A good dose of rain during March has kept most rivers and creeks pushing dirty fresh water in to the Sandy Straits and Hervey Bay making clean water hard to find.

The good news is prawns are on the move increasing in size and numbers, baitfish are thick along the island and it’s stirred a few muddies up.

Rooneys has fished well for sweetlip, blackall, scarlets and a few cod and trout are taking live baits. Platypus Bay is providing plenty of action for longtails, mac tuna and trevally with the odd late season spotted mackerel. The flats are producing goldies, GT, queenfish, flathead and shovel-nosed sharks on a combination of live bait and lures.

The local reefs have fished well for the past few months with good numbers of sweetlip, blackall, grunter and snapper caught on squid and mullet fillets, with cod and trout caught on live herring and plastics.

Barra and threadfin are still being caught around the mouth of River Heads when the fresh eases up. Flathead, cod and bream are responding to plastics, live bait and prawns.

The Sandy Straits is loaded with baitfish and prawns attracting bream, flathead, grunter and whiting around the creeks and cod, jack, blackall and jew on the ledges, rock bars and jetties.

The first inaugural River Heads Barra and Salmon Classic was held in February and attracted 83 competitors with 72 seniors and 11 juniors. Anglers were presented with perfect weather with variable winds all weekend. There was a lot of fresh pumping out of the rivers, which hindered catches a little but all anglers persevered.

The total catch numbers for the competition was five barra to 81cm, four threadfin to 1m and four blue salmon up to 56cm.

The Champion angler and biggest salmon (100cm) went to Steve Denton with 199 points. Runner up and biggest barra (81cm) went to Andrew Chew with 154 points and best female capture was by Sue Allison with a 69cm threadfin.

Over all it was a great success for a relatively new club and you can expect bigger and better things next year.