This week’s fishing tip:
Finesse fishing. There is more pressure on fish these days, therefore it pays to go stealthy when chasing estuary species.
Starting with line, you can still catch big fish on light braid. Use a good quality braid that has a thin diameter for it’s breaking strain, tied to a metre of fluorocarbon leader.
Whether you’re using bait or lures it will make a difference to your catch rate, especially trolling and casting soft plastics and vibes. 6lb braid and 10lb leader is enough to handle most fish in the rivers.
Other things that will tip the odds in your favour are using good quality, proven lures, and as light a weight as possible to reach the bottom.
Also it is amazing what size and numbers of fish you can catch on tiny 4cm long lures. Elephants eat peanuts!
Gold Coast estuary fishing report:
Dusky flathead of 50-80cm are enjoying the cooler water and feeding quite aggressively at the Tweed and Gold Coast upstream areas. At this time of year there is bait fish present, which attracts these fish that are fattening up for their spawning activity in the months ahead. Also the water upstream is not as clear as at the mouth, giving ambush predators like flathead better opportunity to strike at close range without being spotted. Both trolling and drifting with vibes are working well, but it does pay to choose the correct plan of attack on the day based on the conditions.
At the Gold Coast broadwater there seems to be an ever increasing number of solid Purple Tuskfish. They are easily caught on bait and lures and put up quite a fight on light tackle. Terry and Scott caught some healthy flatties in the high 50s on Hurricane vibes with us at Nerang river.
The big sea Bream will begin to enter the systems, and winter whiting, flounder, squid, snapper, flathead, and a range of other reef and estuary species will be around. Fishing a run out tide is preferred to avoid the super clear ocean water pushing in through with the run in tide, or if you’re fishing on a run in tide move further from the mouth as the day goes on.
Smithy the master guide is putting clients on to lovely fish at the Tweed river. The bio masses of big bream and tailor that we predicted are running late but won’t be far away. The good news is the river is still firing with good numbers of flathead smashing lures including the two fish pictured below of 70cm, and an 81cm model posing here with Smithy and client Geoff. The best lures this week being Zerek fish traps and Atomic semi hardz.
Cheers
Clint
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