Cool conditions bring stability

Bo Sawyer

At the time of writing the fishing has been a bit hit and miss with high water temps making it a challenging bite. We soft vibe yesterday and wouldn’t let go of it at the boat (wasn’t foul hooked either!). Logan River has been the pick but anywhere with mud and mangroves and you should nail a few.

Please be careful with your pots as the amount should see this starting to cool down as we approach a great time of the year to fish the Pin. Wind has still been a major factor at the moment with plenty of days ranging between 20-30km. Mornings have been best yet again with the arvos getting quite breezy.

Let’s start off with the crabs. To put it simply, they’ve been everywhere lately. You know they’ve been thick when you are jagging plenty of them on soft plastics. I even had a big one have a go at my of discarded ones getting caught up on lures is at a new time high.

The whiting have also been thick. We were getting one a cast outside of the north lagoon recently on freshly pumped yabbies. If you have a bad back then Brett has plenty of fresh worms in stock at Jacobs Well Bait and Tackle and the whiting love them. Plenty are being caught in the Logan, off Kalinga Bank, slipping sands and Gold Bank as well.

The bream sizes are still fairly small but we’ll see them ramp up with the weather cooling down. The flathead fishing hasn’t been bad but certainly not mind blowing just yet.

The average size is fairly good though and we’ve been nailing a 70+ model on most charters. The low tide as you would expect has been the best for them but they are trickier to catch in high wind so either find some shelter or fish for them before it picks up. Soft plastics and vibes are working well for the lure fisho otherwise livies, pilchards or prawns are getting fish for the baito’s. Find banks with weed edges and bait flicking and you should be on the money.

The amount of small Jew in the 40-70cm bracket around at the moment is great to see. They are such a great species to catch and the size will only get better in the coming months. I’ve been fishing for them in water around the 5-7m mark using soft vibes and it’s been working fairly well with some monster fish almost spooling me and breaking me off on 30lb. It should be a great season for them coming up! Try the pin bar and deep holes all the way up to the Logan. Live pike, legal tailor, prawns and mullet around the 6-7” size are the choice for live baits.

The tailor at the moment have definitely dropped off from their plague proportions we saw last year but it’ll only be a matter of time before we see them kick it up a notch. They’ve been disappearing as quick as they show up lately so if you see a school busting up you want to make full use of it while you can. Small spinners and pilchards are the way to go.

• Capn’s Charters have dates available if you’d like to come out and learn how to fish lures or maybe just brush up on some fishing tactics, we’d love to have you on board! Call 0410 590 049 or email bookings@ capnscharters.com.au.