After an eventful and enjoyable Christmas of stuffing ourselves with seafood, chocolate and other Christmas treats, it’s time to hit the water again and catch the first fish for the year. Why not make use of the after Christmas sales? Grab some new gear and set out to catch a fish you haven’t caught before!

Closed season for our dominant sports fish is still in action but there have been reports of plenty of threadies, blue salmon and golden snapper (fingermark) around the river, predominantly towards the mouth with all the islands and narrow branching creek systems.

The salmon have been going well on lightly weighted plastics, particularly prawn like patterns.

There have been numerous mangrove jacks caught around the area recently, most of them being taken on soft plastics and the Zman DieZel minnow in ayu seem to be the lure doing the job time and time again.

There are plenty of small mullet around the ramps as of late and all around that 10cm mark, making them perfect predator lollies, especially for the big bull sharks in the river of late.

In the creeks and beaches it has been reported that large bream and flathead are in the deeper parts, however the flathead are becoming somewhat harder to find. The bream on the other hand, especially the pikey bream, have been a very common catch for people heading down to places like Wild Cattle and South Trees, along with Moses perch and the odd grunter.

I am predicting that when barra season opens up in February after only a little rain so far the fish will be going off and it will be a cracker season targeting them. The lack of serious downpours and flooding (so far) means the water will be very salty and teeming with baitfish like mullet.

The combination of summer heat, light rain and storms and abundance of small baitfish has turned the fresh right up. The best areas are around the lilies or tree lines. Small curl-tail plastics such as the 3” banana prawn Swimming Mullet make any fish in the freshwater lagoons come out and play!

With a few more hot days getting into the middle of summer and continuing with the occasional rain, the freshwater areas should be filled full of sportfish to target on grubs, hardbodies and for whoever wants to take up a challenge with the smaller baitfish floating around casting a fly around the lillies.

The crabs at this time of the year are extremely active and full to the top of meat and with all the summer sales crab pots are cheap as ever, making it an affordable day on the water for anyone to give it a go! Crabbing can be heaps of fun, especially when you’re trying to grab a big buck to put him in the cooler, just read up on your local rules and regulations or ask when you come in to buy some pots.

Time to make that New Year’s resolution to target a species you haven’t targeted before!