What a great month October is with the water temperature rising, daylight hours stretching out and the kids back to school.

Firstly it was great to meet and talk to so many people at the Brisbane Boat Show this year. We certainly were kept busy at the fishing workshops over the weekend. There were a few questions that seemed to pop up more regularly than others and over the next few issues I will work on putting them on paper for future references.

Unless we get some spring rain the Burnett should be alive over October. The mouth still has plenty of baitfish in it and they are being regularly harassed by hordes of predators. The last run of tailor should see a few Spanish mackerel hunting them around the headlands, which is fantastic fun but be aware that Fraser Island and Hervey bay mackerel can carry ciguatera. At this time last year some XOS trevally were also caught on trolled lures and live baits.

I do get plenty of feedback from anglers coming into my hardware shop telling me that they followed my advice and fished the Burnett and didn’t catch a thing but usually after a few questions we find out that that’s the only part of the advice they took. I know the Burnett can be a fickle river at times but it does usually produce a feed or some fun. As most of you know I don’t use bait but even when I am using plastics if I am not getting any bites I scale down the size of my line and soft plastic. The same way many of the good bait anglers use smaller sinkers and lighter lines to get more bites. Of course you may not stop every fish you hook dead in its tracks, but that’s what the drag on the reel is designed for and getting a few more bites is better than getting no bites.

It has been some time since I last jack fished the Baffle but I can guarantee by the time you have read this I will have been reacquainted with the many rock bars that lie lurking just beneath the surface on this great river system.

If you’re keen to tangle with some big jacks plan yourself a trip into the upper reaches of the Baffle over the building tides this month. If there isn’t any heavy rain the jacks will be on the chew and in surprisingly shallow water. This of course means you should try casting surface lures and shallow diving hardbodied lures into the backs of snags where the sunlight is heating the water, and of course… hang on!

I had the winter off from chasing those dam barra and spent most of my angling time out the front but since the first northerly breezes of the season the barra bug has started to bite again.

I have had one trip to the dam since it started to warm up and the water level has certainly dropped. This has left some banks weedless and others chocked so a bit more homework will have to be done before I can report any consistent patterns. I hear from the guides on the dam that they are doing well, which is great. If you are planning a trip to Monduran for a barra fish and haven’t been there or fished for big impoundment barra, do yourself a favour and hire a guide. There are several good guides that ply their trade on this dam and a day spent with these guys is like having your own personnel trainer in barra fishing and is well worth the investment.