At last! We are up and running again with the ability to give you all up-to-date fishing reports and to let you know of what’s happening here on the Sunshine Coast.
Rocks exposed at Mooloolaba Beach July 2008
Well, this has been a wild year as far as ocean conditions go. We’ve seen some of the biggest swells hitting our area that I can ever remember. This has moved a lot of sand from our beaches as well as uncovering some previously hidden areas of rock. There has been a stack of rain that produced a lot of run off. All of these factors added together has given us an amazing shallow water snapper season.
Ed scored his tuna last time we fished together and this time he wanted a snapper. A nice fish in anyone’s book I reckon …. Good stuff.
Ed Gibbs with Snapper caught on fly
It was made an even better capture due to the fact we used no burley. Snapper are drawn to a good fresh burley and it will increase your chances of finding them.
If you’ve never caught a snapper on fly, now is the best time. They hit a fly like a freight train and can sometimes be a real handful in the shallow waters that I like to fish. Snapper are a beautiful looking fish and absolutely fantastic to eat. Let’s not get into catch and release issues, except to say adhere to the bag and size limits. Let me tell you – Judy’s fresh grilled snapper fillets with a prawn white sauce served with rice tastes a lot better than deep fried basser & chips.
Even though there’s a lot of snapper on all the shallow reefs both here and all along the south east Queensland coast at the moment, from a fly point of view they can be still very hard to catch. You never know what will turn up dredging flies over the shallow reefs. Over the last month we’ve had kingfish, tailor, bream, sweetlip and even a longtail. I like to use flies that are weighted to sink faster than the fly line because I want the fly deeper than the tip of the line. It’s important here to have as little or no slack between you and the fly. This is – dare I say it – Clouser country, but then anywhere there’s water could be called Clouser Country.
Basically the technique to use is dredging your flies deep over a known piece of reef, much the same way you’d fly fish for bass in an impoundment when the bass are feeding deep on the thermo climes. Really good fun and very relaxing especially after the chaos of chasing tuna.
The washes are also fishing very well with good sized dart, big eye trevally and bream. The tailor are just starting to show up. There are reports of some big tailor off North Stradbroke Island now so we may see some greenbacks on the next moon. The big schools of yakkas have not show up yet so the school mackerel look like they’ll be late this year. The best flies at the moment around the washes are Clousers #2, Crazy Charlies #4, and small Surf Candies #2 & #4.
Neil and his boys fished the washes for seven species of fish on lure and fly. The boys are good anglers and a lot of fun to fish with.
Neil & Max O'Hare
The freshwater scene should be starting to fire but as yet it has been a little slow. Borumba has been rather patchy, even bait fisho’s have been saying the same thing. The few times I guided there last month we found mainly small bass. But this will change and the bass will school up in all their old haunts as soon as nature tells them too. Best flies to tie so you’re ready when it happens are Vampires #2 & #4, Purple/Black & Red/Black, Wooly Buggers #2, and Pete’s Bucket #4 Black.
That’s about all for now; hope to see you on the water and good luck chasing snapper.
Gavin
Thanks for stopping by to Tie ‘n’ Fly Outfitters blog…
We will be up and running with it real soon.
In the meantime check this out:
Fly Fishing action in Hervey Bay!
or take a look at us on the web at www.tienfly.com
Cheers
Gavin & Judy