Fishing with Tony Lincoln: Post-flood fishing

As post-flood winter approaches, things are looking extremely positive for a cracker of an upcoming season.

The salinity levels have finally started to come back up and after a couple of days with light winds, the water has cleared up nicely so hopefully we'll see our clear winter water more often as we progress into the cooler months.

Early post flood fishing results have been excellent with some impressive fish being caught, especially snapper. There have been quite a few fish landed already which are well into the 80cm bracket (and larger). These are LAND-BASED fish! If that doesn't scream positives for a fantastic upcoming season, I don't know what does.

Healthy numbers of bait schools are becoming more consistent and some of our other traditional winter fish are also turning up. One of our staff members at the shop brought in a 43cm bream on a recent day off to put on the shop scales. It weighed in at 1.08kg.

How do we maximise our chances at these fish? Fishing at the optimum time is paramount and the best advice I can give is, get out of your comfort zone. To put it succinctly, get tired, get wet, get cold and you're going to have a greatly increased chance of connecting to quality fish.

Fish in areas with structure at night and early mornings. The waters around the peninsula and most of Moreton Bay's foreshores are quite shallow and these fish rarely expose themselves by coming into these areas when the sun's up and the water's crystal clear. Have a plan and a target species. Fish as lightly as you dare for the structure you're fishing in, and use quality bait or lures.

Explore and experiment as some locations may only fish well for a brief period or stage of the tide, so you may need to fish a location several times to work it out.

Here's hoping we get a run of our glassy winter weather this year. Fingers crossed!

Thanks for reading again, and remember ... 

Talk to old people, they know stuff you don't.

Talk to young people, they know stuff you don't.

FISHING REPORT:

• Summer whiting, bream and flathead in Hays Inlet and the Pine River.
• Winter whiting on the Cockle Banks.
• Bream off the beaches, rocky points and inshore reefs.
• The odd school jew in Bramble Bay and around the inshore reefs and rocky points.
• Tailor starting to appear around the jetties, inshore reefs and rocky points.
• A few late pelagics still being landed with school mackerel and cobia off the jetties.
• Snapper, snapper, snapper! Some great fish off the beaches, jetties, rocky points and inshore reefs.
• Mud and sand crabs both consistent in their usual haunts.
• A few quality catches of squid when the water has had a chance to start to clear.

Tony Lincoln owns Hornibook Bait and Tackle at Clontarf. To find out more, head to the Facebook page