The mackerel season was a good one with plenty fish being caught, mainly school-size fish. As the season starts to slow down the big fish will come in close to feed on the massive schools of baitfish. Longtail tuna and cobia will be with the Spanish competing for the baitfish.

North Solitary Island has produced good catches of mackerel and kingfish. Even a fair few snapper have been showing up with trag, pearl perch and tuskfish being caught. This year should be a good snapper season with all the rain we’ve had in the last couple of months. Whenever we have big rainfalls we always have a good snapper season. We’ve been catching decent fish on the charters. Snapper will get thicker in the coming months as the weather cools down.

I like to anchor and berley and use floaters to catch the bigger fish, sometimes letting out a couple hundred metres of line to catch the big ones. I find if you can let out a lot of rope on the anchor you have a much wider berley trail so your berley covers a lot more country. You need a run of current to take the berley down the trail for the maximum results.

The bream are now in full swing on the beach and at the breakwall a lot of luderick are also being caught. A few keen fishos have been catching mulloway on the beach, but you have to be prepared to fish into the dark for top results. The tailor have been feeding on the close beaches and the breakwall. There have been a lot of choppers and some bigger fish around the 3kg mark have been caught on spinners. This is good sport and productive.

The rains have chased the mangrove jack to the mouth of the river. A couple of the locals have been catching them on plastics. They are not an easy fish to stop when they are running so be prepared to get smoked or busted up when they hit the rocks. Locals use the 7” ZMan in smoky shad colour or the pink 16g Trollcraft Fork Tail in the 98mm size.

Wooli has a bar to cross when venturing to sea so make sure you have a life jacket on when going out and coming back in. Remember when putting a life jacket on it must be tight otherwise you could be in trouble. If you go over on the bar and it’s not tight enough it can slip up around your neck and make it difficult if there are waves coming in at you. Always wait for the lull in the waves before venturing out. If you’re in doubt, don’t go out. You can always fish another day and it’s better to be safe than sorry.