Tag Archives: fishing reports Bribie Island 2014

Bribie – the old oyster jetty flats – 15 June 2014

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Sunday

I love my trips away – up and down the Queensland and New South Wales coasts, but this year I have not had much time for them. This has given me the chance to fish my home turf, at Bribie Island, more often. People ask if I get bored fishing the same spots and the answer is always, a resounding no. The main reason is that every day and every tide change brings you a different set of variables. You may be very familiar with the geography of the area but as the water runs in or out, faster or slower, depending on the moon phase and as the weed grows or dies off, with shifting water temperatures, everything is constantly changing. Then you add the wind direction, weather and shifting sand banks and there is always plenty to consider.

So as you may have guessed on Sunday, I decided to fish the old oyster jetty flats at dawn. Low tide would be at 5.15 am, so I would be fishing the first part of the run in tide. It was a couple of days after the full moon and the forecast was for a 12 knot south-westerly. I arrived at 5.45 am just after low tide and waded out under the bridge. The water was calm and the wind was hardly blowing, but it was cold. More importantly the water was really cold. A few days of very cold nights had really brought the temperature down.

I started with a GULP Crazylegs Jerkshad in the Curried Chicken colour. I find this is good to fish before the sun comes up. It has plenty of action and the high contrast often attracts a bite. Just north of the jetty I found my first fish of the day. It was just after 6.00 am and it was a 45cm flathead. I cast around the same area and then moved in, closer to the jetty, where I picked up another, slightly smaller flathead, about 20 minutes later.

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The sun took a long time to come over the thick band of cloud that was sitting along the horizon. I kept moving south, as the run in tide picked up pace. I swapped to the GULP 4” Minnow in the Watermelon Pearl colour. I was fishing with 10lb fluorocarbon leader and a 1/8th ounce, size 1/0 hook, jighead. At about 6.45 am, I caught another flathead, just over 40 cm.

I swapped soft plastics again. This time I chose a GULP  2” Shrimp in the Banana Prawn colour. It took a while, but after another 30 mins I caught my final fish of the day – another 45 cm flathead. It had been a good but tough fishing session with some long gaps between fish. Perhaps it was the cold weather/ water or maybe I just had trouble locating them today.

Bribie – the old oyster jetty flats – 25 March 2014

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Tuesday

On Tuesday the tide and wind looked pretty good but it was probably going to rain. I could not resist another session at Bribie Island. I wanted to try a more scientific comparison of the GULP and Zman soft plastic lures, in an area where I was pretty sure there are fish. There are numerous problems in trying to measure lure success. However, flathead are a good species to work with, as they often lie around in groups of 4 or more.

Gulp
ZMAN 3.75″ Streakz in Shine
Plastics don’t get much bigger than this
Certainly swallowed that
DUO Jerkbait 120 SP
They seem to love this one
More wild weather

I wanted to compare the performance of the Berkley Gulp range with the Zman range. Although the ranges have similar offerings, none of their lures match up, exactly. I decided to compare the GULP 4” Minnow in the Pearl Watermelon colour with the Zman 3.75” Streakz in the Shiner colour. Both have approximately the same profile, although the Zman is a little slimmer. The colours are similar but the Zman is more translucent.

I started with the Zman which I loaded on to a TT Headlockz 1/8th ounce, size 1 hook jighead. This set up caught a fish at about 6-15 am. It was a flathead between 50 and 55cm. I cast out again with the same soft plastic and had another hit but no hook up. I decided to give the Zman 10 casts in a semi – circle and then switch to the Gulp and do the same thing. On casts 5, 7, 9 and 10, I got hits but could not hook up with the Zman.

Then I switched to a regular, fine wire, 1/8th ounce, size 1 hook jighead and put on the Gulp Minnow. I cast right back at the spot where I had caught the fish on the Zman and hooked another, after a couple of hops. It was another flathead between 45cm and 50cm. I continued to cast into the now fairly shallow water in a semi-circle. At the end of 10 casts the Gulp had caught three more Flathead – all were just under the legal size limit of 40cm.

So on the face of it – it was GULP 4” Minnow that caught more fish. I have mentioned before my theory that the texture of the Gulp soft plastics is much more fish-like than other brands. They also seem to be more porous, so they retain a scent trail for longer than most other soft plastic lures. But I could not see how this could make much difference in this situation. In these circumstances, where the fish are really aggressive in their feeding, they seemed to hit almost every plastic/ hard body that I threw at them – so why was the hook-up rate not as good with the Zmans?

Then I figured it out. I loaded another Zman 3.75” Streakz in the Shiner colour, but this time on the regular TT  finewire, 1/8th ounce, size 1 hook jighead. On the first cast I felt the hit, paused and counted to 10. When I lifted the rod the fish was hooked. I kept fishing with the same plastic for a while and I hardly missed a bite, converting about five bites in to fish. I know it is not conclusive proof but it seems that either the TT Headlockz are less sharp or the broader gauge hook required to hold the lock in place, prevents them from penetrating as effectively.

After I finished my experiment I moved to the south of the jetty and I decided to see just how big a soft plastic these flathead will attack. I pulled out a GULP 6” grub in a sardine-like colour. I put it on a Nitro Bream Pro 1/8th ounce, size 2/0 hook jighead. This was the biggest I had, and cast it out. After a few casts, I felt a bite. I paused then struck, but I was not attached. This happened three times, so on the fourth cast, when I felt the bite, I dropped the rod tip for a full count of 15 seconds. When I lifted it I had a flathead, but only a 42 cm long one. The lure was well on its way to the fishes stomach, so I kept it. I would recover the soft plastic later.

I finished the session with the DUO Realis Jerkbait 120 SP – a big hard bodied, suspending minnow. This also soon found the fish. In fact, it found the biggest two fish of the day – both well over 60cm. Just after 9.00 am, the incoming tide pushed me off the target area, so I gave up. The fish are still there and they are still hungry.

Bribie Island – the oyster jetty flats and White Patch – 10 February 2014

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Monday

The wind was dropping gradually so I decided to try Bribie Island again, on Monday. As regular readers will have spotted, I find fishing the incoming and high tides much harder around Bribie. On Monday high tide was at 6.36 am. The wind was forecast to get up to about a 10 knot south-easterly by mid-morning.

I was stuck for inspiration on where to fish, so I opted for the flats either side of the old oyster jetty, to start off with. I arrived just after 5.00 am and the wind had dropped off. I started to the south of the bridge and almost immediately caught a tiny (25cm) flathead on a GULP 3” Minnow soft plastic, in the Watermelon Pearl colour. I released it and was treated to a magnificent sunrise. I waded along the edge of the mangroves until I reached the jetty, casting in all directions. Just passed the jetty, I saw a flathead take off from the shallows just in front of me. I stopped and started casting around in a broad arc, starting parallel with the mangrove roots and gradually turning out into deeper water.

Sunrise – Monday morning
First fish of the day
Bribie flats at White Patch
Sunrise
Flathead – just legal
Flats north of White Patch

There are a lot of rocks on the bottom in this area, so I kept the soft plastic moving fairly quickly. At about 6.10 am, I caught a small flathead that was just about legal size. I let it go feeling confident that I would find something bigger. However, despite trying numerous spots and lots of different plastics, I fished right up to the high tide and through it, without any luck.

As the water slackened off I went for coffee and thought about where to try next. I drove up to White Patch to have a look around. It was now about 8.30 am and the tide was slowly picking up pace on the run out. I drove all the way to the northern most beach access and walked out between the mangroves. This access leads out on to a large area of shallow featureless sand, which is only really deep enough to fish on the bigger high tides.

There are a few weed clumps and depressions and I cast all around these in search of fish. I saw a flathead follow the plastic and then dart away, when it saw me. I moved further south until I reached the area where the weed clumps are thicker and the floor slopes away in to the main channel. I decided to swap up to a bigger, brighter soft plastic as I had not had much luck with the natural coloured minnow that I was using. I loaded a GULP Crazylegs Jerkshad in the Lime Tiger colour on to the jighead and started putting in some long casts, right out to the edge of the channel.

At about 9.30 am I felt a very solid hit and then line started peeling. The fish must have been sitting just beyond the drop off and had struck as the soft plastic swam over it. I felt the leader pulling on the edge of something, so I loosened the drag a little and let the fish take line. It made a couple of big runs and then started to swim back towards me. I took up the slack and kept winding. It was now clear of the drop off and coming into the shallows. It was a big flathead – between about 65 and 75cm long. I never got to measure it. I took my camera out to get a few shots and as I did so it wriggled off the hook and slowly swam away.

That was it, after a few more casts I called time on a fairly frustrating morning of fishing.  I looked back at the blog when I got home and realised I have lost a lot of big fish in this area. I will definitely be back.