The February Fishing Report, Week Three 2009, Noosa, Queensland, Australia, brought to you by Inox.

As at Monday February 16, 2009

Brought to you by...

OFFSHORE: The first and last two days of the week provided the best opportunities for wetting a line on the local reefs with Thursday through until Saturday closed out by blustery 20 to 30 knot+ south easterly winds and a 2 metre swell. While the going was good the bigger boats headed out wide. Noosa Blue Water Charters hit the Barwon Banks on Tuesday and got their customers onto a few Maori cod, squire, hussar, teraglin jewfish, parrot fish and, as you can see by the accompanying photos, gold band snapper and pearl perch. Luke Becroft (above) thought he'd done well when his pilchard bait attracted an 8kg gold band but was pipped shortly after by John Hendry's (below right) 9kg specimen. Not to be outdone, Bill Hoskin (below left) dropped down a pilchard/squid combo and snagged a thumper 5.5kg pearl perch.

Sunshine Reef ran hot and cold with Spanish mackerel on the bite on the good days. Not far away, yellowfin tuna were chasing trolled lures around the rubble grounds three or four klicks north of the headland while closer in, the odd sweetlip and Spaniard were on the bite around Jew Shoal. Mark and Simon (below) spent a fair bit of time berleying up on the Shoal on Tuesday morning and for their efforts, eventually nailed these two 4kg Spaniards using pilchard floaters. Last but not least, there were a few juvenile spotted mackerel caught and released from the river mouth to Little Hall's Reef plus sweetlip (on soft plastics) and keeper spotties (on trolled pilchards) on the bite around Little and Big Hall's. ONSHORE: The North Shore surf beach stretch was a little quieter this week with the only reports being of chopper tailor and dart along the southern end of the beach and quality bream (on live worms) up past Teewah. Across the bay there were still a few yellowtail kingfish on the prowl off the rocks of the National Park headland. Further south, Sunrise Beach produced bream and quality dart, Marcus Beach; whiting and tarwhine and Peregian; bream, flathead and chopper tailor. In the river, whiting were well spread from the river mouth to Tewantin although the sand flats opposite Munna Point were one of the more productive spots to pick up a few of these excellent table fish. The young guns have been doing well with small River2Sea Bubble Poppers which is what Connor O'Brien (right) was using when he nailed a few (to 36cm) around the sand flats yesterday. The runout tide in the late afternoon seemed to produce a few good flathead (on live herring, whitebait and frogmouth pilchards) along the Gympie Terrace stretch and down at the river mouth where bream were responding well to live beach worms. The Munna Point Bridge produced well for the live baiters with mangrove jacks and the odd quality queenfish (as above) being very active. Local angler Tim Milat was more than happy with the 3kg 'Skinny' he attracted with a live pike bait around lunchtime on Wednesday. Mangrove jacks were also on the bite (especially at night) in Weyba Creek, around the Sheraton Bridge and up at the Tewantin ferry jetty. Prawn lures, slider grubs and live fish baits got best results with that species. On the freshwater scene, the points of the main basin at Borumba Dam produced good bass on Blades and soft plastics while trolled shallow to medium diving (60mm to 70mm), dark hard body lures worked well off the steeper rocky banks.