By Jack Mangrove
This week’s weather has allowed anglers the chance to get offshore for a full day. There have been no complaints coming from Double Island with anglers landing large red emperor as well as scarlet sea peach and nice gold band snapper. For anglers targeting these fish on bait you cannot go wrong with a nice slab bait of hussar or mullet. The Hards and north Barwon banks are holding snapper up to 6kg and big pearlies caught on paternoster rigged pilchards and squid. In closer, Chardons Reef and Jew shoal have been producing nice Spanish and wahoo on slowly trolled dead baits and livies on stinger rigs. For anglers chasing the reef dwellers, there have been plenty of grassy sweetlip and spangled emperor taken on fresh mullet and pilchard baits. Sunshine reef has seen multiple anglers boat the elusive coral trout on squid and pilchard cocktails as well as live yakkas. These fish will give their all to take your bait into the nearest coral structure and would highly recommend a leader upgrade to 60lb fluorocarbon. For pelagic fisherman the tuna have shown up in numbers with some big fish in the mix. Although these fish may be thick, at the moment they are eating very small bait fish so keep lines, leaders and lures small. Peregian Beach has been a great spot for surf fisherman with whiting, bream and the occasional flathead showing up. For whiting and bream, beach worms and peeled prawn has worked well. For tailor and flathead, smaller fish presentations such as pilchards, hardy heads and white bait have been the producing methods. The lower estuary of the Noosa River has been the main focus this week with a variety of trevally on the catch list. Golden trevally have been taking prawn imitation and small paddle tail plastics. While the water is clear it is necessary to step leaders down to as low as 4lb with 6lb main line braid as they can become very line shy. Other fish including whiting and flathead are in good numbers especially around Dog Beach, the drop offs around the frying pan and along the current line toward woods bays. These fish will happily take a range of flesh baits including mullet and bonito as well as soft plastics. Further up toward the mouth of Cooroibah there have been a few school sized jewies caught on hardbodies and 4 inch paddle style soft plastics loaded with scent. In the run up to the full moon the saratoga were chewing pretty hard at Borumba on a wide range of surface lures and top water weedless presentations including small poppers, frogs and cicadas. As the sun rises hardbodies that suspend also work well at getting a strike from those fish sitting under the snags. Get out there and have a crack this week while we have some of the best weather on our doorstep.
So on behalf of Jack Mangrove, best of luck on your fishing adventures!
