By Jack Mangrove
River: With the temperatures slowly increasing and the numerous amount of storms lingering around our coast, we are beginning to see the Noosa River come to life, anglers are producing great numbers of quality flathead, whiting, bream, trevally and of course the Mangrove Jacks.
To see success, focus your time around Tewantin and the upper reaches of the Noosa River as the prawns have been flushed out of the lakes and fish will chase the bait in the deeper holes. Fishing the deeper holes will be the best option on either side of the change in the tide with the best time being the last hour of the run out tide.
Early mornings at the the ski run and outside the council chambers have been producing some nice numbers of trevally and flathead on surface lures, and both slowly drifted soft plastics (curly tails) and live baits.
As the day heats up try drifting baits, trolling hard bodies and casting soft vibes through the entrances of both lakes up river, reports are coming back that jew, flathead, trevally and Mangrove Jacks are on the bite.
If you are wanting to chase a feed of whiting, try using live beach worms and small surface lures around the shallow sand banks of Goat Island, Frying Pan and along Gympie Terrace, quality whiting up to 40cm have been getting landed over the last few weeks at these spots.
If you have children fishing and want to keep them entertained, the best method will be to use live saltwater yabbies or beach worms, as the whiting have been in excellent numbers lately. The late afternoon/night fishing has been producing trevally, great numbers of flathead, and better numbers of Mangrove Jacks, anglers casting prawn style soft plastics and using live baits have had the most success.
Offshore: With weather conditions becoming near perfect during the middle of the week we saw some anglers getting out there and getting right amongst some quality fish. The in close reefs such as Sunshine Reef, Jew Shoals and Halls Reef have been performing well, with reports of sweetlip, snapper, Maori cod and coral trout. The wider reefs like North Reef, Chardons have been fishing really consistent for snapper, Red Emperor, Moses perch, Venus tusk fish, cobia, Gold Spot Cod and Pearl Perch. There has also been reports of Dolphin Fish lurking around these areas. Out wide at the Barwon Banks and DI the fishing has been a little tough at times due to the weather and strong currents, but there is still quality snapper, Maori cod, pearl perch, tusk fish, legal size Red emperor and long tail tuna being landed by anglers.
Beaches: Whiting were in good numbers on the open beaches this week with some quality fish on the bite in close at Peregian and Castaways beaches and flathead at the northern end of Sunshine Beach. Hitting the beach on the low tide and collecting some beach worms or pipis, and then fish the run-in tide has seen anglers getting their bag limits of whiting in the last few weeks, along with some dart, bream and flathead.
So on behalf of Jack Mangrove, best of luck on your fishing adventures!
