May can be a bit of a dodgy month on the Gold Coast at times. It either produces some really good settled weather and good fishing to boot or it can relate to the changing of the season and be very unpredictable. The fish species although still overlapping slightly move more towards the winter species as the water temperature drops.

Early starts should be a lot cooler and I for one tend to be wearing a jumper and even a beanie when heading out on my pre dawn fishing trips. The good thing with this cooling trend is that there isn’t a lot of traffic on the water. This can result in better fishing for those of us that are willing to brave watery eyes and frosty noses when heading up the creeks or offshore.

The creeks start to produce a few better quality bream in May, with good things to come as winter progresses. The canals, rock walls and bridges around the river mouth areas are all good places to look for a few bream. Casting surface lures like the Lucky Craft NW Pencil, Lucky Craft Sammy or Smith Towadi around the structure can be great fun in the early hours or late afternoon.

Once the sun sticks its head out it generally pays to target the shady banks or deeper drop offs. Some cracking bream were coming late in March and if the water temperatures get right down this winter we could be in for a really good season with the bream schooling up around most of the river mouths on the Southern Gold Coast.

Although bream are a popular species they are not the only target species in the creeks. Flathead, trevally and the odd tailor should also be around in good numbers. The drop-offs around the sand flats, the mouths of the creeks and canals as well as some of the rock walls are all good spots to prospect on the run-out tide. As the water starts to fall back the fish will congregate in the little channels waiting for the bait to come off the flats or out of the shallow creeks. It then becomes a case of being in the right place at the right time. If you fish a channel for a while without any good hits, then it can often pay to move locations until you find one with a good supply of bait. The predatory fish are usually not far behind.

Palm Beach Reef should start to produce a few nice squire as well as the odd black king. Don’t right off the Spaniards either as the odd good size model could still be cruising around the edge of the reef. Slow trolling live bait is the best technique for these fish and cobia and kingfish will grab a live bait if it passes their path too.

If you haven’t had any success for a while and you see fish marking up on your sounder try to get your baits deeper down by using a down rigger or a weight fastened a few metres ahead of the livey with an elastic band. Experiment with different weights to get the liveys to swim at different depths. As a rule of thumb we generally start with a 1/2oz weight on one and a 1 and 1/2oz weight on the other.

Plastics account for a lot of fish the winter months and Palm Beach, the gravel patch and Mermaid Reef are all top spots to give the rubbers a go. May can be a bit hit and miss but if you aren’t on the water you won’t know so get out there and give it a go.