By JACK MANGROVE
THE weather conditions earlier in the week were nothing short of exceptional, with boats of all sizes making their way across the bar to some outstanding fishing.
Sunshine Reef has been fishing well with good catches of sweetlip, snapper, some nice coral trout, tuskfish, and longtail tuna.
Micro jigs have been accounting for a great mixed bag of reefies as well as pelagics and Sunshine Reef is perfect for this style of fishing.
A lot of anglers are starting to opt for an overhead style micro jigging outfit as they can detect bites easier on the drop and reengage the reel a lot quicker.
North Reef has also seen some nice fish hitting the decks as well as pearl perch, snapper, tuskfish, Maori cod, sweetlip, longtail and yellowfin tuna along with Spanish and spotted mackerel.
There’s been excellent numbers of tuna over the past week.
Carrying a variety of size and type of lure is always a good idea when chasing tuna.
A mixture of small metal slugs, micro jigs, soft plastics, poppers and stickbaits is ideal.
Mackerel have been quite thick with good catches of spotted and Spanish mackerel coming from North Reef and Chardon’s Reef.
Sounding up schools of fish and dropping metal slugs and micro jigs is a great way to entice a bite and can be very productive.
Another great way to entice a bite is the good old-fashioned floater, a lightly weighted large pilchard or live bait drifted out in the current so that the bait will sit at mid-water will quiet often end up with a larger mackerel or wahoo.
In the river there has been an exceptional number of whiting which have been a great target for the youngsters over the school holidays.
Whiting are a relatively easy species to target and are quite safe for the kids to handle because they have no real serious spikes.
Live worms and yabbies have been the go-to baits with surface lures being the real stand out with the bigger fish.
There has been heaps of trevally starting to make their way into the river and this should only continue to get better as winter approaches.
Some cracking mangrove jack have been landed around the sand bags and the rock wall at the river mouth.
Flathead numbers are defiantly on the increase with more and larger females caught and released.
This can only improve the population of the legal fish and improve the fishery as a whole.
The area upriver around the lakes has been one of the haunts as well as the deeper sections of the river down towards the mouth.
The cooler water will start to infiltrate the river system over the next month and tailor and winter bream will turn up in numbers.
Last winter was one of the beast seasons anglers have had in some time and this year should be no different.
