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Reef fish galore!
  |  First Published: July 2005



ON THE BEACH

Despite plenty of south/south-easterly winds around 15 knots all last month, the beaches have still been very fishable. Rainbow Beach has seen the arrival of a few chopper tailor around the Oaks area near Inskip Point. Although these fish are not big and are a little fussy, good catches of them have been taken at night using small blue pilchards.

It is a similar story down toward Double Island Point at Middle Rock, with chopper tailor as well as a few quality bream being landed at night.

Whiting are being caught in shallow drains near Double Island Point, with some really big ones coming in during late evening. Live worms and yabbies are working well here.

I took a drive over to Teewah Beach on my way to Noosa recently, and there are some never-fail whiting drains near the Cherry Venture shipwreck and then south for about 6km. I took a rod and a packet of cured worms and fished about six of these spots, with every one providing a nice feed of fresh whiting for tea. I can only imagine what the fishing would have been like with some live worms.

Tailor are also present on Teewah Beach in deeper gutters, although as at Rainbow Beach, they are only small fish. This should improve over the coming month.

GREAT SANDY STRAITS

Good sized (and some oversized) flathead have been caught in the Carlo area with spinners and soft plastic lures working well.

Whiting are in very good numbers between Bullock Point and the yellow buoy at Inskip Point. Most are winter whiting, a smaller cousin to the summer whiting. You will need a few more for a good feed, but this is easily done at the moment. I watched one angler catching them six at a time on a bait jig, using small pieces of worm.

Local character, Big Glen Callender, has been catching some huge garfish in the same area around Bullock Point and Inskip Point. He has been baiting them up with bread and small pieces of dough on tiny no.12 chemically sharpened hooks. His tackle is ultra-simple – a rod, no reel, a length of 8lb line tied to the tip of the rod, and a wine cork as a float!

There are also some great squid in the vicinity of Carlo Point leads, but you'll find the big ones around the mouth of Teebah Creek on the weed banks. A lot of these guys are as long as QFM! There are two species of squid in this area: pencil squid and the much larger northern calamari. Both are very nice eating when cooked the right way.

A few mudcrabs are being potted in Kauri Creek, but they have certainly slowed down with the cooler weather.

OFFSHORE

All of the charter boat operators in Rainbow Beach have been very busy. My own charter boat, the Keely Rose, has had to do day and night trips to satisfy the demands of keen anglers.

It has been a mixed month, with anglers bagging out one day and catching nothing the next. Some days we would pull up on a spot and every rod was loaded with double headers for two drops. Then the bites would stop, forcing us to move spots and the same thing would happen again. We foul-hooked heaps of fish on these days, which indicates to me that the fish’s bellies were possibly full of all the big bait shows that we saw everywhere. A lot of sharks have been around which may also be spooking the fish off the bite.

Most of the offshore fishing has been done in close of late due to fairly strong offshore winds. There have been plenty of pearl perch around and we have bagged out on all of the night trips and also done well during daylight hours.

Quality parrot, cod, scarlet sea perch, Moses perch, sweetlip and a few nice red emperor are all coming from 8 miles offshore. Snapper have been unusually quiet lately, but I feel the bubble is about to burst.

I'm tipping that July will be a pretty good month for fishing. We should see quite a lot of fish caught, particularly during the Rainbow Beach Family Fishing Classic, which is held between Monday 25 and Saturday 30 July.

Ed Falconer’s charter business, Keely Rose Fishing Charters, makes regular trips to the reefs off Rainbow Beach. If you’d like to go on a trip with Ed, you can contact him on 0407 146 151.

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