Hibiscus Coast Fishing Report - 08/02/24

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With Christmas and New Year all passed, we are finally at the peak of the warm weather. However, despite good conditions, the fishing has been very challenging.

For the past few weeks, the coast has been packed with beachgoers trying to make the most of the hot weather with people engaged in water sports of all forms.

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This made fishing very difficult due to the mass of activity stirring up the water, and the fish were very put off.

My most recent session unfortunately was no different and the struggle continued. I started my day very early and my objective was to try and do some livebaiting for kingfish and softbaiting for snapper. The early morning period showed promising signs but as the sun slowly rose, the activity slowly died off.

To my surprise, the kingfish did not turn up, so I ended up focusing my efforts on softbaiting. Overall, all I was able to get out of my session were mostly undersized snapper which were all released, although I was able to land two legal fish which were also released (they looked too skinny for a meal).

The advice I can give is to fish during the morning period when it is cooler and quiet. By midday, it will be too hot and most of the fish will retreat to the deeper water to avoid the rising temperature. Make sure to avoid fishing during public holidays when a large crowd of people will turn up at your fishing spot for the same idea – it’s not worth the trouble. Make sure to stay sun smart especially in this weather as getting sunburnt can affect you in the long term.

Hope everyone else is having better luck out there and hope you all had a great start to 2024.

- Peter Hwang

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