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No Rain Restricts Fishing
  |  First Published: April 2006



Anglers have struggled to find any fish, but plenty of rays and sharks are being caught.

Fishing at night seems to be best time with fingermark being caught from Mulleys Rock. The rubble on the edge of the transit lane has also been producing legal nannygai.

Missionary Bay has been slow with very few fish amongst the root system. The channel and mainland have been fishing better with plenty of under-sized barra caught.

Some nice barra have also been caught at night using livebait from Five Mile and Pig creeks. Beach barra have been falling for live prawns and big female barra should still be hanging around the mouths of the creeks waiting to spawn on April’s traditional floods.

Anglers fishing the top and the bottom of the tide have had the best results. Thanks to the big tides we have been able to pull the boat right into some of the mangrove systems particularly those near Hecate Point. If you can put up with the mozzies the fishing can be good – just remember to stay away from Hecate Point itself because the bat colony is still there and it still smells terrible!

The mangroves (Avicennia marina) have been fishing slowly lately. In clear water barra will be easily so cast a surface lure and then slowly work it in close to the root system. The key to catching barra in these snags is to keep the lure slow, let it stop in front of the snag before slowly letting it rise. There have also been schools of silver and pike bream hanging around the roots that are attracted to poppers. I caught a 1kg pike trying to smash the popper I was using.

Our best lures have been silver and pink FlatzRat, pink and blue Lead’s, the ever reliable gold Bomber and silver Rapala Skitter Pops.

Our local SES commander ‘Shortie’ Nevins caught a nice 16.5kg GT off the jetty using a shark fillet. It just goes to show that even in the quieter fishing periods, big fish can still be caught.

Safe Boating and remember ‘Fish for the Future, Practice Catch and Release’.

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