By Jack Mangrove
With weather reports looking good for this week, the offshore gang will heading out in force.
There’s been excellent numbers of tuna over the last 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 and poppers and stickbaits is ideal.
The tuna have been quite willing to take larger lures of late with poppers and stickbaits being a very visual and exciting way to catch them.
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 fish on Sunshine Reef.
Attaching a small treble on the rear of your micro jig will increase hook-up rates dramatically and won’t alter the action of the jig too much.
North Reef has also seen some nice fish hitting the decks. Pearl Perch, snapper, tuskfish, maori cod, sweetlip, longtail and yellowfin tuna, as well as spanish and spotted mackerel.
With weather conditions so good a lot of angler are also doing the big steam up to Double Island in search of big snapper, large pearl perch, and of course those elusive red emperor.
The Barwon Banks was also another great spot to head with some nice fish taken.
In the river, whiting have been in good numbers and have been a great target for the youngsters on school holidays, the incoming tide will be your best bet with the clearer water coming through.
Whiting are a relatively easy species to target and are quite safe for the kids to handle as they have no real serious spikes. Live worms and yabbies have been the go to bait.
Surface lures have been real popular as there have been good schools of trevally and tailor in the river, the sought after golden trevally are also making their way into the river, this should only continue to get better as winter approaches.
Some cracking mangrove jack have been landed around the sand bags and the rock walls near the river mouth. Hopping soft vibes is a good way to chase the red devils especially when the water is a bit dirtier as they give off plenty of vibration.
Flathead have also been in great numbers with some very large fish taken over the Easter period, live baits have been the prime baits.
The North Shore is still a hive of activity with a lot of anglers making the most of the Anzac Day public holiday and taking the Monday off to get the four-day weekend.
As the water is starting to cool the tailor have started to show – finding a good gutter and fishing the incoming tide has been the key with pilchards, mullet and bonito the prime baits.
For the kids the dart are everywhere and there are some bigger fish among them.
Fishing those close gutters with prawns, worms and smaller cut baits will see a result.
On behalf of Jack Mangrove, best of luck on your fishing adventures.
