1770 the place to catch a feed

June 4, 2015

Wasn’t it great to see that the weather forecast came good for the Bundaberg area last weekend?

Lots of anglers took advantage of the good conditions and headed offshore from Burnett Heads and 1770 to fish the reefs out around Lady Elliot and Musgrave islands and the country further north.

By the amount of boat trailers lined up along the road, it looked like 1770 was the place to be to catch a good feed last weekend.

By all reports the boats that stayed out Saturday night all seemed to catch some nice fish, including coral trout up to 6kg, lots of red throat emperor, hussar, parrot, cod and even a few Spanish mackerel caught on lightly weighted pilchard rigs intended for better reef fish.

Unfortunately the forecast for this weekend is not as good as the south-easterlies will start to strengthen restricting most fishing activities to our local rivers and dams.

If you can brave the cool conditions the Burnett River is still producing the goods.

The bream should become more aggressive during this cold snap and respond well to soft plastics and well-presented baits, with peeled prawns and mullet fillets cut into strips both working very well.

As well as bream, local anglers have been hooking a few nice blue salmon, flathead and whiting, all mainly on bait, with the Fairymead bend and Rubyanna being two hot spots lately.

If you can see schools of fish breaking the surface smashing baitfish, it’s likely to be small queenfish and trevally.

Whilst both aren’t much good to eat, they are a tremendous sportfish and can be top fun to catch on light gear.

Casting small metal slugs and soft plastics into the schools and retrieving them at high speed should do the trick to catch these speedsters.

Lake Gregory bass have started to school up in the deeper water.

These fish are easy to locate with a good quality Humminbird or Garmin sounder.

The technology has really come a long way, making it easier for the fisherman to put better numbers of fish in the boat.

Well, that’s this week’s fishing report.

The full moon was on Wednesday night so tides should be starting to ease towards the weekend.

If you get a chance to wet a line this weekend, good luck.

Fish with confidence,

Dale Smith