4 minute read
Prime time for jacks, jewies, threadies and snapper
Normally, November is the start of the very hot southeast Queensland weather. The days get longer and thunderstorms become more common.
However, this year, the weather gurus, while forecasting a lot more storms this summer, are expecting it to be very dry.
The rivers and creeks have been very clean throughout spring so far and these conditions will keep them that way, unless the storms dump a lot of rain.
This can make fishing up the creeks much harder.
It gives the bait more water to spread out in and will see fish such as mangrove jack, jewfish, threadfin salmon and estuary cod push well into the upper reaches of each system.
I haven’t put a lot of effort into chasing jack this season yet, but I have managed to tangle with a couple while chasing other species.
A lot of small jewies and flathead are still in the middle reaches of most rivers.
These fish seem to be feeding mostly on the large schools of herring.
I’ve had a lot of success sounding the bends and looking for the dense schools of herring that are closer to the bottom.
When there’s a lot of herring around, I find using a lure that doesn’t imitate a herring tends to work better.
I guess the fish get a bit excited when they see something different swim past, after gorging themselves on the same thing every day.
At this time of year, there aren’t a lot of prawns in the rivers, so prawn imitations have been working very well.
The 92mm Pro Lure Clone Prawn is still catching a lot of fish for me.
I use these everywhere and they out-fish most other plastics.
Juvenile jewies can become a real pest after a while.
They belt lures and they are also good at ripping soft prey plastics apart.
Mangrove jack will be biting hard this month.
They cop a lot of pressure from anglers in the rivers around Brisbane, so try to mix up your lures, and try a few different retrieves and techniques to get a bite.
I prefer to travel a little north to chase jacks.
They still get plenty of pressure put on them from the Sunshine Coast right up to Bundaberg, but they seem to bite a bit better in these areas.
Around this time, the Brisbane River is definitely the pick of systems for me.
Threadfin salmon will soon start to school up around the mouth in larger numbers.
And while there have been a fair few getting around, most of the fish I’ve seen were under 1m, at about the 8090cm range.
Sizes and numbers should increase as the water temperature rises.
Jewies are normally about in good numbers at this time of year too, feasting on all the small prawns that are getting around.
To date, the fish I’ve kept to eat have all been full of small prawns.
The jewies in the Brisbane River love a good prawn imitation and, as expected, the Pro Lure Clone Prawn works very well.
The Jackson Puri Ebi 3.25” plastics are also excellent and have scored good fish.
The river is quite deep in places, so if you’re not used to fishing the area, make sure you pack a few heavier jig heads than you normally would.
The current runs hard in some areas and it can take a jig head of around 1/2oz to get to the bottom.
Even though the current runs a lot slower out there, the wharves out the front are all about 15m deep, so a 1/2oz head is often needed to get down.
Snapper have been very active in the river too.
As soon as I see good numbers of jellyfish coming into the river on a run-in tide, I put a lot more effort into these fish.
They’re great fun to target around structure on lures and bait.
I’ve been taking my son Luke to target them with half a pilchard and we’ve been having a ball trying to keep them out of the structure.
The fish average around 45-55cm at the moment.
And they pull hard, especially on lighter gear – we’ve been getting drilled by some bigger fish.
That’s it for me this month.
Hope to see you out on the water.
