Monday

People often ask me about birds and what do fishermen mean by “look out for the birds working”. Whilst fishing off the beach at Brunswick Heads recently I managed to film a good example.

It is hard to say exactly what was going on but the most like scenario is that there is a large school of bait – mullet, anchovies or something similair, that has drawn the attention of a big school of tailor that are migrating north to spawn. The tailor are attacking the bait school from below whilst the birds are dive bombing from above. Pretty soon this leads to a lot of blood and fishy residue in the water and the larger predators, sharks, trevally, mackerel will start to get involved.

The key challenge for the land based fisherman is getting a cast out to where the action is. You can watch this type of activity going on all day but it often is just out of reach. My advice is to make sure you tie on a very tough leader and a heavy metal lure and then hurl it out in the direction of the fish. There is often a big school under the water that you cannot see and it could be a hundred metres ahead of where the birds are.

If you can get you lure in amongst this kind of action you are definitely going to hook something.