Winter’s tight grip still remains on most of North America. Odds are it will get much tighter before spring makes an appearance. For North American anglers, this can be a tough time of year. Gray skies and cold weather keep many an angler inside. But south of the equator, fishing season is in full force.

With coastline surrounding the entire country and many freshwater lakes and rivers running inland, the country has an incredible amount of fishing opportunities. 

With all these angling opportunities during the peak fishing season, FishAngler is the #1 fishing app to help you! Plan your trips, catch more fish and share your success with friends. To adequately cover how best to use the FishAngler app in Australia, we asked pro staffer Ben Jones, co-owner of Cast Magazine, to cover some of his favorite functions. Read on to learn more about how the GT Buster himself uses FishAngler to find success in the Land Down Under.

Location Location Location

Australia’s coastline spans 59,681 km, or over 37,000 mi, making it the seventh largest coastline in the world. With a coast of that size, where do you start? 

FishAngler’s map is as detailed as you will need and can be brought up with a quick tap. Ben Jones uses the map to scout miles of promising coast, while paying close attention to user posted catches. The catches help him pinpoint which species are being caught in which areas. This particularly helps when he is searching for a particular species which can change depending on how northern or southern you are situated. 

Keep Track of Lures

Jones has experienced a fair share of frustrations from fish, who change tastes in the matter of moments. He says he’s seen popular offshore fish, like yellowtail kings, attacking a lure on the topwater, only to immediately dive much deeper. Other fish like barramundi, which can be found in salt, or freshwater, are equally as picky and can change their minds about what they’re striking in an instant. Jones relies on FishAngler’s My Gear feature in these cases. 

His Gear section allows him to search through the tackle he’s found success with in the past. He can add notes about each lure, line, rod or reel to remind him of specific scenarios when they worked particularly well. He can also add photos of all his setups and baits so he can match the exact size and color of each effective piece of gear. This provides him plenty of educated options to fish with instead of randomly throwing his whole tackle box at a fish. 

Keeping a Diary

Another way Jones combats changes in fish appetites is by logging his catches to keep a detailed journal of his catches, tactics and conditions.

When you enable location services and log a photo of your catch to FishAngler, the app will automatically include the local weather conditions with your catch. This gives Jones a permanent place to check back and analyze. He can use this data to match everything from weather and barometric pressure to water temperature and more. Now when he’s on the water facing specific conditions, or odd fish activity, he can check back to his logbook and study catches where he faced similar conditions.  

Weather Conditions

There’s no hiding that the Giant trevally (aka “GT”) is Jones’s favorite species to target. His nickname, @gtbuster, says it all. These fish aren’t for the faint of heart, however.

Often when Jones is looking to target a large and aggressive GT, his trip will take him over 30km (~18 mi) off the Australian coast to find proper habitat. A trip like this has him constantly monitoring weather patterns on the open seas. Open ocean can be synonymous with difficult wind patterns. Watching the weather and wind forecast can give Jones a good idea of where to be fishing to get out of certain wind conditions. 

Before he heads offshore, Jones will bring up his FishAngler forecast by tapping the Forecast button at the bottom of his home screen. This gives him access to temperatures, wind direction and speed, barometric pressure and more. The forecast even provides Solunar fish activity which advises Jones what times of day fish will be most active. This is particularly important for an apex predator like the GT, which hunts its prey with incredible voracity. 

Connect with Other Anglers

Australia’s opportunities for multiple species can almost be a hindrance. With marlin, mahi-mahi, Spanish mackerel, coral trout and the aforementioned GT being just some of the species to target offshore, there are still Murray cod, barramundi and the Australian bass waiting for terrific fights in the freshwater. Add in the fact that Australia is the sixth largest country by area and you will have a hard time covering all that terrain and learning about each species.

FishAngler helps takeaway some of that guess work, however. Finding and following anglers near you or in areas you want to fish is the best way to learn new regionally-specific techniques, or make new fishing friends.

Jones likes to connect with anglers all over, either through his social media accounts, which he links to on his angler profile, or through following and friending new anglers. Based in Brisbane, he’s not shy to ask fellow anglers three hours north of him how the bite is going and what fish are particularly worth targeting. After a connection is made, he may simply share some information with a willing angler, or even plan a meet-up to fish with a fellow angler.

Regardless of how or where you are planning on fishing, connecting with anglers far and wide is one of the best ways to gain valuable information and keep honing your fishing skills.

Fishing Australia

You can follow Ben Jones on his latest adventures on the app as he travels north toward the Great Barrier Reef. Jones is taking a boat to a small sand island where he will camp and fish for GT, coral trout, dogtooth tuna and every other fish the Australian coast has to offer. Be sure to check out the Cast Magazine page on the app as well, where you can follow Jones and all the other Cast members as they travel the world, looking to push fishing to places most of us only dream of. 

No matter what country you are in, no matter what fish you target, and no matter how you like to target them; FishAngler is here to help you! 

 

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