QUEENSLAND The Tweed

THE TWEED Leon McClymont

Warm currents are kicking in and bringing the pelagics with them. Let’s hope the rain stays away this season, even though the predictions are for a La Niña. A La Niña event will push the warmer water closer to the coast and bring the big fish with it, and so long as we miss the rain on the Tweed Coast (and the water flood after the multiple catastrophic floods in the last few seasons.

Topwater yellowfin is what all the talk is about at the moment. Big yellowfin turn up at this time of year out on the canyons off Kingscliff and further north to Southport. These grounds are your best bet for a ticket to the show. The depth range can be anywhere from 250-2500m, so finding them can be very difficult and timeTroll big skirted lures, covering ground until one of the following happens: you spot the fish working the surface, birds working, you sound a pod of fish up on the sounder, or the drag on the reel starts screaming off as you run past a random few fish. Once you have found the fish, and the area they seem to be hanging in, then you can change your technique to get one on topwater.

If you have two or more on board and you’re confident in your fishing, casting a popper or stickbait whilst your fellow angler is tight to a tuna is your best bet at a hook up. The other tuna will be excited and following their fellow mate around, wondering what all the commotion is. Then they’ll see your popper or stickbait offering, and it’s an easy meal they can’t resist. This method can put quick kilos on the boat when the yellowfin are fired up, so only take what you need and remember to practice catch and release.

The mahimahi are also turning up in numbers, multiple snip-offs. You’ve just got to love it and, as they say, you’ve got to take the good with the bad.

There are still plenty over and line peeling off. We caught seven flathead in the space of an hour, all on Tweed Bait whitebait. We kept four flatties for a feed and let the others go. It was a great action-packed arvo on the river that I hadn’t had in a while.

On the way back I lifted two crab pots and pulled a couple of good bucks, one going 1.5kg. It was a perfect ingredient to my coconut chilli mud crab that night. If that sounds tasty to you and you’re keen for a feed of muddies, be sure to get those pots in and get yourself a feed. Just be mindful that the Fishery patrols are out and about checking everyone is above board, so here are a few things they will be checking: your fishing license is valid, your crab pots are correctly marked, and your catch is within the size and bag limits. Be sure to check the guidelines in your region; being so close to the border it can get confusing. Remember that in Queensland female mud crabs are prohibited and must be returned back to the water, but here on the Tweed in NSW we can keep a female mud crab as long as it’s not bearing eggs. If the crab is carrying eggs it must be returned to the water immediately.

Everyone has their favourite bait for crabbing, and mine is mullet or fish frames from previous sessions. There’s no need to get too fancy in my opinion. This time of year leading into Christmas/New Year is your peak season for mud crabs here on the Tweed.

The upper reaches of the Tweed have been firing with huge numbers of bass, big eye trevally, GTs and little tailor feeding on little baitfish and schools of prawns.

Until next month, soak ‘em long.

David McAndrew with a solid mulloway taken on a cut bait while fishing a beach gutter. Bodenn Shipmann with a 60cm flathead taken on a Tweed Bait whitebait on 6lb line.

Benny and Tyi bagged out on the Spanish mackerel while trolling skirted pilchards.

offshore remains blue) we should see a good season and a good run of fish. With a bit of luck the rain events will either go west or south of the catchment areas in our region. I’m not sure if the anglers and the residents of the Tweed could handle another deluge/ consuming, chewing fuel in the relentless search. A few things you want to be on the look out for are bait balls, birds working or upwellings of cold water (you’ll need an app like RipCharts or similar for this). These are all good zones to be focusing your time around.

and some big bull models are hanging around at the moment. Drifting pilchards or livies out the back with a bit of a berley trail is my favourite way to target the dolphinfish.

Plenty of pearlies and snapper are still getting caught on the 24s and 36s. Slow-pitch jigging is very effective for these species at these depths.

The Spanish mackerel and longtail tuna are turning up, and no baitfish is safe in the coming months. Spanish fishing can either be the best day on the water you’ve ever had, with screaming drags, double hook-ups and insane high flying aerobatic performances. Or it can be the most frustrating day you’ve ever had, with several missed hook-ups, countless sharkings and tailor and mulloway off the beaches, break walls and headlands. Spotting the gutters on low tide and returning on the incoming tide and fishing the last quarter of the incoming tide will produce jew and big tailor. Fresh cut baits are the go-to bait for targeting big jew and tailor in my opinion. The tailor are thick in the Tweed River at the point of writing. We fished the back of Stotts Island some weeks ago, trolling hardbodies, and managed a few nice tailor and dropped a big lizard. During the last hour of the run-in tide I switched it up and threw whitebait out on small longshank hooks whilst flicking lures, and I couldn’t get a cast in with the lure – every few minutes the whitebait rod was bent