mangajack

7/8ths of land based fishing is watching and taking notice....notice where currents converge, notice where food might be taken to by the current......notice the slow spots in the currents....notice the dis-colour of the water.

Fish are not dumb, they know where their food will be brought to them and they will wait for it a lot of the time.

So rather than concentrating on getting a bite, concentrate on trying to see where a fish will wait for food or why this place is better than the next. Select the place slowly, there is no rush....make the decision of where you believe the fish will be then specifically try to catch that one fish. Doing this will teach you lots more than pulling up to the bank and chucking a bait in the water.

You will be fishing for a fish that is waiting for your bait....present your bait as a drift bait like it is expecting....don't anchor the bait near him.

If you get a chance to be up high over shallow water, just watch, you will see a fathead move, then watch him some more.....every move me makes is to another spot that positions him better for a feed....take note of where he moves to and why that spot is better.

When fishing watch your line, not the rod, look for changes in the tension or tics travelling up the line. Always fish with a bit of a belly in the line to the water, don't pull the line tight to the sinker.

Try fishing sand banks with unweighted baits....yabbies and worms are king.....use the wind to help your cast and the current to deliver the bait....you already know where the fish will be.

It sounds like you are on the start of the learning curve for your area.

Here are a couple of basics that work well here in SEQ.

Whiting like the early stages of a run in tide....they move onto a sand flat as the water covers it....20cm of water is plenty for them to be ravenously feeding there. Use the local bait for them....worms, yabbies, crabs or small live prawns.

Bream like structure with a bit of depth and plenty of current, again they are ravenous at the start of the run in usually. Bream will eat anything but offer them something they can easily swallow rather than something they have to bite chunks off. 5c to $1 size baits are good for them....pilly or mullet cubes, prawns and squid are all good options.

Flathead are ambush hunters primarily, they lay and wait for food to swim by them....that being said though they will follow a scent to a bait ok too. For me flathead are the easiest to catch in the bottom half of a run out tide. Live baits rule, lures and plastics second and dead baits 3rd. Look for drains of flats or creeks entering rivers, they will be within a five metres of those spots.

If you only catch smalls you are generally either fishing the wrong area or you are fishing the area at the wrong stage of the tide.

You can throw all of the above out the window if you are fishing a flood zone.....everything will be feasting on the last 90 minutes of the rising tide and vanish as soon as the tide turns. Flood zones up here are mangroves that only go under at about 3/4 tide...often behind the mangroves there is a clear area of sand or mud several metres wide....when that gets 25cm of water over it the place is full of big feeding fish and very easy to catch if you do not spook them. 65mm squidgy wrigglers in bloodworm colour unweighted are the gun plastic.....sit or crouch down and wait for the fish to approach you...they move quickly and absolutely smash anything resembling food. Very exciting fishing.

Good luck.

Things to consider with Lithium batteries.

They do not handle high temps well.

They definitely do not like cold to sub zero temps....Will you need to start the car early morning in sub zero temps?

Is your Jimny charging system suitable for the Lithiums and it's BMS?

From what I can see lithiums are best suited from 8c to 35c.

What extremes of temp will you likely encounter?

Invicta has been around for a long time and well regarded....unfortunately nearly everything you see on the net will be a sales pitch for them.

Next time you fish the harbour fish unweighted livies along the north eastern part of the marina....you will not get a bite on lures or anchored baits there   but unweighted livies work. Threadies and cod there usually.

Alternatively work the Rita DeMata headland if you can still get access to it. Threadies and barra.

I fished Corio Bay and the headlands there the most....some good fish on the headlands there....very hard to land though. The reefs go out a hundred metres from the waters edge in some spots. GT's spanish macks and barra there. Occasional cobia and coral trout have come ashore there.

There are several cheap Japanese sites....there is no way of telling which ones have a better deal on any day apart from visiting them each and comparing.....they don't usually come up on search engines that well searching for products.

Always good when you find that deal though.

So Raef and I did a quick run in the Brisbane River this afternoon with the winds dropping off a bit and the showers clearing. Launched at the Pinky at 3pm and fished until 7pm with plastics. My best was a snapp about 55 that was sent back....then a tailor about 50ish.....not welcome in my boat.

If you want a feed of tailor go to the grain  wharf at Pinkenba at night and throw anything into the lights under the wharf....you could bag out in 30 minutes easily. They all seem to be 40 to 50cm there tonight.....I wasn't interested but had to throw a lure into the lights anyway.

Water quality is decent but the run made it a challenge to work the lures well....next weekend will be better tides.

No photos, nothing worth the cost of the flash.