OFFSHORE: As we write this weeks report, tropical cyclone Hamish is moving down the coast and is roughly 12 hours away from fully impacting on the region. By late yesterday afternoon the offshore gate had been well and truly closed by the building swell and blustery south easterlies which by lunchtime today were consistently in the 25 to 35 knot range.
Prior to that, however, it had been a great week offshore with light to moderate (5 to 15 knot) variable easterlies providing some idyllic conditions on the local reefs.
Trips out wide were a fairly straight forward option with squire, parrot fish, pearl perch and teraglin jewfish common to the outer reefs.
In addition, the Barwon Banks produced snapper, rosy jobfish, Maori cod and gold band snapper while 'The Hards' yielded moses perch, hussar and, as you can see by the photo above, the odd quality amberjack.
Drew Bennedick from Nerangba was out there on Friday on a full day Cougar One charter when he boated this 10kg specimen. He was using a Penn 330 GTi combo loaded with 50lb braid and a squid/pillie combo.
A little closer in, North Reef was the spot for mowong, pearl perch, parrot fish and squire. Sunshine Reef was enormously popular this week with the runup to the full moon, dawn/dusk high tides and the presence of plenty of bait bringing in Spanish mackerel, spotted mackerel, northern bluefin tuna, big cobia, sweetlip, parrot fish, snapper, red throat emperor and coral trout.
Dick McClymont (above right) dropped the pick there on Wednesday afternoon and, using a mackerel tuna flesh bait, soon attracted the attention of the 3.5kg 'Trout' he's pictured with. He was armed with a Shimano TLD25 combo.
Paul Grenfell (above) and a couple of mates bagged out on 8kg to 12kg Spaniards at 'Sunshine' on Wednesday using live pike as their draw card. He was kitted out with a Wilson Live Fibre rod, a Shimano Baitrunner 6500 reel and 30lb line.
Spotted mackerel were in numbers in Alexandria Bay at times while Laguna Bay was firing on all cylinders with plenty of bait boils being hammered by northern bluefin tuna and spotted mackerel near Jew Shoal, around the shark nets, just out from the river mouth and, as per the photo above, along the Little and Big Halls Reef stretch. Charlie, Lochie and Nils had a ball there on Saturday morning, taking northern bluefins (to 7kg) on cast 50gm slug lures and a 3kg spotty on the troll.

ONSHORE: The North Shore coastal beach stretch produced quite well this week with whiting (to 600gm), bream (to 1kg), tarwhine and quality dart active around Teewah and up to 5km's north, while tailor (to 2.5kg) were on the bite at the Third Cutting and around the camp grounds. On the east side, Sunshine Beach produced quality bream, dart and whiting.

In the estuary, flathead were responding to trolled lures around the Frying Pan, in the deeper waters of the Noosaville stretch and up in Lake Cooroibah where whitebaits worked well.
With the full moon coming up, the prawns were running and the trevally were out in force.
Best spots for the 'Trevs' was up along the Tewantin stretch, in the Woods Bays and, as local angler Dylan Harvey (above right) discovered around midday Saturday, near the Sheraton Bridge.
Dylan could see large numbers of trevally just below the surface feeding on school prawns so simply 'matched the hatch' with his own prawn bait and was rewarded with the 2.1kg 'Golden' he's posing with.
He was armed with a Butterworth threadline estuary combo. Apart from that, the stretch between the lakes produced mangrove jack (on River2Sea Humbug lures) and, as you can see by the photo above, tarpon on soft plastics. Cameron Clark caught and released this specimen in the waters just above Lake Cooroibah using a 3" Atomic Prawn soft plastic as his draw card.

Last but not least, mangrove jacks were in excellent numbers around Harbourtown at Tewantin as the week drew to a close. David Doran (above) hit the jackpot there on Sunday when he used live mullet and mullet flesh baits to boat four 'Jacks' with the top weigh fish tipping the scales at 2.4kg. He was using an Abu 5000 combo loaded with 30lb braid.
On the freshwater scene, quality saratoga were active in the Yabba Arm of Borumba Dam while the resident bass were responding well to spinnerbaits around the timbers.