t always been successful, although that’s where you’ll find them on the cloudy days. It was a miserable, wet, windy day when Dave and Charlie caught a 60cm flathead just north of Turner’s Camp. They also brought in three 30+cm bream. Further up the Passage, there have been some good flathead catches around the mouths of both Elimbah and Bullock Creeks, but there haven’t been many reports from further north. Reggie and Levi had a couple of trips to Bribie over January and spent most of their time fishing. They’d scoot up to Mission Point to get a bucket of yabbies, but they weren’t having much fun up there, so they’d then come down south of the bridge for a better time of it. The best baits for flathead have been small prawns, squid and pilchards. Try to buy small bait prawns – the quality of the larger prawns hasn’t been great, and small ones are definitely working better. A word of warning – it is illegal to use supermarket prawns as bait. You must buy prawns from a bait shop (or cast for them yourself) and use them locally – to protect our wild crustaceans from introduced diseases.
There have been good catches of bream near the oyster leases at the mouth of Ningi Creek as well as up among the mangroves – silver bream, grunters and tarwhine all tend to hang around there. Jeff and a mate had a few bream to take home recently after spending an afternoon between the Avon wreck and Ningi Creek. Jeff said that prawns were the only bait that was working for them.
Squid has probably been the most reliable bait through the summer – perhaps because there are so many youngsters flinging the rods around and squid stays on the longest! Guy and his family caught six very big bream (and lots of undersized ones too) up at White Patch, as well as a 70cm longtom and an 80cm shovelnose – all on squid.
White Patch is nicely protected from the north/easterly winds and there’s been plenty of undersized fish there, as well as keeper snapper, bream, grassy sweetlip and the occasional trevally, but be wary – the Wright’s Creek marker is still missing, and you can find yourselves sitting out the low tide if you go in too far.
The deeper water in the middle of the Passage and around the bridge is holding lots of grassy sweetlip and moses perch, as is usual over the summer. The tidal run through that part of the Passage is strong, so try to choose a period of time over the change of tide if you want to anchor up. There has also been some good snapper around the bridge, as well as around the ripples at Pacific Harbour.
Try drifting from the bridge on a falling tide towards IGA supermarket, about 100 metres off the shore of Bribie, or use the rising tide to sneak over the weed beds west of the second green marker. Evan and Tamara found a spot they liked – “on the line between the second green and the IGA, in 34 ft of water”. Tamara said pilchards were the only bait working for them – mullet, prawns and even fresh yabbies failed to bring in the fish. They had a great time with a variety of fish – most of them undersized but enough keepers to feed the family; then “the catfish came in, slimed up our gear, ruined the fishing”, so they gave it up. Richard, too, was at the second green marker earlier in the month, during a spot of lovely weather and just after the high tide, when he hooked up an 85cm cobia! If you’re land-based, Airforce Park on a falling tide and Buckley’s Hole on a rising tide – always worth a try!