_{I had a chance to visit Broadbeach on the Queensland coast and the hotel I stayed at overlooked the Nerang River. This river is a wide, deep, and has a lot of rocks and other structure…}

_{But this is a double edged sword…fish love structure so it provides a great place to fish – but structure also snags tackle so you have to be prepared to lose a bit.}

_{The Nerang River holds plenty of fish but they respond to the tidal flows, much the same as many tidal rivers in Australia.}

_{Fish feed well leading up to high tide but slow down after the tide changes. When they stop searching for food after high tide – often the only way to catch is by dropping a bait right in front of them…so lure fishing can work better then.  Since I don’t like to wander too much when I bait fish – I had to really work the best part of the tide – this is important…if you want to improve your chances of landing fish you need to know the tide times.}

_{I found a spot near a bridge and targeted a pylon where the water slowed. I fished into the slower water because this is where it tends to drop food items that it is carrying…this is where fish will feed. .}

_{I couldn’t find any tackle stores in Broadbeach to buy bait so I had to get everything I needed from the local supermarket.}

 _{I bought some bread crumbs, chicken, fish, prawns, white flour and a few spices to make up my berley and  bait.}

_{I cut the chicken into small pieces about the size of my little fingernail, cut some fillets from the fish(whiting) and peeled a few prawns. Lastly, I made up some dough from the flour and flavoured it with garlic spice…all this was to make sure I carried more than one type of bait…and all these baits are proven fish catchers.}

_{I set up a two hook rig and a berley cage as my sinker.}

_{I used bread crumbs as berley and added a little garlic spice to add a bit more attraction.}

_{I used two hooks so I could try two different baits and work out what worked best.} 

_{The first cast I used chicken and fish as bait. I set up my rod pointing towards the sky to keep as much line as possible out of the flow of the river and off the rocks near the bank I was fishing from….these rocks ended up costing me a few fish as they cut the line when the fish swam into them when they were hooked.}

_{Within five minutes I hooked a good fish, probably a bream, but I never found out as it broke off after a solid struggle. This was probably the biggest fish of the day…}

_{…isn’t it always what happens? You lose the big one…and worse still, the line broke at a weak point…it was frayed from a previous snag…and I didn’t cut it off like I should have. My bad!!}

_{I tackled up again and cast in. I used the same baits and hooked another fish within a few minutes. This one was smaller and I got it straight in…a nice bream around 500gms. I quickly unhooked and returned the fish then baited up again… it had taken the fish bait but I wanted to be sure this was the preferred bait so I used the same combination of baits again and recast.}

_{About ten minutes later I was into another fish and this was a good one. It stripped off line and took a bit of effort to keep it away from the structure that had lost me a fish before. It was another bream, a good one about a kilo in size and in absolutely perfect condition…}

_{I didn’t have anywhere to cook where I was staying so I retuned this fish to fight another day.} 

_{After another hour and a half, I landed two more bream, a trevally and a flathead…and lost two fish in the rocks.} 

_{The most successful bait turned out to be the prawns but they came off the hook too easy and small fish were taking them as soon as they hit bottom.}

_{Surprisingly, the second best bait was the dough. I had mixed some very small pieces of fish with it ….and it worked great .}

_{As the tide changed the fish stopped biting…I got a few more bites but after a while I got nothing…so I called it quits.} 

_{It turned out to be a really good session. I had fished light gear using a telescopic graphite spin rod, small spin reel, berley and a selection of baits.}

_{A couple of things I tried that really worked were simple, really effective and you can easily use:}

1. _{1. Berley brought the fish in. When I didn’t use it the fish took twice as long to find the bait}

2. _{Prawns and dough were the best baits ….with dough being a killer bait for bream and prawns catching everything – but attracting lots of small fish.}

3. _{Before winding in I twitched the bait….this got me a few bites when things were slow.}

4. _{I was using berley so I tried to cast to the same spot each time so the berley landed in the same areaand built up a bit of a feeding area.}

5. _{I used small hooks, size 8 bait holders and these worked well on the small mouthed bream and trevally…but also caught the larger mouthed flathead.} 

6. _{I fished two hours leading up to high tide and half an hour after.  This seemed to be the best time for the estuary fish.}

7. _{Before I tackled up, I tied a small sinker to my line and cast to the area I wanted to fish and reeled in. This helped me “feel out” the bottom and find a few snags that would tangle my line. I made a mental note of where they were and tried (unsuccessfully on one occasion) to avoid them.}

 _{This had turned out to be good fishing…and what I learned in this session would help me in the next.} 

_{After-all,  this is what makes fishing a great hobby (obsession)…every outings different but you get better if you pay attention and try different things to hook those fish.}