Noosa Cyclonic Fishing

Weather has been absolutely off the scale over Christmas which was heartbreaking for a lot of tourists to the area. I found Wallaby Lote Tuqiri hiding from the weather in a local cafe. He expressed his dissapointment at not being able to get out for a fish.

After the holiday season, the weather subsided somewhat and enabled us to get out for a fish. The waters have been well and truly stirred up to almost a kilometre offshore. The inshore reefs are therefore fishing very well, with opportunistic species like the snapper gorging themselves on all the available food. The rivers are pouring heaps of dirty water into the seas, and the shallow reef systems have been stirred up.

Over the weekend we fished a session on the reefs in 40 to 50 metres of water (fringing on the stirred up water). With so much food in the water we opted to use plenty of berley and drift lightly weighted 4, 5 and 6 inch plastics down the trail. We scored well with 9 snapper to 5 kilograms and several lost to the reef. The trick was in presenting plastics nice and slowly to fish in the berley trail. We used 5/8 Oz jigheads and fed about 20 metres of line at a time before engaging the reel and allowing the plastics to drift at a point in the water column for several minutes. We kept this up until the plastic got eaten. The 4 inch Pogys in anchovy produced the bigger fish, with other “wiggly” plastics like the swimming shads and grubs doing well.

The weather has gotten nasty again, so with fingers crossed it may be right again for the weekend and another shot at some reefies!

Happy Fishing
Nige