Winter is over and summer is approaching fast. Along with summer comes earlier mornings, later afternoons and some great fishing to be had.

The warmer weather will bring many anglers out of hibernation in search of species like school mackerel, sweetlip, trevally and the very sought after mangrove jack.

When you are getting home from work at 4.30pm, it’s a great feeling knowing that you still have an hour or two up your sleeve to go for a fish. Now that the water temperature is beginning to warm up the canals are a great place to start. We are lucky in our area to have some great canal systems in Raby Bay and Aquatic Paradise that are so close.

In these systems either a kayak or an electric motor is a must. It allows you to stealthily manoeuvre yourself in and around the pontoons and boats without starting your outboard every few minutes to reverse away from the pontoon you are fishing.

Chasing bream in the canals is definitely a lot of fun but can be quite difficult at times. The main reason is that the fish in canals are so well fed because people feed them every day. Boat traffic is also a contributing factor. When you find the fish a bit cagey like that I’ve found dropping back your leader size to 3-4lb can be effective. Working your lures a bit slower than normal should help as well.

During the warmer months I will generally start my session with a small top water lure like an O.S.P Bent Minnow 76 or Lucky Craft NW Pencil. When using top water lures, cast in toward the rock walls and work them out or cast in tight parallel to the boats or pontoons and work them alongside them. These lures are great for bream and other predators that lurk around the canals like the estuary cod, mangrove jack, trevally and small queenfish; all great fun on light gear.

If the fish are not interested in coming up and taking a surface lure then your next options are small minnows and cranks. Try using lures like Cranka Cranks, Jackall Chubbys or a Zipbait Khamsinon. Be sure to change between deep and shallow running lures depending on whether the fish are hanging under the pontoons or down low on the rock walls. This will change from day to day and tide to tide.

We have been getting a bit of rain lately which has done wonders for the fishing in the bay. It has got the water visibility back to normal which has allowed the bait to push back up into the shallows with the bigger predators not far behind.

On my first trip back out on the bay after the rain, we got great snapper up to 64cm in the shallows around the bay islands with plenty of tailor and school mackerel as by catch. All fish were caught on the range of Z-Man Plastics. These are great if you are looking at chasing tailor on plastics as they are extremely durable.

If you have any queries or questions on anything that I have written about or products I have mentioned, please don’t hesitate to come down and see us at Fish Head in the Victoria Point Town Centre.