There is an old saying: it doesn’t rain it pours. We are experiencing the fantastic benefits of all of the recent rainfall here in Hervey Bay.

The bumper run of prawns has continued with most creeks on Fraser Island and the mainland still producing good hauls of decent sized prawns. Local boat ramps and pontoons have had at least a couple of people throwing nets and there are a few kilos of prawns coming from most locations.

Mud and sand crabs have maintained their numbers throughout the Sandy Straits with many catfish being turned in to a feed of crabs, which is a productive way to keep the catfish numbers down!

There are still some quality whiting taking yabbies and worms and the bream and flathead have been all over plastics around any kind of structure.

Squid have been in good numbers throughout summer and hopefully will continue to improve as it gets colder. Most jetties, rock walls and creek mouths have had enough squid around to make it worthwhile chasing them for an hour or two.

With some of the cracker new jigs on the market it doesn’t take long to find out if any are around; gone are the days of throwing a baited jig out on a handline suspended from a float. The latest squid jigs look, feel and sound like a prawn and enable a lot of water to be covered quickly.

Reef systems have fished well for reds, coral bream, cod and parrotfish on live bait and jigs. Fishing mid water is accounting for cobia, kings, Spanish and school mackerel on ganged pillies and live yakkas.

Trolling wide of Rooneys and the Porpoise Shoals has been productive with multiple hook-ups on Spanish mackerel, tuna, trevally, yellowtail kingfish and cobia. Skirted trolling pushers are performing well in conjunction with Giant Tremblers, Rapala CD18s and rigged garfish.

Keeping track of where bait schools are on your GPS helps keep you in the strike zone when the bait goes deep and a keen eye on the sounder lets you know what depth the bait is holding.

If trolling the surface isn’t working and a good ball of bait is hanging deep try switching to live bait, knife jigs, plastics and octo jigs.