A great month to head offshore

David Green

March is a great month to fish the offshore grounds off the Gold Coast. Target species this month include spotted mackerel, wahoo, blue marlin and black marlin. The current is generally quite strong which makes bottom fishing difficult. For the first three weeks of March there is a closed season on Spanish mackerel, a ludicrous management rule in my opinion.

can recommence chasing bigger Spanish mackerel. Hopefully the review into this management paper will take place soon, as it is clear to most anglers that the stock is in excellent shape. There should be increasing numbers of wahoo this month and it is worth a visit to the Tweed Nine Mile reef. Trolling high speed skirted lures, live tuna, jigging metal lures and casting stick baits are all effective methods here. Hard bodied minnows also work well at times. The Nine Mile works best grounds there should be black marlin on the 80-metre line around Spot X and blue marlin out wider. This season has seen a lot of smaller black marlin on the inshore grounds but these have generally finished their run by March. Most fish are caught on deep drifted live baits dropped down next to the bait schools. Lure trolling and switch baiting are good alternative methods and are a much more exciting way to fish. Personally I’d rather catch one fish on a lure than three on a live bait. The be increasing in numbers. It has been an excellent season for blue marlin, with exceptional catches of more than six fish a session happening frequently. Most anglers don’t put their lures in until they hit 200 metres but there are good opportunities well inside this line, and I generally set my lures once I’m in about a hundred metres of water. Last Sunday we caught and released a great fish over 200 kilos after a long battle. Targeting blue marlin is best done on 37 kilo tackle and trolling large skirted lures is the commonest successful method used.

BROADWATER AND RIVERS

We can expect to see some good catches of crabs in the coming weeks.

So far this season the mackerel run has been quite good, but now is the time to chase spotted mackere3l rather than Spaniards. There have been some good catches of spotted mackerel at Palm Beach and Mermaid Reef but they have been inconsistent. Trolled pilchards, small metal lures and small ‘squid and tinsel’ skirts are a good way to target spotted mackerel. When the closed season is over on 21 March we when the current is running hard over the main body of the reef, and if wahoo are about you should see a lot of long toms taking to the air and nervous schools of small tuna in the vicinity. Hopefully this will be a good season for Wahoo, and already a number of smaller fish have been caught. The Nine Mile tends to fish well during the week, and weekend crowds tend to scatter the fish.

Out on the wider weather over the last week has been outstanding with virtually no unfishable days, but prior to this it was terrible. In March most of the black marlin activity will be around Spot X. Drifted live baits catch most of the fish. March is generally one of the best months of the year to chase blue marlin. While the black marlin are generally starting to thin out a bit by March the blue marlin should