Although we have experienced a fair bit of rain it has not affected the Tweed area nearly as badly as many others and although this may change at any time, at least we have still been able to fish and enjoy our lovely region.

The rivers have suffered from the consistent deluges will continue to do so until the rain slows up.

It seems as if the rain just gives the river time to almost recover before sending down some more water to complicate things again.

There should still be fish to catch for those willing to do a bit of looking around before committing to an area.

My little boy is now almost three years old and is absolutely fanatical about fishing – must get it from his Mum – and I wanted to take him for his first bass outing recently.

A drive quickly proved that catching a bass in the upper reaches of the Tweed River would be quite difficult, judging by the water quality. We changed our destination to the Clarrie Hall Dam and had a very pleasant morning trolling up 18 bass in about two hours.

They weren’t monsters by any means but were a welcome catch to keep the little man entertained and Daddy sane. I am sure we wouldn’t have come close to similar action if we had fished the Tweed River.

The heavy tackle game fishing on the wider grounds off the Tweed has been phenomenal this summer, with numerous mahi mahi, yellowfin and striped tuna and even good numbers of wahoo keeping us very busy on our trips out there.

The blue marlin have been a very viable option and we have averaged one hook-up every trip to date, with the odd striped marlin on the cards as well. They are awesome fish and put on an impressive show.

Everyone hopes this action will continue into March and that we can have a few more cracks at them.

On a recent trip out wide we came across a school of striped tuna under a patch of birds. We did several passes around the birds with no luck until a small striped tuna grabbed one of the pushers that was almost as big as he was. The little tuna couldn’t even pull the line out of the outrigger clip.

I went over to wind it in and release the fish. As I started to wind it in, a large striped marlin came up and engulfed the little tuna in a huge explosion.

The marlin was hooked but jumped off shortly after. It was an awesome thing to see happen and a very good example of just how savage the food chain works in the ocean – eat or be eaten!

Wahoo, Spanish mackerel and yellowfin should also be good target species on our inshore reefs this month.

Trolling minnows or skirted lures and rigged baits should be the preferred methods of securing a feed of these top quality fish.

Don’t be put off if the water looks a bit dirty or discoloured, a lot of the bait has been in the dirty water and the mackerel and wahoo haven’t been far behind.

Quite a few local guys have been concentrating on the colour changes where the reel dirty stuff meets the cleaner water and if this coincides with one of the inshore reefs then the action has generally been pretty good.

The lower reaches of the river should again be fishing at their best in March, simply due to water quality.

In saying this, though, most of the better action has been at the start of the dirty water with the really clean stuff on the bigger tides being a bit trickier to fish.

If the rain continues into March then it could become a lottery as to what will happen on the fishing front. All we can do is hope for the fishing gods to smile on us.