Fishing has been up and down lately and often badly affected by the weather. Like the little girl with a curl in the middle of her forehead, when the weather has been good, it has been really good. When it’s bad, it’s been horrid!
An example was last weekend when Bribie really needed fair weather sailing for the Bribie Island Classic Boats Regatta. Saturday morning began miserably – cold, damp and windy. Just as we were giving up hope that the boaties could possibly enjoy their excursion up the Passage, out came the sun, and a glorious Saturday afternoon led to an equally lovely Sunday. Fishing, too, was lousy on Saturday morning and improved when the sun came out.
The water temperature has dropped by half a degree in the past few days, enough to slow some fish down. Bream, particularly, is less keen if there is a quick drop in water temperature – there haven’t been many good ones around. Ben did get a nice one off the sandbank near MR.
Ronny had better luck when he was christening his new boat. He anchored between the first red and green markers up Ningi Creek on the morning rising tide and caught two bream, all more than 28cm. Then, not long after the top of the tide, he landed three flathead – 41, 55 and 57cm, as well as a flounder. It must have been his new boat!
Talking of Ningi Creek, it has really silted up over the last few months, maybe due to the constant rainy weather? There are sandbanks across the entrance to Little Ningi, where there used to be drains, and the old oyster leases are hummocked with mud.
Whiting and tailor are abundant all through the Passage, so fishing over winter looks promising. Chris got eight whiting and two bream up at Poverty Creek – all while waiting for a VMR rescue! He was north of the campground and says there were whiting sitting all along the water’s edge – big fat ones. It was the same the week before – he had half a bucket of them before pulling up anchor because his son’s girlfriend was seasick with the swell.
Jo and Rob went out to one of their favourite spots for a good feed – a little sandbank between Redcliffe and Beachmere, where the “whiting were biting!”
We had to go out a couple of nights ago to bring in a stranded hire boat, so we decided to do some fishing while we waited. After a couple of big snap-offs and wishing we’d remembered to pop a landing net on the rescue boat, we wandered up to our stranded vessel and chatted with a Whitepatch local on the shore, who said he could see whiting all along the edge of the water. They would have been after all the goodies that the rising tide stirs up and would be easy pickings if you want to try fishing from the shore.
Peter and Heather were nearby earlier that day, fishing off the sandbank close to Wright’s Creek and caught a 54cm flathead, using prawns for bait. On their way home, they caught flathead getting around but sizes have generally not been huge.
Fishability Queensland has been getting some reasonable flathead from north of the Ningi Creek yellow marker. But they’ve also been getting lots of slimy grinners! If there is a catch-of-the-week, it’s probably grinners – they are everywhere at the moment, “plague proportions”, as one fisher said! Some people like to mince them for fishcakes, but they’re too ugly for most to keep. The Alvey Women’s Fishing Classic is on again for a month, so there’ll be more news about that in the next report.