This month we will talk about bream fishing. We go bream fishing in a lot of places, but our favourite places are the Mooloolaba River and Pumicestone Passage.

When fishing for bream you can use a number of strategies. A few we use are fishing along side rock bars and oyster leases. When fishing along these places you need a heavier line than usual because often the fish will try to take you over the rocks. We usually use a line of around 12lb for this. The rig we use is a sinker, straight down on to the hook – and sometimes only a hook is used. Once we have anchored up we put a berley out to help entice the fish to bite and also to attract them out from the rocks where they like to hide. The bait you use can vary, but some bait you could use include green prawns, mullet flesh and gut, any type of tuna/bonito and gar.

Another area we catch bream is in the Mooloolaba River around the long liners and trawlers. We also anchor just outside the main channel and cast into it with bigger baits than usual and let them drift with the current. Other tactics that we’ve tried to use is trolling hard-bodied lures whilst another is casting hard and soft-bodied lures around rocks and oyster leases. When a bream bites while bait fishing, you have to give a little bit of line to the fish to run with and then you strike and fight the fish to the boat.

The main time of year to catch bream is during winter. When fishing for bream you sometimes catch other fish like flathead, tarwine, trevally and moses perch.

When we used to live on the canal the bream used to hang around our place around where we used to dump big fish frames and other stuff from when we went offshore fishing. In the evening we used to go down with the light tackle and catch and release the bream.

Bream are OK to eat if it’s fresh but we never really keep many unless they are 30cm or bigger. We think that 23cm, which is the legal size, is probably a bit small for a bream.

Until next time, happy fishing!