We are having a great winter in Karumba. The colder water brings some great catches of grunter and bream.

Most bream up to 43cm have been caught along the rocks in front of the fisheries houses at the Point. I was travelling to the airport and saw a huge number of cars parked there and went to investigate. It was like the tailor were running and people were standing shoulder to shoulder with about 30 people in a 100m stretch of the bank. The excitement was evident with plenty of bream caught for a 30 minute session.

I have known about them for years and always treated them as a nuisance while targeting barramundi, but it goes to show that there are always options if you are willing to look!

The winds continue to blow quite strongly, which is normal for this time of year. The grunter have turned up in good numbers with plenty of 60cm, and even some 70cm, fish caught up the river near the power lines. A good set up for grunter is a running sinker rig with about 30cm of mono leader. One tourist uses wire trace as he caught a Spanish mackerel when targeting grunter out the front. This can happen but you will land more grunter with mono leader.

Blue salmon will be here in August and are great fun to catch. They can be found all around the place, but the dirty water line out in front of the Airport is a good spot to try. Please only take enough for a feed as that will allow everyone to catch one. I love to see people enjoy themselves and blue salmon fight clean, so as long as you do the right thing you will come home happy.

I would like to thank our Fisheries Officers for being proactive and solving a problem that had been happening for a while. People’s crab pots have been opened by other people (who don’t own them) and this was causing an issue with the pro crabbers looking at the recreational anglers. Fisheries set up a trap and caught the offending person who is now $2,200 lighter. He was a pro crabber and it was good to get the issue sorted.

Sweers Island continues to be awesome with a good run of Spanish mackerel the current highlight.

The new managers, Brett and Sarah, have been on the ball and the reef fishing has been hot.

Strong winds have been affecting fishing in the mornings but the afternoons have been glamour. The southern side has been totally going off with acres of longtail tuna chasing bait balls with the Spanish mackerel thrown in.

Trolling spoons and hardbody lures at around 5kg is working quite well.