Rivers

BARRA have started to bite a bit better around the mouths and headlands of the rivers, with the rising tide being the optimum time to target them on shallow-diving hard bodies and plastics.

Salmon have been plentiful throughout the systems with gutters and rock bars fishing the best during the run-out tides on live baits soft plastics.

Crabs are a real option still with the added bonus of a possible feed of fresh prawns for those spending the time to chase them in the gutters as the tide drops out.

Islands

THE great weather and fishing continues with most species biting well. Rolling garfish or wolf herring is still receiving the most interest from the mackerel. Dolphin Point, Leaper Shoals and Double Cones have been the most productive but anywhere you find bait, the mackerel won't be too far away.

Best results on the reef fish, in particular coral trout, have come out of the 20-30 metre depth using pilchards and prawns.

Tiger squid are around in abundance on and around the fringing reefs. These make for an excellent feed or great bait for fishing deeper water for nannygai and reds.

Fresh squid fished over the inner shoals, holes and rubble patches as resulted in some very large jewfish and fingermark.

Rock walls

BLUE salmon, queenfish, grunter and school mackerel are making up the bulk of catches off the rocks.

Live and flesh baits, metal spoons and soft plastics are getting best results. There has been some good flathead off Cannonvale Beach on the run-in tide with pilchards and peeled prawns.

Later afternoon rising tides will be ideal to live bait for a barramundi or mangrove jack.

Ryan Fuller, Whitsunday Fishing World

Dingo Beach/

Hydeaway Bay

NICE weather over the last week has allowed anglers to get to all their favourite locations and to be able to fish for whatever they want.

Our local inshore reefs have been a little sporadic with the larger fish being hard to get a bite out of, but the deeper reefs and rubble patches have fired up well with good catches of jew, large mouth nannygai and grunter coming in. Drifting baits or using slow jigs has been working well for us.

The pelagic scene has been a little intermittent with the Spanish mackerel only showing up and biting for short periods. There are still some deep bait balls in the bay.

Once you've located these patches of bait, sending down various jigs and working them up fast through the bait has been getting some nice bites out of the tuna and various trevally species.

In the creeks, the quantity of crabs being caught has slowed up but the quality of the crabs being caught is right up there.

Reports are coming in from the creeks that the blue salmon and flatties are biting well.

Mick Underwood, Reel Addiction Sport Fishing