The Gold Coast's Friday weather update hit the wires just as the swell jumped to four metres out wide, but Doug Burt's Tackle World still backed Saturday morning to fire — provided anglers minded the seaway and got off the water before the south-easterly hooked in.
Filling in for regular co-host Stuart at the shop's weekly fish report on 8 May, presenter 'D' delivered a punchy run-down of where the Gold Coast bite had landed for the long Mother's Day weekend, with snapper, dolphin fish and tailor headlining the offshore card.
"Tomorrow's the 9th of May. We're looking at sort of around about 10 knots up to about 1 o'clock, and then it does come in pretty windy after that, around 20 knots from the south-east," he said, before warning that Sunday would be a 20-knot blowout with showers — "not really worth going offshore."
Snapper had been thick from the 18-fathom line out to 24 fathoms just north of the Seaway, with action stretching across to 36 fathoms east of the Seaway and north-east off Jumping Pin. Float-lining small pilchards on gang or snelled hooks with the smallest sinker that would reach the bottom remained the standout method, while bottom-bouncers were running paternoster rigs with squid and pilchard halves under 8 to 16 oz of lead depending on current.
Out wider, the FADs continued to deliver. Doug's son, Jack Burt, had bagged out 10 dolphin fish on the Tuesday morning using pilchards and small lures around the floats. "They got their 10 of dollies, and they're reasonable size," D said. Yellowfin tuna in pocket-rocket size were hanging in the same zone — great fun on light tackle — and a few mackerel were marking on the sounder around Diamond, Focus and the 18-Fathom reef. A heavy shark presence, however, was making the Spaniards reluctant to commit to a bait, with D suggesting the fish were visible on the sounder but spooked.
Inshore, tailor was the standout, with fish to 60 centimetres pushing along the north-eastern corner of Crusoe Island, around the Slipping Sands and back towards Tipplers Channel. Twenty-gram and 30-gram metal slugs in two profile sizes were doing the damage on the high tide and into the first of the run-out.
For mulloway hunters, the Tackle World team was directing anglers to the eastern edge of Klinger Bank, fishing the front of Swan Bay outside the green zone in 6 to 16 metres of water. The catch was that anglers needed to troll up live pike on small sinking minnows over the South Stradbroke weed banks first, then drop them on big ball sinkers and snelled hooks. "These are big jewies," D promised. "We're talking metre-20." He warned the same ledge held sharks.
Flathead were biting on prawn-imitation soft plastics — Wilson Wild Shrimps, Squidgies and Samaki options — through the Broadwater, with the Pandanus Island banks, Tipplers Channel and the Cab Street Point to Rocky Point bank all producing on the run-out. Whiting on worms or yabbies came good around the southern side of Hottinger and the swimming enclosure at Southport on the run-out tide, particularly after dark.
Doug Burt's Tackle World also flagged a snapper-on-lures seminar booked for Thursday 21 May, covering down-rigging, slow-pitch jigging, soft plastics and mechanical jigging.
The bigger picture: this was the first foul-weather week the Gold Coast had seen in close to a month, and D was forecasting the offshore bite to come good again the following weekend. The Saturday morning window aside, the message to Mother's Day weekenders was simple — keep it inshore, or stay home with mum.