With the coldest winter on record for many years finally starting to ease, a few more pelagic species are on the move. The unusually cold weather has brought water temperature down with recordings of under 15 degrees in the bay during the past few months.

In the bay, snapper have been hard to find and mostly only averaging 3–5kg – hopefully the big fella’s are just behind schedule this year. The artificial reef has been fishing well for squire snapper by drifting with soft plastics. This style of fishing is best suited to the smaller tides with very little run and should be fished either side of a tide change.

Yellowtail scad (yakkas) are in plague proportions on most reef structures at the moment and many anglers have been stocking up the bait freezer while they can.

There are still a few squid around but you might have to work a little harder to find them as the water temperature rises.

The Urangan Pier has been fishing well for bream, flathead, golden trevally, school mackerel and has even accounted for a few oddball species. Chris from anglers den had a bloke turn up to get a couple of golden trevally weighed having just caught from the pier. This is nothing unusual as Chris weighs many goldies throughout the year, but he was handed instead two snub nosed dart (permit) that pulled the scales to 6.2kgs each. The angler, Damien, couldn’t work out what all the fuss was about and even seemed a little disappointed that they weren’t trevally! Once it was explained how rare a capture they were (especially from the pier) Damien was satisfied and got his photo on the wall for his efforts.

For the record Damien caught both snubbies on a 35g Flasha lure while spinning the first channel. Apparently there had been a big school of bait pushed into the shallows and the dart were feeding on them! So once again it goes to show you never know what will hit your bait or lure next when fishing in Hervey Bay