As we draw closer towards the final months of the year, the back end can start to be quite a hectic time for most of us.

The list of endless ‘chores’ seems to set upon us at a rapid rate towards every year end. But there is always a light at the end of the tunnel and it starts with the passion… the passion that drives us to spend countless hours tinkering with our gear, sifting through our tackle box, rearranging or soft plastics collection or even practicing a new knot you have heard of.

I’ll be the first to admit my life gets busy, but I can always say one thing, my boat is always ready to go fishing! Batteries charged, oil filled, and rods ready, just waiting for that little gap in my week to sneak out for a few hours to cure my piscatorial itch and for me, I know it’s like life’s big Panadol. A few hours of thinking about nothing but fishing is enough to reset my life, to mentally put me back on the straight and narrow and give me the drive to tackle the rest of the day, week or year.

So with that thought, let’s get into what’s been going on in the northern bay. With constant south-southeasterly winds as we expect in the warmer months, the northern bay has started to hold more bait that had seemed to elude us over the past few months, bringing us a nice change to the feeding habits of the bread and butter species. Increased water temperatures have been another positive factor making fish a little more active on the feeding front. Be on the lookout for the calm day that follows few blowy days as this is the ideal time to chase some fish as the water will be stirred up and the fish will be less spooky.

Flathead have been biting well of late as they have been making their way out of the estuaries and roaming the more open waters looking for a feed. Recent rains assist in this migration, so target run offs into main channels when chasing lizards. Areas on fire at the moment in the Pumicestone Passage include Mission Point, the mouth of Glasshouse Creek, Tonys Gutter and the drop offs along Sylvan Beach. Working south good reports have come from Cooks Rocks, the mouth of Newport Waterways, the Wells and Hays Inlet and the mouth of the Pine River under the Ted Smout Bridge, especially on the ebb tide. Soft plastics around 4-6” have been the favourites with anglers, having success with both minnow and grub style plastics.

After an average winter on the bream front, spring and the warmer months have started to see a resurgence of the humble bream giving anglers a more steady flow of catches. Hardbodied lures and small soft plastics have been working a treat with the diehard bait anglers finding success using wares at night when fishing bridges and rocky points. Up the Bribie end of the bay, bream are being picked up on the flats near Ningi and Donnybrook, especially on the bigger tides giving the bream more water to cruise right up to the mangroves. Also worth a try is the Pacific Harbour canals and Tiger Rock with the mouth of the Caboolture River fishing well in the afternoons. The Peninsula has been the stalwart of bream fishers for years with its many bommies and rubble flats. With the rise in water temperature, topwater has been working well, especially on the flooding tides. Luckycraft Sammys, Megabass Dog X Jrs and Zipbait Fakie Dogs worked across shallow bommies have been gathering good attention with a slow swooping twitch being the best retrieve. Other areas of interest on the incoming tide include the mouth of Bald Hills Creek, Dohles Rocks and upriver of the highway bridge towards the mouth of the South Pine. Baits have also been working well with mullet strips, hardiheads, pilchard cubes and chicken being the pick.

With the weather warming, reports have been flooding in about good catches of summer whiting. Fresh baits like yabbies and bloodworms have been the go with anglers finding an inch of red tubing (available from most tackle stores) and long traces helping increase their catch rate. The southern beaches of Bribie are starting to fire with anglers also getting good whiting at the mouth of the Caboolture River, Burpengary, Hussey and Coochin creeks. The mouth of the South Pine and Margate Foreshore along Suttons Beach has also been worth a look for summer whiting lately.

Anglers have also been rewarded by dropping some crab pots while having a fish with good sand crabs being caught in the main channel of the Pumicestone with Gilligans. This has also lead to sandies being caught through Deception Bay and feeding further south to Bramble Bay outside of Clontarf. So if you are heading out, be sure to throw a couple of pots in as you may get a pleasant surprise.

Happy fishing!