Mark had fun with a few pelagics off Ballina.
Cracking jacks, flatties and pelagics
H
ELLO all and welcome to April. Even though we have officially finished with summer, the warm weather and strong northerly wind seem reasonably settled and don’t appear to be going anywhere in a big hurry. Compared to this time last year, when the region was suffering its
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worst flooding in recorded history, for the most part it has been fairly dry – apart from a couple of days when the heavens opened up and dropped about 150mm in certain areas. While this may sound
like a lot of rain in a short space of time, it was definitely needed in various parts of the region, and has certainly not affected the fishing at all. With Easter around the corner and the current
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condition of the river, the next few months are looking very good in Ballina, and on the Northern Rivers as a whole. This summer seems to have produced a significant number of mangrove jack compared to other years. I do think that now more people – who may not have done so in the past – are targeting this iconic species, but I will add that jack quantities and quality do appear to be stronger this year. Live bait have been working quite well, but 4-5” soft plastics have also accounted for plenty of the larger models that have been landed over the past couple of months. As is usually the case, most of the fish have been caught in the afternoon or at night, with most rock walls and bridges on the Richmond River producing at some stage over summer.
The other species we heard a little more than usual about was trevally. There seems to have been an increase in their numbers this summer and, as they are an aggressive species and fight particularly well, there were some great stories and captures across the summer, from the mouth of the river all the way up to Broadwater. The bulk of the catches were flathead or jack bycatch, but if you want to target them a little more, I suggest sticking to a 3.5-5” soft plastic with a fairly quick and erratic retrieve. Unfortunately, both whiting and mud crabs continued to disappoint across the summer period. We have however, seen a slight improvement in the number of whiting, however they are still not to the level we would expect at this time of year. The increase seems to * continued P33
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