Category : Blog

The weather gods have not been kind to us in recent weeks, but we’re trying to get out on the water as often as we can.

Last week, for something a bit different, we did an afternoon trip. The weather was a bit sloppy but everyone seemed to have a good time reeling in fish. We also caught lots of crabs.

The biggest fish was a 3kg snapper, caught by Dave. It’s the biggest fish he has ever caught and it was just in the nick of time – 10 minutes before we headed for home. Great work Dave!

If you haven’t been able to get out in the open ocean, our local river systems have been producing some excellent catches of flathead and jewfish (mulloway) – some as big as one metre.

Surprisingly, with all the rain we have had, we’ve seen a lot of blue swimmer crabs in the lower reaches of the rivers and on the beaches.

What’s being caught:

Caloundra 9 Mile: squire, sweetlip and tuskfish

Caloundra 12 Mile: pearl perch, squire, tuskfish and maori cod

The Gneerings and Murphy’s Reef: snapper, Spanish and spotted mackerel, tuskfish, sweetlip and cobia

Noosa Reef: Spanish and spotted mackerel

Sunshine Reef: coral trout

Chardons Reef: snapper, jew and cobia

Happy hunting!

Everyone loves a quick and easy meal now and then. But it doesn’t mean you have to sacrifice taste.

If you’ve got a few fish fillets you want to cook up and you’re looking for something a bit different, you’ll love my salt and vinegar fish. This is a recipe that will get them talking. It’s great for anyone trying to put something together in a hurry or for those planning a cruisy fish and chip night. Here’s how you do it:

Ingredients:

You need two boneless fish fillets, one packet of salt and vinegar chips and a ziplock bag. Your choice of salad or veggies to serve with it.

Method:

Place two handfuls of chips in the ziplock bag and crush them. Place your fillets in the bag and shake. Then tightly push the fillets into the chip crumbs to ensure they are well coated. Cook in a frying pan with some olive oil at a high temperature for three to five minutes either side. They’ll go golden brown. Serve with chips and sweet chilli mayonnaise and add salad or veggies if you want a more rounded meal.

If you’re planning fish and chips this week give it a go and let us know how it turns out.

If you’d like to keep up to date with all our trips and tips head over to our facebook page and like us: 

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What a great spell of weather we’re having. It’s well overdue. I hope you’ve been making the most of it. We’ve certainly been busy this week.

Here’s a shout out to Hugh, who spent his bucks’ party on the boat with us on Friday, enjoying the fishing, sun and a cold beer. It was a lot of fun.

The boys kept enough fish for a barbecue that night. And it was great that we were able to let some of the good fish go to fight another day.

Our best fish this week was a six kilogram coral trout caught on the Caloundra 12 Mile Reef. It was caught using a pilchard for bait.

Coral trout is a species we usually catch in the warmer months so it was good to see such a big one at this time of year. Well done mate!

Overall, the fishing for the week has been good although Sunday was a little slow, possibly because of strong currents.

On our half-day trips we have been making the most of the mackerel as they migrate north for the winter. They’ll only be around for a few more weeks, so you need to get out there soon if you want to hook one.

Our full day trips on the outer reefs have been good for catching winter species like pearl perch and snapper as well as a lot of venus tuskfish, which is a popular table fish.

What’s being caught this week:

Currimundi Reef: spotted mackerel, grassy sweetlip, tuskfish and squire

Caloundra 9 Mile: snapper, tuskfish, grassy sweetlip and moses perch

Caloundra 12 Mile: grassy sweetlip, squire, pearl perch, coral trout and maori cod

Murphy’s Reef and Gneerings: spotted mackerel, mac tuna, squire and sweetlip

Barwon Banks: snapper, pearl perch, moses perch, maori cod, tuskfish, fusilier and hussar.

The weather in the next week doesn’t look as stable as it has been and the predictions are that Friday and Sunday will be a bit blowy for offshore fishing. But apart from that we should be heading out. Give us a call if you’d like to come along.

Happy Hunting!

Wow! The weather has been perfect this last week and we’ve been making the most

of it. I hope youhave too.  The conditions have been excellent for offshore fishing and

the great news is the next week looks much the same. 

This is a pic Steve took for us on Sunday morning.

With the full moon this week, the fish should be on the bite.

We got in a few trips over the last week and Sunday turned out to be the best day

for fishing.  The biggest fish we reeled in was this 5.5 kg snapper from Caloundra 9 mile.

Congratulations Trent!

What’s being caught:

Murphy’s Reef: squire, Moses perch,  sweetlip and blue-barred parrotfish

Currimundi Reef: sweetlip, spotted mackerel, Moses perch and squire

Caloundra 9 Mile: tuskfish, sweetlip, snapper and pearl perch

Caloundra 12 Mile: pearl perch, squire, kingfish and Maori cod

Barwon Banks: snapper, pearl perch, amberjack and tuskfish

There’s a lot of sweetlip around at the moment and they can be found on all inshore reefs.

They rangein size up to four kilograms and we’ve been letting a lot of juveniles go so the

numbers are lookinghealthy and we should continue to have fun catching these for a while

to come.  If you’re keen to hook a sweetlip, I find the best time to catch them is in the

afternoon on a making tide. They are most active a week either side of full moon, so now

is certainly the time to give it a go.  They fight well and they’regreat eating. And the best

part is that you don’t have to go far to catch them.

If you’d like to come out for a trip with us, head to the contact page and drop us a line

or give us a call on the number at the top of this page.

Happy Hunting!

It’s still six weeks until winter but we’ve already started catching a few cold weather species like

jewfish, pearl perch, cobia and snapper.

As the temperature cools down these species move into the nutrient rich shallow reefs to spawn.

Snapper is one of my favourites. As well as being a hard fighting fish, it is one of the best eating

fish in the sea. The fillets are delectable if the fish is bled and put in an ice slurry shortly after

capture.  If you’re chasing snapper, the best time to catch them is at dawn and dusk around the

tide change. Drifting is a particularly good way to find where the snapper are feeding and once

you have found a hot bite, anchor up and berley.

Their favourite foods include pilchards, squid and flesh baits such as mullet.

Hooking a big one can be a bit tougher than the average two to three kilogram range – they get

to this size for a reason. I find you produce the quality fish when using the lightest sinker possible,

or even better, no sinker and let your bait slowly drift through the water columns.

Snapper can reach 14 kilograms on our local reefs during the winter months.

Let us know how you go.

Here’s a couple of good snapper Steve caught last year:

 

 Fishing Report

It’s been a bit quiet the last week and while the big fish have been elusive there have still been some good eating fish caught in local waters. This is what we’ve seen reeled in during the last week.

Caloundra 9 Mile – sweetlip, tuskfish, moses perch, mackerel

Caloundra 12 Mile – Cobia, sweetlip, pearl perch, squire and Maori cod

Murphy’s Reef – morwong, squire, mackerel and tuna

Currimundi Reef – sweetlip, squire, mackerel and estuary cod

Barwon Banks – red emperor, spangled emporer, fusilier, Maori cod and tuna

The weather pattern looks stable for the next 10 to 14 days, so happy hunting!

We’d love to have you along if you’d like to come out with us. Give us a call to check our availability.

A lot of people have favourite lures they like to use and some of them have a lot of success. But we find a lot of people get pretty confused with all the choice that’s out there.

We’ve had some success catching tuna with a Halco swimmer lure, which looks like a striped baby tuna in colour.

We’ve found if you don’t let them out too far from your prop wash (about 30 to 40 metres), pelagic fish mistake the prop wash for a feeding frenzy and come up to investigate, which results in them taking our lures.

Other colours that have worked well are the yellowfin, green fluoro, and the red head.

We find them great because they enable us to do high speed trolling and we can throw them on the way out to the reef or on the way home.

The body length of the lure is 130mm and its slender tail action provides maximum hook exposure when the fish strikes.

It sits about two metres below the water and it will catch just about anything including mahi mahi, wahoo and tuna.

It retails at $18.

It’s been another wet week but we’ve still managed to get in some good fishing. We had a full charter last Wednesday then we got blown out for a few days and had to stay home. But we were nearly full on Sunday and Monday.

The fishing has been a bit slower this week due to run out tides but there were still a few good catches reeled in.

We caught lots of sweetlip, squire, a few Moses perch and mackerel and one coral trout. The coral trout was the best eating fish for the week.

We also landed two tuna on the troll out to Barwon Banks on Monday. They were only about three to four kilograms but the guys were pretty pleased. They couldn’t wait to get them home and share so they were cutting it up and eating it on board. Mmmm sashimi.

The tuna were caught using a Halco swimmer lure, which looks like a baby striped tuna in colour.

We find them great to use for high speed trolling.

Sunday’s trip was a surprise birthday party for Tom and he caught a mackerel to take home. Happy birthday Tom! It’s always great when a celebratory trip ends with a good catch.

If you feel like coming out with us for a day, give us a call or click on the bookings icon at the top of this page. We’ll get back to you with trip availability.

We’ve had a great week of fishing and some good weather for the Easter school holidays.

Here’s what’s being caught:

Murphy’s Reef – parrot, tuskfish, snapper, spangled emperor and jewfish

Caloundra 9 Mile –  squire, tuskfish, spotty mackerel, Maori cod and sweetlip

Caloundra 12 Mile –  squire, tuskfish, kingfish and sweetlip

Barwon Banks –  Spangled emperor, kingfish, amberjack, tuskfish, pearl perch, snapper fusilier and marlin

RIVERS AND BEACHES

There’s plenty of flathead in all our river systems.

Noosa – bream and whiting from the Tewantin stretch. Mangrove jack and jewfish from Woods Bay.

Maroochy – Mangrove jack and grunter bream in the upper reaches and creeks, flathead in the middle reaches.

Mooloolah River – bream and whiting from Kawana Beach, gar, bream and trevally from the reaches. Grunter bream, trevally and flathead from McKenzie Bridge.

Caloundra – bream, whiting and heaps of flathead at the top end of the passage. Trevally from the Pelican Waters canal and jacks in Currimundi Lake.

There are plenty of fish about. Head over to our facebook page and hit like page

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Top-Catch-Fishing-Charters/132542573455412

and we’ll keep you updated with what’s going on or you can share your fishing tales with us.

Wherever you were this Easter weekend, I hope you got a bit of fishing in.  We were flat out, with seven trips since Thursday and a few beauties were reeled in.  We had a mix of half and full day trips but Monday was our best day with fairly light winds coming from thesouth-east instead of north-west and a mid-morning high tide, creating the best conditions.  This pair of jewfish were among the best catches of the weekend, with the biggest one measuring 90cm.  They were caught at Murphy’s Reef.

Four free-jumping marlin created some excitement at the bottom end of the banks on Sunday.

They’re a great fighting fish and everyone loves to have a go at catching them.

But the biggest catch of the weekend was this 12kg yellowtail Kingfish reeled in at the Caloundra 12 mile.

Awesome catch!

We usually put the crab pots in on the way out. Crabbing is a bit slow at the moment but we’re

starting to see a few sand crabs show up.  The best eating fish caught on the weekend was this

blue-barred parrotfish.

I love to cook them up with mango and coconut.  If you want to give it a go scale, gut and gill the fish then stuff the stomach cavity with sliced onion and tinned mangoes. Wrap the fish in foil and just before you seal it, pour the coconut cream over it. Once the foil is sealed put it on a baking tray and bake at 200C for 15 to 20 minutes, depending on the size of the fish. Delicious!  If you feel like coming out for a trip with us, give us a call or click on the book now button at the top of this page to check our availability. We’d love to have you along.

In the meantime – happy fishing!

Fishing report March 28

How good is it to see some sun and some good boating and fishing conditions?

I hope you’ve been catching a few.

The full moon tonight means there should be some fishing activity over the next few days.

The weather for next week looks okay bar Monday and Tuesday.

There will be morning high tides for the next week so the run-in tide early in the morning should result in better fishing.

Here’s what’s being caught:

Caloundra 9 Mile – grassy sweetlip, squire, pearl perch and cod

Caloundra 12 Mile – Sweetlip, squire, cobia, maori cod and moses perch

Caloundra Wide – amberjack, kingfish, snapper and pearl perch

Barwon Banks – kingfish, squire, pearl perch, spangled emperor, tuskfish, red throat emperor, fusilier and the odd marlin

Noosa – a few trout and longtail tuna from Sunshine Reef and pear perch, squire and cobia from Chardons Reef

Have a great Easter and happy fishing.

If you want to book a trip with us head to our contact page to check availability.

Or head over to our facebook page https://www.facebook.com/pages/Top-Catch-Fishing-Charters/132542573455412 and share your fishing stories.