General News
25 June, 2026
Sootys and perch are biting
CREEKS, rivers and estuaries are best for catches, with winds disrupting Reef.
Freshwater
LIKE the last few weeks, the cold-water techniques continue to get the sooty grunter and jungle perch to bite.
There are still plenty around but downsizing your lures and using sub surface is your best bet, lures like the Barambah Stinger shrimp and any small soft plastic and spinner attachment are doing the damage as of late.
During the mornings the sootys and ‘JP’ tend to hang out in the deeper pools near the bottom, so make sure you let your lure sink down into the bite zone.
Once the water warms up later into the day, you’ll find the larger sootys will come up onto the sand flats to sit in the warm sunny waters – this is the best time to try sight casing them. They are quite skittish when they are doing this, so small light weighted lures are your best bet.
Estuary
THE barramundi are finally starting to get used to the colder water and we are starting to get some more consistent results.
Once again soft plastic prawns are an absolute killer during winter. The Samaki live shrimp is the standout lure doing the rounds on the barra.
Jerk baits have been working well for myself lately and is one of my favourite ways to get winter barras.
The double twitch and long pause defiantly gets a good reaction from them.
I’d recommend a Jackall Squirrel 79 in a shrimp pattern or the Profishent Shutdown minnow.
We are now seeing consistent schools of barras, so make sure to keep a close eye on your side scan sounder.
The cold hasn’t seemed to slow the mangrove jacks, as there are still plenty of reports and good numbers being caught skip casting or snag bashing the mangrove edges.
Flatheads are still in big numbers, so if you’re after some nice table fish, make sure to head out to the river mouths and sand bars to try your luck.
Don’t forget the crab pots, there’s been some great catches lately with quite a few people bagging out on big muddies.
Offshore
THE wind continues to keep the reef boats parked up in the sheds.
Unfortunately, we haven’t had much of a break in the weather, although the wind was good enough over the weekend to get out around the islands and we have had quite a few good reports, with plenty of small school size nannygai caught (best eating size in my opinion), also some big bar cheek trout were caught up in the shallows.
During winter we tend to find the inshore fishing picks up and can be very good fishing, so make sure you have your bait ready to go as we have only been getting small windows in the weather and you don’t want to miss out.
– Ryan Sanger, Tackle World Tully
Read More: Cassowary Coast