As the water temps rise Barramundi will become active in both the impoundments and the estuaries. This 92cm fish was taken recently in the great sandy straits from a creek mouth on a pink richo’s extracta lure, the angler is Rob from the gold coast.
Mark Larsen from Tara in western Queensland is more at home bobbing for yellowbelly and murray cod in the condamine river or hunting feral pigs with his dogs but when the chance to bag a big golden trevally on a snapback he could not refuse. This one was over 10 kg, sight cast in 1 meter of water with 20 pound spin gear. Hervey bay offers the fly, spin or baitcast anglers plenty of opportunity to tangle with fish like this.
tony from Brisbane fished with me last week and after a quiet start, we trolled some 150mm halco crazy deep scorpions over some rubble bottom and landed this top snapper. Later in the day some nice flathead on fly and a big golden trevally as well. Nice fish Tony!
The flats have been fishing well with plenty of big goldys, queenfish and longtail tuna have started to arrive also. This is Tony from Tasmania with his first golden trevally sight cast in hervey bay, his expression on his face was priceless as his flyline dissapeared from sight on the first run. Well done mate!
This season is shaping up to become one of the best golden trevally years I can remember since I started fishing 30 years ago in the bay. We caught goldys right through winter (very unusual) with large numbers of smaller fish as well as some 8-10 kg specimens on the flats. This is Mervyn Tan from singapore with a smaller specimen (his first ever) taken on a plastic in 1 meter of water.
mervyn's first golden trevally
This month will see an increase of pelagic fish enter the bay with good numbers of big mac tuna already feeding hard on the surface in the sandy straits. This is a pic of a good mate Allan Philliskirk from fish’s fly and sportfishing, weipa hooked up to a 6kg mac tuna in Hervey Bay on 8 weight fly tackle
hooked up to mac tuna on fly
The last month has seen a few north winds, common for this time of year but the good news is that water temperatures have risen 5 degrees and the summer season is about to fire. Last week I spent a few days at a new location looking for new options and species and with little knowelage my two anglers caught some trophy fish with GT’s to 18kg, barra to 92cm, an 8kg fingermark and some big estuary cod all on lures.
In partnership with tackleworld Hervey Bay we decided to offer a full day guided fishing for the winner of the show us your pic competition for the last season. The winner was 5 year old Harry Rails and on our days outing he caught a few nice fish on plastics and learnt some new tecniques, young Harry is already a quite accomplished angler and I think we will see his face holding a few nice fish in the future!
This winter has seen good numbers of snapper through the bay with some clients landing up to 7 fish in a session, some around 8kg in weight. Most fish have been caught on berkley gulps but recently I had Nerada and Kai from Sydney who caught this double hookup on 6kg fish using squidgy pro flickbaits. On this day the squidgys outfished everything else 6-1.
This year we received an unusual 300mm plus of rain at the very start of june which is very unseasonal. Plenty of freshwater run off and dirty water has changed the habits of many species for a few weeks until the water clears. Snapper have come on strong with the dirty water and bream,whiting, grunter and flathead will have a bumper season after the fresh, fishing today we caught plenty of stud whiting and bream over 40cm on poppers.
Most tuna have dissapeared from the surface but will be found hunting deep on larger baitfish but larger longtails will still be about around the edges of dirty water and current lines needing a stealthier approach to get a hookup.
Here is a very recent picture of John Haenke, producer of the famous FISHING DVD series on one of his days off hooked up to a big longtail tuna.
