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Troll up your sleeves
  |  First Published: January 2016



Where did the year go? The good news is that the fishing has maintained the high standards we’ve grown used to before Christmas. Our creeks, estuaries and local reefs are producing plenty of bread and butter species alongside trophy sportfish. Out wider, reports from the gutters have been few and far between courtesy of the ever-present northerlies keeping all but the keenest anglers’ boats in the garage.

In the bay, pelagics are in their prime and running amok around the beacons and jetties, pushing right down the Sandy Straits and up the creeks from January to March.

UP THE CREEKS

Crabbers are having a tough time due to some lowlife stealing pots. This deplorable activity has gotten so bad in some places that anglers have taken to setting motion sensor cameras to find the culprits. Those that don’t get stolen have had plenty of crabs, however, the buck to Jenny ratio is still low.

Good numbers of threadfin salmon have been caught in the Mary and Susan rivers on hardbodies, soft vibes and live mullet. Fish have averaged 90cm, but there are plenty of bigger threadies around. Grunter are also on the move with some horses landed in the past few months. The biggest I’ve heard was over 20lb, a size that would be hard to stop! Smaller fish from 35-50cms have been working the flats and have made a pleasant by-catch when chasing bream.

ON THE TROLL

The marlin mayhem continued through December nicely. Usually these billed beauties calm down a little in January but there are still plenty of opportunities to catch a marlin right through to March, with a focus on Platypus Bay. Spotted mackerel and longtail tuna tend to fire up in the first few months of the year, pushing further into the bay and the Sandy Straits.

Hopefully we will see the typical large schools surface feeding along Fraser Island that have been hard to find so far.

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