Sunday
I managed a quick dawn session at Bribie on Sunday. I arrived at around 6.00 am. Dawn and low tide were at about the same time. I was fishing the area of sand banks and muddy weed beds south of the old oyster jetty, on the mainland side of the Pumicestone Passage.
I started with a GULP Crazylegs Jerkshad soft plastic in the Pink Shine colour, rigged on a 1/8th 1/0 jighead. I have now upgraded to a 12lb fluorocarbon leader as I have been getting bitten off by the Tailor that are around in the estuaries at the moment.
As I waded out I noted how cold the water has become in the last couple of weeks. I presume this is down to the consistent westerly winds. It was a westerly again this morning but not the predicted 10 to 12 knots. The first hour, through the slack water period on low tide, was a bit slow, but as the sun started to really light up the water, I started to catch fish. I had now switched to the GULP 5” Jerkshad in the Satay Chicken colour – basically, yellow on top of pumpkinseed.
I opened the account with a monster Pike – at just over 45cm I think it’s the biggest I have ever caught. Around 7.00 am I caught the first Flathead. It was about 35cm long. I then put in about ten more casts in a radius of a few metres of where I caught it. After slowing my retrieve and pausing longer, I hooked up to another – this was a much better fish. I dragged it on to the sand, photographed and released it. It was just over 50cm.
I fished on until 8.00am and caught another six Flathead between 30cm and 58cm. They seemed to feed more aggressively once the sun was a little higher over the water and the tide started to run in, solidly. There are plenty of fish in our fridge at present, so I released all the Flathead I caught today. I kept the monster Pike for the cat.
If you want to try land-based fishing with soft plastic lures, now is the time in southern Queensland. I expect they are sitting on sandbanks and weed beds in all the major estuaries at present. You will need to wrap up warm though!
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