The northerlies are back and in full force. The summer weather patterns are already getting anglers focussed on this season’s options. Even though we are still in a transitional period, there are still some good fish getting around for those prepared to put in the time.

Over the past month I have been chasing the bream around the bay islands with great success. We are really blessed with awesome and unique areas to fish for bream. There is everything from canals to weed and flats fishing to coral edges and rocky foreshores.

My last trip out chasing bream was up at Mud Island with Brett Habener and we caught lots of good fish. As there was big tides, we had we decided to get up into the lagoon. It didn't take long until we found our first bream of the session. I was throwing the Maria Pop Queen and Brett was throwing the Duo Popoco popper. We had bream climbing all over both of them, it was almost ever cast.

We weren’t targeting big bream, the biggest landed was up around the 33cm fork length, but most of them were around the 27-28cm. I don't care what anyone says, fish of any size on surface is great fun. It didn't matter whether we were casting at the coral bank or out on the open flats, the fish were everywhere.

Bream can be picky, so we made sure to mix up our retrieves. If you are not getting hits on a slow pop/retrieve then speed it up; they maybe in the mood to chase it down. Bream will still hit a moving surface lure, it doesn't need to be moving slow all the time. It is an awesome sight when you have a lure moving fast and you see a bow wave of a big bream coming up behind and slams it off the surface.

Bream aren't always going to be keen to feed off the surface, so you need to be prepared to change up your technique from surface lures to small cranks and minnows to lightly weighted plastics. Lures that I would always keep in my bream box would be the Maria Pop Queen, Maria Wise Dog, Zip Bait Khamsin JR and the Imakatsu IS Wasp 50. All of which work really well around the bay and local canal systems.

We would have caught 12 fish in an hour session, with more hits from fish that didn't hook up.

It isn't just bream that you will encounter up in these areas. You can catch everything from flathead, tailor, and whiting; even trevally get up in the shallows hunting for a feed.

The snapper in the bay have been a little quiet compared to the start of winter. I have put it down to their spawning cycle. When snapper spawn they are extremely hard to find and, even if you do find them, they aren't in the mood to feed.

If you really want to chase snapper, I recommend putting in the hard yards and persist around areas where you know they hang out on a regular basis. If you do come across an active school, there should still be some good quality fish in amongst the smaller ones.

I hope you are able to get out over the next month and get onto some really good fish. If you put in the effort you will be rewarded with good results.

If you have any more questions on lures or rod and reel setup for chasing bream around Moreton Bay then come in and see me at Fish Head 349 Colburn Avenue, Victoria Point.