Fishing tips for Moreton Bay December 2024

Merry Christmas fishos. The weather is warm, and it is time to get out for a fish and get some seafood.

Inshore reefs and bay waters

The shallow inshore reefs around the Peninsula will have grass sweetlip, snapper, Moses Perch and bream. Fishing light is always the key to catching these fish and they will be most active at dawn and dusk and during the night. The middle of the day will usually see mostly small fish caught. If you are bait fishing, make sure your bait is fresh and well-presented and use the smallest sinker you can. Various soft plastic lures will also work well and a key to success with them, over a shallow reef environment, is to make sure your jig head is not too heavy. While Scarborough Reef is always a popular location, the edges of most of the rocky outcrops of the Peninsula will produce fish for those that put in time and effort. Remember if you are unfamiliar with the area, check the Moreton Bay Marine Park Zoning Plan maps and don’t fish in the “green zone” around Scott’s Point, where fishing is prohibited.

Crabbing and prawning

Christmas crustaceans are on the menu for many! December can be a great month for catching mud crabs in our estuaries. Our Moreton Bay mud crab is a fast-growing, short-lived species, and populations and catches from year to year are highly variable. Environmental factors such as temperature and rainfall are the key drivers of this variability. In Moreton Bay, they grow to 8-10cm carapace width (CW) in their first year, to 13-16cm CW in their second year and up to a maximum of 24cm CW in their third year, although such large animals are rare.

Make sure you follow all the rules this summer, if you head out to chase mud crabs, including using the correct number and size of pots and ensuring that they are properly marked. Pots should be sturdy as you don’t want them drifting with the current, particularly on the big tides. The in-possession limit is 10 male mud crabs per person. So, let the ladies go and make sure the lads are all over 15cm carapace width.

Blue swimmer crabs are also active this time of year in the coastal waters around Redcliffe and can also be caught land-based from Woody Point and Redcliffe jetties.

Although it is very early in the season, depending on rainfall, some banana prawns may be starting to move around in the estuaries. They are likely to be in the upper reaches of places such as the Pine and Caboolture rivers.

Estuary and land based

Mixed bags can be the order of the day for those that are fishing the estuaries and land based. As well as crabs and prawns, yellowfin bream will be active in our estuaries and will take most baits. The Pine River is a reliable place to target them this time of the year and the Ted Smout Memorial Bridge and Deep Water Bend are land-based spots in that system which are reliable spots for them.

Flathead will also be around and a great fish to target on lures. Hays Inlet and the Pine River are some of my favourite places to target these species. The Ted Smout Bridge is a good land-based spot for them. In the deeper channels, lure fishers should look at using vibe type lures while shallow divers and soft plastics are the most effective over the flat and the edges of the drop offs. Yellowfin and sand whiting will still be on the shallow bank and their edges in the Pine and Caboolture rivers, Burpengary Creek and Hays Inlet.

Mulloway of various sizes, as well as javelin fish (grunter bream) and a few trevally will also be mixed in with the bream and flathead. For those who are targeting them, mangrove jack are now active.

Beaches

If you are heading to Moreton Island, you have plenty of good fishing options. The western beach from Comboyuro Point to Cowan Cowan will have flathead during the day and sand whiting at night.

The northern beach between Comboyuro Point and Yellowpatch is my pick of the options on the island this time of year, particularly if there is a strong southeasterly wind blowing. The better class of whiting will be found in the late afternoon and evening. The early part of the run-in tide is the tidal phase that they are normally the most active. The fish can be in very close to the shore and a mistake a lot of anglers make when targeting them is to use a sinker that is too heavy and cast too far.

Chopper tailor can also be targeted late afternoon and evening. I prefer to fish around the high tide and the early part of the run-out tide.

Swallowtail dart and a few tarwhine will also be around, but more on those next month!

Offshore

This is often not the best time of the year weather-wise to fish offshore, but if you can safely venture out, expect a big mix of potential reef species. Pearl perch, teraglin, venus tuskfish and Moses perch will be the mainstays, but depending on where you are fishing offshore will be more tropical species including hussar and green jobfish. It really is a species lucky dip this time of the year offshore.

Cobia and yellowtail kingfish will also be around offshore a well as in parts of Moreton Bay itself such as around the Bulwer Ledge and the shipping channel beacons.

That’s it for me for the year. When you are out and about on the water, make sure you slip, slop, slap!