QUEENSLAND The Tweed

THE TWEED Leon McClymont

The winter fever for landbased fishos means fishing for big greenbacks and big silver slobs. If you’re in worth a look as well.

For the headlands and break walls, the rock fishos have been hitting first light with spinners targeting greenbacks, and fishing the larger tides at night with big hardbody lures and large baits areas are a great spot to invest your time if you’re in search of the what can seem like a mythical creature – after spending hours casting lures and soaking baits only to leave empty-handed. But they’re not meant to come mulloway, we are talking over the 30kg mark, are a fish of a lifetime and I’ve known blokes to hang up their hat once catching their fish. For many, it just serves as another benchmark to beat and bragging rights to their mates. Only the elite anglers manage to catch and tame these beasts consistently, and a lot of them keep their trades and locations top secret and only divulge titbits of information and are often known to mislead their opposing anglers to different locations (having a chuckle to myself).

As for offshore fishers, it’s when the currents slow allowing for float lining and bottom bashing for snapper, pearlies, kings and other reefies. But this time of year and the pinnacle of offshore fishing would have to be deep dropping for flametail snapper and bar cod and other deep delightful Lachlan Hohnberg with his first ever mulloway going 20kg on a Croaker hardbody.

the hunt for them in and around the Tweed area, the beach gutters, break walls and headlands are where you need to be.

Black Rocks to Wooyung has some great looking gutters at the present time of writing. They have been producing good size dart and whiting in the day on the low tide. As the tides push in of an evening/night, the tailor have been moving in and are feeding well on Tweed Bait pilchards, garfish and strips of bonito.

Some lucky anglers have also had good success in these gutters using beach worms for school mulloway, along with some other quality table fish in the mix as by-catch, such as bream, tarwhine, whiting and dart.

Other good gutters are still holding fish along Cabarita to Cudgen that are No bluffing from Nathan Dodd, showing his hand with a pair of kings.

Mark Bennett and his mate caught this good haul on beach worms after dark. delicacies that can be pulled from the depths.

There are some really good size snapper on the 18-36 fathoms. The pearlies have been chewing well on the 36s and 50 fathoms. Kingfish and cobia are moving in thick with the migration of the whales in full swing now with some solid size fish coming in the last couple of weeks. The best technique for the cobia has been anchoring up on some ground and float lining

in the wash for mulloway. With plenty of mullet still schooling up, making easy prey for the mulloway, these easy or they wouldn’t have such a high honour of an anglers’ trophy fish list.

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pilchards/baits or livies out the back. Always remember to berley when targeting cobia they can’t resist an easy feed and will follow a berley trail for miles and often swim right up to the boat as if to say ‘can I have some more please’.

I haven’t heard too much on the wider front at the time of writing as the weather hasn’t really allowed many anglers to head out wide so hopefully more of that front next issue.

As for the rivers and estuaries, there are plenty of whiting and flathead in the shallows. Tailor have pushed in these waters also and are working in schools, along with the trevally terrorising baitfish.

Plenty of soapies and the odd school mulloway are being caught in the deeper holes using vibes and plastics, or dropping baits onto the school below once sounding them up. If you can find the mullet schooling up in the river you can sure bet mulloway aren’t far away, it can pay to return at night when the mulloway will tend to start to feed and you can often hear them boof the mullet off the surface. Don’t let it fool you, being in the river doesn’t mean you’re only going to catch small fish, some jaw dropping size mulloway can still be pulled from our rivers and estuaries with several over the 20kg mark being taken from the Tweed River this season alone.