Longtail tuna

Happy new year… unless you are a fishing guide. The weather continues to be challenging, and therefore, so is the fishing. Where are the masses of spotted and mack tuna? Where are the occasionally annoying school mackerel? Yes, sorry, but have some wind instead – unfortunately, I spent the beginning of December hiding from wind. Thankfully, the small area I …

Nervous bait appears like rain on the surface of the water before out of nowhere the attack comes from both below and above. Fish fins and teeth carve up the surface of the water and birds descend from above, taking advantage of the hapless baitfish that have nowhere left to run. A quick cast into the melee, a few fast …

IT’S tuna time! Plenty of tuna are around but that doesn’t necessarily guarantee success. Tuna, as for any fish, can be fickle and I find the mack tuna are the worst. Throw shark attacks into the fray and what could have been a five fish day turns out to be a doughnut. Hervey Bay Tuna There are many things you …

WELL, it’s that time of the month again – where I whinge about the weather and how tough the fishing has been! Yes, the weather has been tough that’s for sure, and from most reports it’s the same up and down the coast. I find spring is often quite volatile. Heavy from the north as the temperature rises and then …

ANYONE who has caught a jewfish will almost certainly have encountered worms inside the fish. Be it live wriggling reddish nematodes – or roundworms – in the gut cavity or the smaller white spaghetti flatworm trypanorhyncha, both are believed to use jewfish as a host before moving on to another species. Headlands hop While the sight of either of these …

THERE are lots of places to troll for snapper and your best bet is to start looking at maps with contours lines, Beacon to Beacon charts and even your sounder if it has a detailed Navionics card. To give you a few ideas of good places to start trolling for snapper, I would look at Peel Island, Mud Island, Green …

WINTER has flown by and we are already almost into spring, though our winter species here on the Gold Coast will still be in full swing. Here in Queensland we have just experienced our first year of the snapper and pearl perch closure, which was in effect until August 15, meaning you could not target or keep either of these …

WINTER is definitely here now. Very cold weather in May made temperatures drop quick. Sharks seem to be less active or not present, I can’t really be sure. Best of all, restrictions have been lifted to allow travel around Queensland. Hope this kicks a few more punters my way. Typical winter species have started to move and it’s exciting to …

WELL I was talking about rain and pretty much every creek and river from Hervey Bay to the NSW border was running after the fresh flush in March. It’s great news because the fresh flush was much needed to improve fishing, and the majority of dams have seen good increases or are overflowing. In the short term, fishing options will …

IT has been a wild couple months of weather. So much rain, so much humidity… it was a ‘real’ summer. I can’t remember the last summer with prolonged humidity – I have even considered buying an air-conditioner. I wish the fishing was just as hot! It has been patchy and at times tough. Particularly when dodging massive rain squalls that …