Fishing around Noosa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . by Craig Tomkinson

ABOVE: The author with a lovely whiting from Teewah Beach.

Fishing around Noosa

With November not far off, what can we expect the weather, fishing and crabbing to be like?

The weather report is forecasting that storms will be around, with a high likelihood of flooding, so I’d say another good wet season is on its way with a bit of luck.

The fishing will be good out wide, though the run will kick in more and make it harder to fish.

Whales have nearly all gone south, which is great – I love them but there are just too many out there nowadays, it’s scary moving around at day or night.

Pelagics will start showing up in bigger numbers, as will more sharks.

I’ll start towing my tinnies up to Double Island to fish in close for mixed reef fish and mackerel.

Ian Fry help pick avocados, the proceeds went to a charity for the homeless.

Crabbing has been great all year.

Before I went north in July, I got 20 cracking bucks over the period of a week at Tin Can Bay.

I put the pots in again once home, but it was so busy, with five boats in the area I normally chase mud crabs.

So, I put my pots out in the deeper channels with no other pots around and got a nice feed of sand crabs.

I started crabbing again in the middle of October and will continue through November, in between the school holidays and up at Tin Can Bay, because I think there’ll be too much freshwater in the upper Noosa River system. Driving and fishing trips

On a trip to the Cape this year, I met two lovely people – Ian and Gill Fry – both from England.

They were camped in their 2008 Toyota LandCruiser Troopcarrier, beside another good friend Bob Gentlemen.

Ian came out fishing with Eddy and myself a few times and, when the time came for them to head south, I gave them my contact details and said ‘pop in and stay a while’, which they did.

So, I took them up to Teewah, through Cooloola and onto Rainbow Beach, to Inskip for a look around the area and then we headed for home.

The next day out I took them with me to the Mary Valley to pick avocados for the charity Tony Stewart helps with, and a look around.

Tony Stewart and 1200 avocados.

The day after that, I took them back over to Teewah Beach for a bit of fishing.

I showed them how to find eugaries – pipis – on the beach and in the surf, doing the eugarie shuffle.

Once we had bait, we rigged up the rods – small 2m rods with 2500 spinning reels and 6lb line.

I did up two running sinker rigs and put on some eugarie that was chopped in half long ways.

We found a nice gutter that had no footprints near it – this lets me know that no one has fished in it for at least one tide.

Ian and I cast out and within minutes Ian had the first lovely whiting.

Gill and the author at the Fig Tree Walk in Mary Valley.

We caught one or two fish out of that gutter before they went quiet, so we moved to find another tiny gutter that no one had fished that tide.

We only fished the gutters between Teewah township and the south end of the Cooloola camping areas.

By the end of the runin tide at about 5pm, we had six good whiting to 35cm, three good tarwhine and a few good dart – a lovely feed indeed.

Gill had a great walk along the beach at each spot we stopped to fish.

Hopefully, over the coming weeks, I’ll do more beach fishing over at Teewah.

Until next month, be safe on the water.