Anglers often overlook the little things; spending thousands of dollars on the latest and greatest fishing tackle, but neglecting to be vigilant of sun protection. And until recently, I was exactly the same.

Every year my wife drags me to the ‘skin check’ clinic to get the once over from the Doctor, but instead of taking the usual 10 minutes and a “see ya next year Doc”, it was, “and lets have another look at this lump on your forehead”.

I love how Doctors make everything sound so easy; “I’ll just lop it off and send it to the lab for analysis”. Not thinking about it again, as the Doctor said it was most likely ‘nothing to worry about’, until three days later I was sitting at the computer and the phone rang. It was the ‘stress free’ Doctor asking me to come back to see him as the lab had found some ‘irregularities’ with the test results.

I asked if I should be worried and old ‘stress free’ Doc says “not really, but you still need to come and see me today”. So off I went to the clinic and within minutes the reality of the situation was being digested. The small lump was now skin cancer and the ‘stress free’ Doctor had a serious look on his face. All the years of neglecting to wear hats, shirts and sun cream was paying its toll.

To cut a long story short the Doctor said he removed everything and was happy with the result. The reason for writing about this is that I am only 34 yrs old and seemingly too young to get skin cancers, so I hope it may encourage others to stay sun vigilant. Trust me, continual sessions of needles and lasers aren’t any fun.

The bream have definitely started to congregate in large numbers around the mouths of creeks, rivers and bar entrances. Schools of spawning fish will hold in these areas for several months to wait for the perfect moon phase to spawn. Areas like Amity Point on Stradbroke Island, the Timbers on the southern end of Moreton Island, the mouth of the Brisbane River and most of the deeper holes and ledges around Mud, Green and St Helena islands are holding good numbers of bream.

Schools of small tailor, with the odd legal fish amongst them, can be found around the reclaimed section at the mouth of the Brisbane River and around the shallows on most of the smaller bay islands. Better fish are being caught after dark when the schools seem to disappear and the larger solo fish come out to play. I’ve caught some good quality fish lately by targeting bream and snapper at night on small diving minnows around the river mouth.

Snapper and school jew are in good numbers around the shipping terminals towards the mouth of the river and are taking a variety of offerings. Vibration baits, soft plastics, live baits and fresh dead baits are all catching good numbers of theses quality eating fish.

Squid will start to peak in size and numbers over the next few months. Most of the shallow rocky and reefed areas that rim the foreshores of Moreton Bay and the many smaller bay islands will hold squid at this time of year. Areas that I’ve caught plenty of squid from over the past few weeks have been the weed flats north of Tangalooma on Moreton Island and the rubble walls around St Helena and Mud Island. For best results, use 2.5 sized jigs for this region but having some deeper models to work the deeper ledges around the island at this time of year can be handy.

Threadfin are being caught along the entire length of the river from the fresh to the mouth. Bait, flats, deep holes, bridges, docks, creek mouths and lights are all key indicators for successfully targeting theses mighty river fish. Just about every technique from lures to bait to fly will work well when these fish are actively feeding. Keep trying different locations until the pattern starts to unfold.