The recent rain was a welcome reprieve from what has been one of the longest, hottest and driest summers on record. Given the unseasonal dry weather over our wet season the fishing, prawning and crabbing has been superb.

The creeks and estuaries are full of bait with prawns, herring and mullet making up the bulk of it. Chopper tailor, small mackerel and wolf herring have been working the herring schools attracting larger predators to feed on them.

With all this action, mulloway, trumpeter, jack, bream and shovel-nosed shark have been all over live/fresh baits and lures.

The local reefs including the Arty, Moon, Bagimba and McKenzies ledges have fished well for blackall, juvenile snapper, parrot and there have been heaps of small to medium cod climbing all over live bait and plastics.

The ever present sharks are still a problem at most spots taxing quality fish and making live baiting a waste of time some days. On a recent trip to the Rooneys 6 mile, every live bait was taken within a few minutes and smashed up after a brief fight. By switching to squid baits and 50lb braid with a solid drag we managed to extract a few fish with a mixture of scarlets, trumpeter, blackall and sweetlip bagged.

With all the bait around, flathead are gorging themselves on prawns and baitfish making them a prime target for flicking plastics and hardbodies. Golden trevally are stalking the shallows and are a prime sight cast option. Shovel-nosed shark can be seen prowling in ankle deep water exposing half their back and fins to get to the bait hugging the waters edge.

Prawns have been a popular target for Fraser Coast anglers recently and you know the prawns are on when all the tackle shops sell out of top pocket cast nets! They are a lot of work, especially when they’re hard to find but you can't beat a feed of fresh local prawns and just about all by-catch (herring, mullet, etc.) makes great bait for another day.

Having a heavy old glass boat restricts me from a lot of places but with someone steering the boat while another casts you still can get in close enough to score a few prawns.