A Justin Willmer and Declan Williams session at Redcliffe at the start of May has produced a textbook case for staying on the water when conditions look better than they fish. The Tackle Tactics TV duo had sat out two days of strong onshore winds in southeast Queensland before pushing out onto the rubble grounds north of Brisbane, hoping a window of calm would put a snapper on the deck. Ten species came over the gunwale before they pulled the pin — and not one of them was a snapper.
"We've had a couple of days of rough weather. So we haven't fished those two days, but we've waited for the weather to come good. And it often fires up the fish in these shallow rubble patches and areas that we're fishing here," Willmer said, working a 3-inch ZMan StreakZ in jelly prawn on a quarter-ounce 3/0 TT Headlockz HD jig head as the first flathead came aboard.
The morning ticked over from one species to the next. Grassy sweetlip on heavier jig heads, mid-60-centimetre flathead in patches of weed, spangled emperor mistaken at first for grass sweetlip, and a procession of swallowtail dart that drifted in with the bait push from the rough weather. Willmer noted the prawn imitation kept producing through the slack tide because the leg action and antennae vibration of the ZMan PrawnZ Elite carried bites where bigger profiles would have died in the lull.
When the run-out tide kicked, the action picked up with it. A school of late-season tailor began smashing surface bait, and Willmer switched to a 10-gram TT SwayBait in silver flash to take advantage of the new profile. The first proper one over the side drew a clean direct quote from Williams. "He's a great Taylor. These early season ones are quite often good fish."
The pair landed two GTs from the same Redcliffe ground — a result Willmer admitted he had never seen before — along with goldens, big-eye trevally and another run of bream that came on twitchy retrieves over rocks and weed pockets. The 2.5-inch ZMan PrawnZ Elite in opening night colour produced one of the day's standout bream, with Willmer watching the fish eat the lure right under the rod tip on a pause.
Williams, a key tester on the SwayBait program, used the session to walk through the lure's versatility. He pointed out that anglers can fall it down like a jig and twitch it, slow-roll it through the column for tailor and trevally, or skip it across the surface to cover ground when the birds pile in. Two GTs and a procession of trevally took the bait on different retrieves through the day, validating the work that went into shaping the profile.
The tackle was deliberately light — TT Black Mamba 7-foot 1-3kg and 2-4kg spin rods, 2500 reels, 6lb Platypus Pulse X8 braid and 10lb Hard Armour FC fluorocarbon leader. Willmer credited the leader for keeping the bream pinned around abrasive rock structure, and the lighter setup for turning the trevally session into the most fun of the morning.
By late morning the wind had picked back up and the Redcliffe trip was wound back. Willmer's parting line summed it up — "It's going to be an epic winter for you guys. So grab a bit of gear, get out there and get stuck into a few fish."
For southeast Queensland anglers planning their next mixed-species crack at the rubble grounds, the playbook is the trio Tackle Tactics has hammered all session — find structure with current running over it, look for bait, and run a small ZMan PrawnZ Elite through the rocks until something inhales it.