The weather has finally begun to warm up, so now we can start to chase some of our favourite summer species. At the moment it seems as though we have had strong southeasterly after strong southeasterly, which has made it very difficult to get out on a consistent basis, but when you can there has been some great fish caught.

This time of the year, with the weather heating up, people think that the snapper have moved out of the bay, but this is far from the truth. They are still around, just not schooling up as much like they do through the winter months when they are spawning.

With summer comes the northerly winds that dirty up the water in the shallows a little. This allows the fish to push up on top of some of the reefs around the islands. This is one of my favourite ways to target snapper locally, getting up into the shallows and throwing plastics and hardbodies. If you love your mangrove jack fishing then you need to try chasing snapper on hardbodies. If you get a snapper over 45cm they pull just as hard as a jack.

Even though it is warming up there have still been some catches of good mulloway in the bay; in the deep water as well as around some of the drop-offs and islands. One of my favourite plastics for chasing mulloway are the Z-Man 5” Streakz in baby bass or pearl white, for some reason they just love these colours. They also love the action that these lures impart. With the extra soft plastic of the Z-Man, the tail on the Streakz really gets a nice flutter to it.

The key to targeting mulloway in Moreton Bay is learning to read your sounder. Knowing what you are looking at is so important. Mulloway love structure and will use it to their advantage. They sit in behind the structure to get out of the current, so distinguishing what is the bottom and what is fish is crucial.

This can be hard at times as they can sit so close to the bottom that they just look like a little bump or formation. On the turn of the tide though they will get out and search for food, this is when you will find them schooled up away from any structure. Once you are able to identify what mulloway look like on your sounder, you will be able to sit above a school and persist with working your lures through them.

On the offshore front there have been some great fish caught over the last month, especially on the shallow reefs. Everything from big early season wahoo to quality shallow water kingfish. We have also been hearing awesome reports from up north on the small black marlin so, if we haven't already, we should be seeing numbers of those getting around. There is definitely plenty of bait getting around out there for them to be hanging around in close. Chasing these aerobatic speedsters is certainly on my list of species to target this summer.

Whether you want to chase marlin with pushers, livies, skipping gar or stickbaits they are great fun on light tackle. All you need is that warm blue water to push in and those little blacks won't be far away.

I hope you all get out over the holidays and have some fun with the species we have on offer throughout summer. Merry Christmas and a happy New Year to you all. Catch you on the water.

1

Trav Kloda with an awesome 30kg+ wahoo. It measured 1.7m long and wasw taken on a FCL Labo 120Ext Ebi Pop in panic trout.

2

Kingfish of this size are just one of the many species that you can get on the inshore reefs at this time of year.

3

This 107cm mulloway was landed on a Dobyns 743 Champion Extreme rod rigged with a TT Headlockz 1/4oz jighead with a Z-Man 5” Streakz in baby bass colour.