Sydney Harbour
Report by CRAIG McGILL, FISHABOUT TOURS SYDNEY HARBOUR

May 2008
As I write this in late April the air temperature is relatively cold at around 16 degrees. That’s a long way down on normal summer temperatures which are usually between 25 and 30. Water temperature in Sydney harbour is currently 19 degrees which is only a couple of degrees colder than normal summer water temperatures. As a result we are still doing quite well on a number of summer species. Only a few days ago we had a sensational session catching kingfish around the wedding cake near watsons bay which is something considered very much a summer activity. Samson and amberjack are still hanging around and I even witnessed the capture of a 12kg cobia in middle harbour
The fish don’t know or care how cold it is on land or in the air.
Remember that old saying that’s been going around for years that if you want to become a better fisherman then ‘think like a fish’. Well we need to apply that philosophy in relation to temperature. If a fish thinks its summer because the water is warm then it is ‘fish summer’.
If we reversed the situation, I’m sure as hell we’d get a serious shutdown if the water temperature dropped to 16 degrees in the middle of summer.
So the bottom line is that we must start paying much more attention to the thermometer in the water and not the one on the land.
My bet is that by the time you read this in May temps will have dropped to around 16 degrees so lets go over some of the species that you can expect to find in these temperatures.
Trevally must have a wide temperature tolerance because they are very common in summer and winter. They are a very good fighting fish and very underrated as a table fish.
Just like dory, trevs like clear, deep water but will range well upstream in dry weather. Being an active pelagic fish they are happy to hold in the current which makes them more common around the main channels and headlands. At times they will school and feed on the surface. When this happens they will readily accept small lures and provide very good sport.
The most common method of fishing for trevs is with bait on very lightly weighted rigs. They mostly feed from mid water to the bottom so you must choose a sinker that will take your bait into that zone.
FishAbout Newsletter
I
ssue 7, April 2008
The best rig is a main line of 4kg with a nylon trace about the same. The sinker runs on the main line and stops at the swivel that separates the main line from the trace. Hook size should be somewhere between no.4 and no.1. A bait holder pattern is most suited to the type of baits used.
Best baits are small cuts of baitfish like pilchard, gar, bonito or slimy mackerel.
A good burly trail of pellets or mashed fish is very beneficial.
John Dory are one of the classic winter immigrants. They live on the off shore reefs in summer and move into the bays and harbours when the water gets cold. They are mostly found around the lower reaches they have been known to roam up stream when the water quality is good. They like deep, still, clear water and congregate around structure that holds plenty of bait fish. Boat moorings, bridge pylons, jettys, reefs and drop-offs are all prime spots.
Its very rare to catch dory on anything other than live baits. Best livies include yellowtail (with the tail trimmed) or any small reef fish like sweep or mado. Dory have an enormous mouth and will have no trouble swallowing a 15 centimeter sweep.
They are not a good fighting fish but due to the possibility of picking up larger predatory fish on your live bait I would suggest using no less than 6kg line. The rig consists of a size 4 bean sinker on the main line terminated by a swivel. A five foot nylon trace of about 10kg breaking strain is then tied to the swivel and finished of with a 4\0 to 6\0 Dynatec suicide hook.
The bait is then suspended directly under the boat or jetty about 2 meters off the bottom.
The best time to catch dory is on the turn of the high tide, early morning or late afternoon.
Luderick are a very good winter stand by. They inhabit the reefs, rocky shorelines and structure throughout the harbour.
Specialized gear is required. Rods are generally long and light action ( about 9ft) and are best coupled with a small threadline reel loaded with 4kg line. As blackfish usually feed from mid water to the surface a long stemmed float is used to drift the bait around the fish holding area. A no. 6 to 10 sneck hook in green colour are ideal for blackfish.
Blackfish are primarily vegetarian so weed baits are the most effective although there are times when they can be caught on worms, yabbies or small pieces of peeled prawn. Cabbage weed found around the ocean rocks is best for blackfish on the lower reaches of the harbour while the long hair like weed found in the canals on the upper reaches is best for blackfish upstream. This same
weed, chopped finely and mixed with sand makes good burly.
Salmon and Tailor are two good pelagic sportfish that stay around for winter. Their full potential is realized when they are targeted with lures although both species will accept live and even cut baits.
Salmon regularly feed on the surface in large foaming schools that are easily visually located. They are not always easy to catch when they are like this but your best chances is to try flicking small lures or flies into the school and retrieve them rapidly. Id recommend no less than a 4 kg outfit as salmon are tenacious fighters. They are poor table fish and I’d recommend releasing them. By using heavier line you will effectively shorten the fight, giving the fish a better chance of survival when released.
Tailor are better eating providing they are bleed and iced immediately and eaten fresh. In summer its common to see tailor feeding on the surface like salmon but in winter they stay deep. The best way to locate them in winter is by trolling deep diving minnow lures around the headlines. My favourite lures are Tsunami minnows in the moderate to deep diving models. Tailor also respond well to live
baits fished in the deep holes during the day. Your Salmon tackle will also double up as a good tailor outfit.
When the fishing goes very quite Leatherjackets will usually save the day. They hang around the rocky shores, bridge and jetty pylons, marker buoy blocks and reefs.
Fresh squid and prawns are the best bait. The jackets mouth is very tiny so baits must be kept small and be used on small hooks. A no. 10 long shank is a good choice as it is important to stop the jackets teeth coming in contact with the line. They are not sharp but are very powerful and will snip even heavy line. Occasionally they will even snap the hook. The best rig is the paternoster. This rig is made by tying the sinker to the end of the line and then tying two evenly spaced loops in the line above it. A hook is then tied to each of these loops. This rig is fished straight below you.
The Leatherjackets bight is very slight so it will be necessary to use light gear in order to feel them.
Apart from being abundant their other big advantage is that they can be caught all day and at any tide.

October 2007

Despite very lousy winter weather the fishing overall wasn’t too bad. Lots of discolored water due to rain and big seas contributed to minimal john dory catches. This was more than compensated for with one of the best winter flathead runs I can remember and the fact that both salmon and Kings stayed feeding on top through middle harbour up until mid August.

After a lot of experimentation small slender bodied SP jigs turned out to be the key to success on the cold water flathead with the added bonus of salmon , kings and trevally by-catch. The success of tiny lures on big fish has recently been highlighted by the number big jewfish taken by fishos throwing small plastics aimed at bream and flatties , but the secrete isn’t new. When the tiny minnow style Darwin Dart hit the scene a few decades back, anglers targeting smaller species like jacks ,sarratoga and sooties , for which the lure was designed , often found them selves tight on some massive barra , fingermark and gt’s. This tiny lure quickly became the ‘secret weapon ‘ for a handful of switched on angles chasing big barra.
My own experiences with small lures include taking big jewfish on little plastics aimed at flatties , flatties so big that they could have inhaled my tiny bream jigs through their nostril , big kings inhaling 2inch stickbails aimed a fussy ‘eye’ feeding salmon , northern blue fin tuna to 10kg eating 15gm slices aimed at frigates and Jules Verne proportion cuttlefish eating a 1.5 squid jigs.
The obvious dilemma that presents itself here is that you are going to be throwing light lures with light tackle -- not the ideal scenario for big fish . Micro jigs are the most tackle specific lure fishing we can do . With most other types of lure fishing the range of tackle you can use is fairly broad. You can go barra luring with an egg beater , baitcaster or even an alvey . Many indigenous Australians very successfully lure fish with a handline. But with micro jigs you are limited to a very narrow spectrum of balanced eggbeater outfits.
The introduction of braid lines and braid specific rods and reels and the availability of tiny jigs are equally contributory to the rise of this style of fishing. Braid lines with the diameter of 1lb mono and the breaking strain of 10lb or the diameter of who knows what and the breaking strain of 6lb (actually breaking at almost double that ) allow us the spool capacity to land some pretty big fish on what would have traditionally been deemed ultra-light gear . The point Im making is that you are not going to land those big fish on the traditional mono that would be required to cast the ultra light jigs. Most of the time you are going to catch your target species but its nice to know , when a big fish takes off, that you have the line capacity to handle it.
The mistake Im often seeing made by guys wanting to get into micro jigging is buying the jigs and then trying to run them on their old lure outfit. You will have to accept the fact that if you want to seriously get into this style of fishing you will need to go into the tackle shop with enough cash for the lures and a new outfit.
Fish , both big and small , often choose to feed on small prey. Jewie Jim will use his sounder to find upstream whitebait clouds in order to locate winter jew and then micro jig for them. Many of the fish he lands have been clearly feeding on the tiny fish.
Its hard to say why salmon for example will spend all day feeding on bait that is no bigger than a pin or why a 10kg jewfish would go to the effort to get a belly full of whitebait. One theory includes the need to vary their diet but most likely its simply just that they target the most readily available and abundant food source at the time.
The old adage ‘ you will catch a big fish on a small bait but you wont catch a small fish on a big bait’ can be equally applied to lures.

Spring is in the air but unfortunately not in the water . There’s always a lag between water temps and land temps and water temps will remain cool for at least another month or so. The salmon run should be well and truly on by October and the first schools are already starting to congregate at north head now . They will most likely be fussy on lure size so this will be a good opportunity to put the above mentioned ‘micro jig’ gear into action. Tiny (1 or 2 inch ) unweighted stickbaits usually do the trick .
Blackfish are on fire at the moment and will only get better up till December. The good news is , that after a prolonged scarcity due to a rough winter , the weed is back in force. Cabbage is the weed of choice on the lower harbour and you can get plenty on any of the ocean rock platforms.
Trevally have been around in good numbers and we have been getting them on both bait and small jigs while targeting flathead. Their numbers will increase through till Xmas until the warm water comes in . Trevs will often be found under the salmon schools so its worth occasionally letting your jigs fall well below the salmon before starting your retrieve.

New size limits

New size and bag limits apply from 1st September and of interest to harbour fishermen are the following ;

King fish 65cm . This will have a substantial impact on the numbers of fish taken . I estimate that 70% of all king fish taken in the harbour will now be undersize and NSW Fisheries have clearly gone overboard on this one . A reduction of the bag limit to 3 fish would have been a much better option and everyone I have spoken to agrees. The only up-side is that this size also applies to commercial fishos .

Samson fish and Amberjack have been grouped together in a bag limit of 5 total . So in other words you can keep a bag of 5 mixed Sampson’s and amberjack ie; 3 amberjack and 2 Sampson’s etc . This will have very little impact on rec fishos.

Luderick (blackfish) have been raised to 27cm . Once again a bad call by Fisheries as it is very rare to catch a luderick under 27cm but quite common to catch over 20. With a little bit of research any numbskull could tell you that a better conservation option would be to leave the size at 25cm and decrease the bag limit to 10.

Bream and tarwine have been grouped into a combined bag limit of 20. ie 18 bream and 2 tarwine. Once again this is a token measure only and of little conservation value.

Trevally have a size limit of 30cm where they previously had none. This will have little impact on fishos as a trev under 30 cm would have normally been released anyway. As a conservation measure a lowering of the bag limit down to 10 would be more obvious.

Flounder and sole have now got a size of 25 cm and a combined bag of 20 where before they had neither. Once again a complete waste of time . Find me some one who has ever caught 20 flounder in one session .

Overall the revised size and bag limits , as a conservation method , are a complete waste of time. A much better alternative would have been to get some more Fisheries offices, in the field, policing the old regulations.

August Report 2007

Its been a lousy winter with back to back bad weather , colder than average temperatures both in the water and out and relentless big seas. Fortunately , on the occasional good day that we have got out , the fishing has been exceptionally good.
Blackfish have been around in good numbers but getting a decent supply of weed for bait has been difficult . All the rain combined with the big swell pounding the rocks has left most of our usually reliable spots bare of the preferred cabbage weed. The best spots for the luderic have been in the lower reaches near Manly and on the south side near Vaucluse.

It’s a little known secret that morwong move into the lower harbour in the cooler water months and can often be taken in good numbers with the right technique. They particularly like the deep water rocky points right on the spot where the rocks hit the sand . A couple of reliable spots are Flagstaff , Fairlight pt , Dobroyd reef and Bottle and Glass pt. They are suckers for prawns or fresh squid fished near or on the bottom. I first discovered them while fishing for leatherjackets with a two dropper paternoster rig baited with small bits of prawn . This technique still remains the most successful. Because you will be using small hooks you will need to go very lightly when fighting them and you are guaranteed a great fight on the light gear required to catch them. The bonus of this technique is that you will also snare plenty of jackets , bream and trevally. Iced quickly , filleted and skinned and then pan fried , they make a delicious feed.

Salmon have been the big surprise of this season with good numbers of them continuing to feed on the surface throughout middle harbour and Rushcutters bay. These are fish that have stayed in middle harbour from summer , I can only assume to take advantage of the unusually large quantities of baitfish . Salmon are common near the heads at this time of year but this is the first time I have encounter them , in large numbers , so far up stream. They are taking metals , trolled minnows and flies around the general area of Seaforth .
Also unusual for this time of year are numbers of kings that have hung around in the cold water. You will always pick up a few kings this time of year fishing deep but these fish are feeding right up on the surface and over the flats in water less than 14 deg . We have picked up a few while bouncing SP’s along the sand for flatties in less than 1 m of water.

Flathead have been responding well to plastics bounced along the bottom on most of the lower harbour flats. Rushcutters , Balmoral , north harbour and Tailors bay flats have been the hot spots.

New DVD
If you find yourself stuck inside with the bad weather , you could do a lot worse than get yourself a copy of Al McGlashan’s new DVD ‘Strikezone Billfishing’ . For me, the outstanding feature was the underwater footage of blue , black and striped marlin and even a sailfish belting baits and teasers. It presents a whole new perspective on how billfish behave before and during taking a bait or lure. All the action takes place off Port Stephens and is loaded with action both below and above the water. Aside from the hot action the program contains a wealth of tips and information , including working the baits , fighting techniques and the use of the latest technology like GPS and sounders. Definitely worth a look.

June/ July Report 2007

Im confident that by the time you read this all the pelagic action will be well and truly over despite the whole season running late. The salmon shouldn’t be too far away but in the mean time its time to turn some attention to that reliable winter stand-by -- the Luderick
The tricky bit to blackfish fishing is in the control of the rig. Light floats , long drops , wind resistant baits and lots of sinkers add up to a rig that demands constant attention. There's two ways to go and they both have their good and bad points.
You can opt for the running float rig. This consists of a standard long stemmed blackfish float that is free to run on the line. It's stopped a certain distance from the hook by a split shot and stopped from running all the way up the line by a 'stopper'. The 'stopper'can be a piece of light string tied to the line or any one of a number of commercially produced rubber 'stoppers'. The main criteria for a stopper is that it clamps tightly enough to the main line to stop the float sliding any further than you want it to but still must be loose enough that it can be moved up or down in order to change the depth of the drop. It must also be able to be wound through the runners ,sometimes even onto the reel and cast back out again without snagging. The main advantages of this rig is that the length of the drop from the rod tip can be as short as a couple of feet and the maximum depth of the drop below the float is infinite. This makes it an easy rig to cast and can be cast further than the alternative. The disadvantage is that it is prone to tangling due to the fact that the wind resistant bait is very close to the float during the cast.
The alternative rig consists of a fixed float . A split shot clamped above and below the float restricts its movement up or down the line. This means that the float is fixed on the line at the full depth you are fishing. The problem with this rig is that if you are fishing deep at lets say ten feet or more you will have that full ten feet of line hanging down from the rod tip. As you would imagine this would be difficult to handle. The big advantage with this rig is that is much less prone to tangling during the cast because the bait is so far from the float . This is the method I use most often. Obviously if you are fishing more than about twelve feet then this rig is not applicable , but this does not occur very often.
Weighting of the float is critical. Most floats consist of a thin stem with a stream lined float of either cork or foam about two thirds of the way up the stem. The float must be weighted so that the cork or foam section is under water leaving just the one third of the stem above the float showing. The float is weighted with split shot , running sinkers, strip lead around the stem of the float or a combination of all of these.
Whether conditions dictate the size and weight of the float you will use. In windy rough conditions you will need a big heavy float and in calm conditions the smaller the float the better. A quill float makes an ideal still water float.
The rods used in blackfish fishing are long and soft for a number of reasons. They are long because of the need to handle the long drop often used under the float as described above. The extra length also helps to lift the 'belly' out of the line when you go to strike. The term 'Belly' refers to an ark in the line between the rod tip and the float often created by a cross current or wind. On a long drift , the belly can become so severe that the strike only serves to lift out the belly and sometimes never reaches the float. The rod must be soft because the blackfish's mouth and the hooks used are small . This combined with a stiff rod would pull the hook clean out of the fishes mouth. The long rod offers the cushion needed to prevent this happening during the fishes strong lunges.
The choice of reel is up to you . Ive seen egg-beaters , baitcasters and centerpins used successfully. Centerpins are still used on a traditional basis rather than on their practicality. If you opt for a centerpin then go for a side cast such as those made by Alvey . I use egg beaters as they offer open face casting, a fast retrieve which is important when picking up 'belly' before striking and the ability to feed line smoothly to the float to allow it to drift.
For the smaller river blackfish a six pound line and a no. 8 or 10 hook will suffice. The big ocean bronzies will require heavier tackle. A no. six hook would be more appropriate along with a ten or twelve pound line.

If you fish for blackfish in the harbour for long enough you will no doubt encounter the mighty surgeon fish . They are taken using the same methods as Luderick but you might consider upping the tackle a bit if you intend to fish specifically for surgeon and as mentioned before they are location specific . They are no where as abundant or wide spread as luderick but they obviously do mix. Deep water bridge and jetty pylons are prime locations as are along deep reef edges in selected locations in the lower harbour. When prospecting for them I would strongly recommend fishing a cabbage bait close to the bottom (as well as your standard float rig) off a Paternoster rig as They are caught in water as shallow as 10ft but are much more commonly in the 20 to 40 ft range . Given that we rarely present weed baits in these sort of depths its not surprising that surgeon fish are an uncommon capture for recreational fishos.

Mid March Report
This season is by far the best Kingfish run I can ever remember. Not only are there swarms of small fish in the 55 to 65cm bracket , there’s also heaps of bigger ones in the 70 to 90 range.
The fish can be found all the way from Goat island through to the heads and then all the way back up middle harbour as far as bantry bay.
There’s more Kings on the surface than I can remember and the most notable point is their willingness to take nearly any style of lure. In past years they have been particularly fussy with lure choice , taking mainly stickbaits and flies. This year they have been scoffing anything including trolled minnows , cast metal slugs and most styles of soft plastics . The other notable thing this season is the amount of time that they have stayed feeding on the surface . In past years they have usually settled in to the deeper structure by Christmas . This season they are still on top as I write this in early February .

If you go to the trouble to learn to catch squid you will always catch a lot of kings and that is the only way , I know of , to do it . If you go to the trouble of going to the fish markets and buying very fresh squid you will catch a few kings, sometimes.

Big Kingies do like whole live squid but small ones don’t. Big kingies will just as happily take a squid head . So by using a squid head you will get lots of big and small kingies. If you use live squid you will get fewer fish but they will be bigger on average. A whole squid gut is not only an exceptionally good bait but it is also the best burly that you can use for kings. Its all about the guts. Use the guts and especially the ink to entice the fish You can burst the ink sac before you send the bait down or you can let the first king burst it for you.The gut is always the first bait to go which must mean it’s the best bait. Strips of squid cut from the tube are good baits particularly after the guts and heads have got the school in a frenzy. Rub it all in Ink
Kingies mostly hold from mid water down so obviously this is a good place to present your bait

High tide and the first two hours of the run out ,early morning and late afternoon is when you will find then really feeding . That’s also a good time to catch squid. You wont have to worry too much about tides or time of day it you pay close attention to what I said earlier about the bait the guts and the ink. Kings are easily turned on and then off again if you know what buttons to push. The worst thing you can do is to keep presenting something that has been rejected , in the same manner. A school of following kings can be turned into a school of taking kings by something as simple as changing the presentation angle, . This applies to both lures and bait. If they follow a lure or show interest in a bait for more than three times without taking it don’t present it again.
They are the exact opposite to barra in this sense. Barra can be teased into striking where kings can be teased out of striking. They are stubborn bastards and the more you shove it in their face the more they’ll reject it
Change lure size , let it sink , change presentation angle or best of all go away , try another spot and come back in half an hour.

One final but equally important tip is to fish with your reel in gear and with your normal fighting drag. Don’t feed kingies any line when they take your bait . Once a take is felt lower the rod down and move with the fish. Once the rod reaches the water its time to strike.

Bonito have also made a big comeback this season and like the kings have been roaming well up stream as far as the harbour bridge and Bantry bay. We have been doing well trolling Tsunami minnows or casting metal jigs. A couple of spots worth a throw are , across the front of middle head , Kirribilli point and Pickering point in middle harbour.
They fire up after the tide changes.

March Report

Sad news for Sydney harbour fishos this month with the collapse of the western wedding cake channel marker. This iconic watermark had been a popular and productive spot for harbour anglers dating back to the turn of the century. Old mate of 1910 would have pulled boatloads of bream , jew and ‘nuisance’ kingies from these towering twin channel markers with city views void of both harbour bridge and opera house . Both cakes , the eastern near Watsons bay and the western near Clifton gardens, were due for replacement this year and its my guess that maintenance was allowed to slip overdue. Unfortunately the western cake was also the big fish producer of the two being nearer to the deeper western channel. We pulled hundreds of kings over the years . It was also a top producer of Dory , blackfish , bream and trevally. The wreckage was cleared , much to my disappointment and a modern buoy style marker now replaces the old cake. Im not sure whether they were scheduled to be replaced with replicas or modern markers but , given time , either will produce fish again. In my opinion they should be replaced as original. Along with the harbour bridge , the various headland gun emplacements , garden island , the quarantine station , sow and pigs reef and the opera house, they form the corner stones of Sydney harbours character.

On the fishing front things have improved dramatically with the return of the warm water. A horrible , unseasonably cold current flooded the coast around Sydney just before Christmas plummeting water temps down to 16 deg and causing a total shutdown. Its improving every day now and should settle into a great season.
Kings are in plague proportions . The close coastal reefs , headlands and right through to the mangrove reaches of middle harbour are thick with them. There’s some bigger fish up to 13 kg around the heads , particularly the quarantine station , but otherwise the majority of them range from just legal 60cm to quality fish of 80cm or 4kg. There’s lots of kings working the surface around Clifton gardens and Rushcutters bay but by the time you read this they should have settled around the marker buoys and deeper structure.

Flatties have been great this year and their obviously increased numbers could be linked to the removal of the pro fishermen from the harbour. Rose bay is one major beneficiary of the commercial ban as they used to hit it relentlessly due to its shallow structure free bottom. We’ve been nailing heaps of fish between 40 and 80 cm on tsunami swim shads around the blue hole near the Catalina restaurant. Rushcutters bay continues to fire and is a great spot for both boat and shore based anglers. There’s a series of holes in the sandbank that runs along the break wall on Darling pt. They are easy to find , just look for the darker water. Balmoral and north harbour are also worth a look..

There’s still plenty of jewfish around the harbours wrecks and reefs but summer fish tend to be smaller than winter fish. Working the pylons at night on Roseville , fig tree , gladesville and Silverwater bridges with surface and shallow running lures is productive. Fishing the holes at blues pt , the spit , Putney and middle harbour with fresh squid baits on the turn of the high tide should produce the goods.

January Report
My first ever decent fish that I caught as a kid was a bream taken on a piece of bread off a water front park on the Manning at Taree . We had pulled up for lunch with the family on a trip home from Coffs Harbour and , like most kids , wouldn’t eat the crust on my sandwich and proceeded to pick it off in small pieces and toss them into the water. It wasn’t long till I had a boiling mass of bream at my feet going nuts over the crust. I bolted back to the car , grabbed a handline and within a few minutes had a nice bream of about 2 lb flapping on the grass. Up until a few days ago I had always considered it to be a bit of a novelty but all that changed with a few trips rock fishing with northern beaches legend Big Al Bellissimo. I rang Al to see if he would do a segment on my new DVD ‘Local Knowledge’ and he suggested “how about something using bread bait”.
Generally the key to successful fishing is in sourcing the freshest most natural baits and , equally important , identifying out target species primary food source. So what’s the go with bread ? Its processed human food made from a substance that has no resemblance to any natural food found in the sea. Not only will fish eat it but , at times, they will go absolutely nuts over it even when more conventional baits have failed. Al has taken bream , drummer (both silver and black) , luderic , salmon , kingfish , trevally , bonito and a whole heap of other non angling targets. Ive caught bream , flathead , mullet , gar and small jewfish in the estuary. It seems like that there aren’t many fish that wont eat it and even more bazaar most species , even bottom feeders will rise to the surface to take a floating bread. Fishing with Al we pulled luderic , 4 bream including one to 2kg and a 3 kg black drummer in one session . All of them slurped the bread off the surface. Al’s technique is to burley heavily with bread and then fish with small pieces of bread , unweighted under a small bobby cork . Putting the bread on the hook is the tricky bit and it has to be done right if you are to be successful . The crust is striped off a slice of white bread . It has to be white as multigrain falls apart too quickly. Then he selects a piece about 5cm square and squeezes one end of it round the hook forming a dense dough but being careful to leave the other end fluffy . This achieves a bait that stays on the hook once wet but , due to the fluffy airated end , still has enough buoyancy to stay afloat. He has tried sinking baits but gets best results when the bait stays afloat. Its visual fishing as you nearly always get to see your bait taken off the top.

The harbour is firing . While Kings are not in big numbers yet , the average size is way up . We are averaging 80cm fish and there have been plenty caught and sighted at 1m. I even heard from a reliable source that there was a school of about 6 kings over 1m swimming around the Roseville boat ramp. Up stream locations are working better at the moment as is usual, for this time of year . Try Middle harbour and the area around fort Denison with fresh squid which I might add are hard to catch at the moment .

Big schools of salmon are still feeding around the heads but are still hard to catch . The water temp has just hit 20 so they should be a bit easier by the time you read this.

There are some whopper tailor on the troll at Rushcutters with a few kings mixed in with them . The kings generally wont take the lures we are throwing at the tailor but will nail a fly or stickbait.

Our luck continues on big jewfish with another 50lber from the harbour . My regular customer Josh Reynolds landed the beast on a Penn 750 spinfisher and 40lb braid within sight of the opera house and you guessed it – right on the turn of the high tide on fresh squid. .

November Report
The salmon are on the boil and are moving further into the harbour every week . They have been spotted up around Rose bay and we caught a few at Fairlight pt but the main concentrations are still near the heads.
Bonito have made a welcome return after some very sparse years and are in good numbers around south head . They haven’t hit the surface yet but can be located by trolling deep divers or letting your metal lures sink below the salmon schools. If things go to plan , both the salmon and bonito should be working the surface well up into the harbour and be taking any size lure by the time you read this.

If you want to consistently catch jewies you must crack the formula down to every last detail. Unlike most other fish you wont get by just having half of it solved. A month or so back I reported being involved in the capture of Jewie Jim Siriakas’s 70lber monster jew on the Hawkesbury. One month later I went back with my mate Jobby to put the formula to the test and came up with another 70lber . The sense of deja vu was almost spooky. We put exactly the same bait in exactly the same spot on exactly the same moon phase to the day , and the fish took the bait dead on slack water , as before .
Kingfish , for example , have a high metabolism so they are hungrier more often than Jewfish . This gives us the leeway of being able to get some parts of the kingie formula wrong -- sometimes. In other words you simply wont get as many shots at jews as you will at kings and therefore must work harder at filling the jewfish formula to achieve consistent results.
Im not going to lay out the whole formula for you because ,
1. Ill get necked by the guys who have but in the hard yards and
2 , the exhilaration of your first jewfish comes from having put in the hard yards your self .

Here is a few starting points .
1. Big baits on the bottom , preferably squid
2. They are a year round fish so don’t neglect the winter months.
3. The week leading up to the new and full moon are prime times. There are prime days within these weeks but you will have to work them out yourself. The week after the full moon is a waste of time.
4. All of my biggest fish have been caught on slack water of the full tide but the last hour of the run up and the first hour of the run out are good times.
5. They prefer major points , bends , holes and structure like bridge pylons and wrecks.

The flatties have fired up with the warm weather. Flatties are well distributed right throughout the harbour from the uppermost reaches to the heads. The lower reaches around the heads are dominated by the smaller sand flathead commonly encountered offshore with the occasional dusky thrown in especially when using larger live baits.
Up stream is the exclusive domain of the dusky who despite growing to considerably larger sizes is comfortable in as little as one foot of water.
Flatties have a reputation as being a poor sport fish which holds true when using bait fishing techniques but can be totally disregarded when they are targeted with lures. Firstly the skill ,thrill and anticipation involved in hunting flatties on lures is little different to that of any other predatory species including the tropical glamour fish. Although the fight from a lure caught flathead bears little resemblance to that of the northern mangrove inhabitants it is a huge improvement to that of a flathead caught on bait. In the clearer water often found in the upper reaches of middle harbour and lane cove river there's the added appeal of the visual thrill of actually seeing the hooked fish in action.
Some of the best areas in the harbour to lure fish for flatties include ; The shallows of Rose Bay , The upper reaches of middle harbour, The entire length of Lane Cove River, Iron cove and the Parramatta river from Gladesville bridge upstream.
The best times to work these areas is the two hours before low tide and one hour after it starts to come back in. Its even better if this tide occurs early morning or late afternoon.
Flathead congregate around channel edges , rock bars , weed banks and sand\mud bank drop-offs. Any area where water is channeled off mangrove stands or flats on a falling tide is well worth a throw.
A single handed spinning or light baitcasting outfit loaded with three or four kg line will handle any flathead provided you use a more substantial trace of about ten kg.
Flathead will hit almost anything that swims past their face . With the emphasis on presenting the lure close to the fish , depth capabilities are the major consideration when choosing a lure for flatties.
Considering you will be fishing depths ranging from one to fifteen feet you'll need quite a large selection of lures should you opt for diving minnow style lures.
A more versatile and possibly more effective option is to carry two types of soft plastic lures . For the shallows ( 1to 4 feet) a stick bait like the 'slugo' are deadly on flatties especially around weed. To cover all depths its hard to go past a soft plastic on a jig head like Kokoda or Storms.

Flounder are a welcome bycatch of flattie luring and generally favour the same areas although prefer the deeper sand banks. If you would like to specifically target flounder drop down in lure size to something in the vicinity of 5cm.

OCTOBER REPORT
Summer seems to have come early this season with some scorching hot days and unseasonably warm water . As a result the fishing has been sensational with all the winter fish sparking up and some of the summer fish kicking in early.
Salmon have been thick around the heads venturing in as far as Manly wharf at times and under them has been bonito , tailor and even the occasional Kingfish. Bonito and tailor feeding on the surface is something that we would normally not expect to see till November.
The bream have started to bite and flatties have been nailing SP’s bounced along the bottom in Balmoral , North harbour and Rose bay.
The only downside is that its erratic with crazy bubbling schools one day and nothing the next but this situation will improve as it warms up even further.

Fortunately the most reliable of all the harbours fish , the blackfish , have filled in the gaps when all else goes quiet. Top spots have been Fairlight pt , Clontarf , Bottle and Glass and Sow and Pigs. There is a few Surgeon fish mixed in amongst them so it might be a good idea to up class your tackle a bit.
Luderick are still quite prolific having survived the ravages of commercial fishing and pollution a lot better than most other species. They fight well, are great to eat and are found through a range of habitats that include the most tranquil estuarine reaches to harsh ocean rock environment. They are well within reach of shore based anglers , inexpensive to set up for and are a year round proposition.

They require specific technique that can take considerable time to learn , but once mastered the fish flow freely.
Here's a bit of information on tackling up for blackfish that might help short cut the initial learning curve.
The tricky bit to blackfish fishing is in the control of the rig. Light floats , long drops , wind resistant baits and lots of sinkers add up to a rig that demands constant attention. There's two ways to go and they both have their good and bad points.
You can opt for the running float rig. This consists of a standard long stemmed blackfish float that is free to run on the line. It's stopped a certain distance from the hook by a split shot and stopped from running all the way up the line by a 'stopper'. The 'stopper'can be a piece of light string tied to the line or any one of a number of commercially produced rubber 'stoppers'. The main criteria for a stopper is that it clamps tightly enough to the main line to stop the float sliding any further than you want it to but still must be loose enough that it can be moved up or down in order to change the depth of the drop. It must also be able to be wound through the runners ,sometimes even onto the reel and cast back out again without snagging. The main advantages of this rig is that the length of the drop from the rod tip can be as short as a couple of feet and the maximum depth of the drop below the float is infinite. This makes it an easy rig to cast and can be cast further than the alternative. The disadvantage is that it is prone to tangling due to the fact that the wind resistant bait is very close to the float during the cast. Its common with this rig for the line and bait to tangle around the float.

The alternative rig consists of a fixed float . A split shot clamped above and below the float restricts its movement up or down the line. This means that the float is fixed on the line at the full depth you are fishing. The problem with this rig is that if you are fishing deep at lets say ten feet or more you will have that full ten feet of line hanging down from the rod tip. As you would imagine this would be difficult to handle. The big advantage with this rig is that is much less prone to tangling during the cast because the bait is so far from the float . This is the method I use most often. Obviously if you are fishing more than about twelve feet then this rig is not applicable , but this does not occur very often.
Weighting of the float is critical. Most floats consist of a thin stem with a stream lined float of either cork or foam about two thirds of the way up the stem. The float must be weighted so that the cork or foam section is under water leaving just the one third of the stem above the float showing. The float is weighted with split shot , running sinkers, strip lead around the stem of the float or a combination of all of these.
Whether conditions dictate the size and weight of the float you will use. In windy rough conditions you will need a big heavy float and in calm conditions the smaller the float the better. A quill float makes an ideal still water float.

The rods used in blackfish fishing are long and soft for a number of reasons. They are long because of the need to handle the long drop often used under the float as described above. The extra length also helps to lift the 'belly' out of the line when you go to strike. The term 'Belly' refers to an ark in the line between the rod tip and the float often created by a cross current or wind. On a long drift , the belly can become so severe that the strike only serves to lift out the belly and sometimes never reaches the float. The rod must be soft because the blackfish's mouth and the hooks used are small . This combined with a stiff rod would pull the hook clean out of the fishes mouth. The long rod offers the cushion needed to prevent this happening during the fishes strong lunges.
The choice of reel is up to you . Ive seen egg-beaters , baitcasters and center pins used successfully. Center pins are still used on a traditional basis rather than on their practicality. If you opt for a center pin then go for a side cast such as those made by Alvey . I use egg beaters as they offer open face casting, a fast retrieve which is important when picking up 'belly' before striking and the ability to feed line smoothly to the float to allow it to drift.
For the smaller river blackfish a six pound line and a no. 8 or 10 hook will suffice. The big ocean bronzies will require heavier tackle. A no. six hook would be more appropriate along with a ten or twelve pound line.

Gelspun lines are credited for their non stretch properties. There are situations when low stretch is good but not when blackfishing. Non stretch lines do have a reputation for tearing hooks out of fish -- a problem already prevalent with blackfish. A compensation is the fact that gelspun lines float. This is a huge advantage when picking up 'belly' as it is much easier to pick up a line off the surface compared to one that has sunk, as do monofilaments. Gel spun line makes an excellent blackfish line in experienced hands holding soft rods.

September 2006

Surgeon Fish

The harbour has been producing some sensational Surgeon fish action lately so Ill take this opportunity to shed some light on this mystery fish .
Despite their abundance they are rarely ever seen by rec fishos. There are a few reasons for this . Firstly they are weed eaters which limits their availability to luderick fishermen. They have very robust grazing teeth which will nip easily through the light mono leaders used by luderic fishers . In fact I estimate that half of all the Surgeons we hook will nip straight through the leader virtually the second you put the pressure on . To make matters worse , if they are lip hooked and are unable to bite through , they are dirty fighters , as bad as any King or GT , and half of them will run you into the structure and bust you off. Id bet that most of the bust offs that luderick fishos attribute to drummer are actually Surgeons. They are rarely caught by ocean rock luderick fishers and seem to have a preference for the quieter waters of the harbours and bays. However my friend Jack Hannan , who spends a lot of time snorkeling , tells me that they are common off the ocean rocks but are generally in deeper water out wide putting them out reach of the average luderick rig.
Given that all the surgeons we have caught have been on standard luderick methods and baits with a few luderick mixed in amongst the catches , it appears that it is very much a location thing. Ive pulled hundreds of luderick from sow and pigs , the wedding cakes and other locations without ever getting a stray surgeon. The only hint I can give you in this respect is to look for either whiterock (bald sandstone boulders grazed clean by urchins) or vertical structures like sharp reef edges or deep water jetties.
They are a mighty powerful fish with one kilo specimens a real challenge on standard blackfish gear. According to The Australian Museum web site ‘ Sawtail Surgeonfish (Prionurus microlepidotus ) can be recognized by its grey to brownish coloration and the row of five to six black scutes on the rear of the body. It grows to 70 cm in length.
Adults are found mostly on coastal rocky reefs. Juveniles are usually seen in estuaries and coastal bays.
This species occurs in tropical and warm temperate waters of the Western Pacific.
In Australia it is known from northern Queensland to southern New South Wales, plus Lord Howe Island. ‘

The tail scutes are scalpel sharp which is , I imagine , where their name came from and the flesh is pearl white and delicious. The dorsal and anal fin spines are hideously sharp and inflict a painful wound . They have the mouth almost identical to a luderick (even in tooth structure) and their skin is closest to shark skin than anything else.
As for catching them , all as I can say is that we did exactly what we normally do for luderick. You might consider upping the tackle a bit if you intend to fish specifically for surgeon and as mentioned before they are location specific . Try long shank hooks , no.6 but make sure to cover the entire shank with weed. They are no where as abundant or wide spread as luderick but they obviously do mix. When prospecting for them I would strongly recommend fishing a cabbage bait close to the bottom (as well as your standard float rig) off a Paternoster rig as they mostly sit deeper then luderick . They are caught in water as shallow as 10ft but are much more commonly in the 20 to 40 ft range . Given that we rarely present weed baits in these sort of depths its not surprising that surgeon fish are an uncommon capture for recreational fishos. Who knows what else we might discover fishing deep weed baits. Red morwong and Old maids (Scats) , both vegetarians , are two very real possibilities.
Although they are described as a tropical and warm water fish all the ones I have caught have been in winter water temps of 17 degrees. There is no size limit for surgeon but there is a bag of 5 , mainly in order to protect them from spearfishos.

Massive Jewfish

Jewie Jim Siarakas is a genuine jewfish master. His accuracy in predicting the fishes movements is phenomenal to the point where he forecast the capture of a 50lb plus fish down to three days in August and came through with a 70lber. This wasn’t just a lucky call either. Over three separate days fishing with Jim this winter season we caught 4 fish including 4 , 10 , and 30kg specimens . Given that one of the days was a rite-off due to atrocious weather , that adds up to a comfortable average
I rang Jim back in April to see if he would be happy to help us with a jewfish segment on our new DVD with the tall order of a 50 plus fish . His reply was simple and straight to the point. He nominated a three day period in august and said that we would get the fish most likely on the first day.
We arrived at the well known Hawkesbury location at sunrise on the first day and within two hours had a 70lber boated , on film , by 8am.
Ironically I guided Jim to his first jewfish 10 years ago on one of my charters and now here I was being guided by him. That first fish back in 1996 started Jim on the 10 year obsession that is required to achieve his level of success on one of anglings most challenging species. According to Jim the first step is to throw out the window everything you thought you knew about jewfish .
The first and biggest misconception being that they are a warm season fish. “Naturally if you are not fishing for them in winter you are not going to catch one “.
Big baits is his second hint . We are talking whole 1kg squid or mullet on the bottom.
Jim is adamant about the use of burly , cat food , but it has to be on the bottom. “Burly doesn’t bring the jews but it brings the fish that jews feed on”.
Look for the white bait concentrations . In some situations mid sized Jews will gorge indiscriminately through white bait clouds . He has witnessed boated jews coughing up handfuls of white bait and while this isn’t in line with the big bait big fish tip it is certainly a crucial drawcard for jewie lure throwers.
See Jewie Jim in action on the DVD titled ‘Local Knowledge’ out by Christmas or early new year.

Soft Plastic Special

Why are soft plastics such a phenomenally successful lure. What is it about these lures that they have opened up whole new fisheries on traditionally ‘non lure ‘ species like jew and bream and increased dramatically the success rate of traditional lure takers like kings and flatties. It is quite possible now for a skilled sp user to do at least as good someone using bait and this is something that has generally not been possible in the past.
Here’s a few of my thoughts on the subject

Size

The elimination of trebles on plastics is a major consideration because although most hard bodied lure manufactures give their size specs to the length of the lure body they do not including treble and bib length. There’s no problem with this from a sales point of view but from the fishes point of view I have no doubt that they can see trebles and bibs and that they contribute to the overall size perception of the lure. So while a hard bodied might be specd. at 3cm the actual size to the fish , when you add bib and trebles, is more like 5cm. Generally a 3cm SP is actually 3cm. You can cast a 3cm sp with lead head but , even if they existed , you could not cast a hard bodied that measured an actual 3cm.
What about tiny metal slugs that actually measure 3cm ? These have been around for years and while they certainly fit into the critical size bracket their sink rate and snag prone treble makes them unsuitable.
When it comes to fish like bream and whiting size is critical.

Silent

This is just speculation on my part and its almost impossible to prove ( as with the colour debate) but I believe that the ‘quietness’ of these lures is a major player on some species. However , this theory is based on throwing lures at Kings and other pelagic for at least 150 days a year for the last 15 years (aprox ; 9000 kings) so it does carry some credibility. Someone is sure to remind me of a time when they caught a King on a rattler but in my experience you will get kings on a SP to minnow ratio of about 50:1. Similarly you will pick up a bream using a 10 cm lure but when you know that you will get 10 times more bream on a 3cm lure then the choice becomes pretty clear. There’s always exceptions to every rule in fishing and someone will contradict your theory with a story about a freak capture but my advice is that if you want consistent results then stick with the averages.
Fresh water and estuary species are probably exempt from this theory as they feed on a whole host of critters, some of which are noisy like crabs , bass yabbies and terrestrial critters like cicadas and beetles. Fish like kings and other pelagics whose diet is primarily soft bodied bait fish and squid are not used to hearing their prey click, rattle and hum. SP’s in general but particularly stick baits are silent through the water. A hard bodied lure doesn’t have to have added rattles to become highly audible underwater. Rings and trebles make more than enough racket to shy off a noise sensitive fish. Of course Sp’s aren’t the only silent lures availably . Fixed hook jobs like the old Smiths jigs , flies and feathers all carry the same silent attributes and surprise surprise they are also top King producers.

Soft

Its been touted for years that the soft bodied feel to plastics is a major attribute in relation to fish biting down and holding on longer giving the angler more time to react. This is all very true but I think that there more to it than just this critical point of impact . SP’s are the closest lure we have to the feel and consistency of most of a fishes natural prey. So it would probably be fair to assume that when a SP bounces off a snag or hits the bottom it will have a similar sound/feel to real prey. Furthermore the ‘vibes’ put off by the undulations of a plastic moving through the water will be closer to that of a natural baitfish .

Depth capabilities

The positive attributes of plastics just keep rolling in and their depth capabilities are just another one. Once again metal slices can be worked deep but their sink rate and clunky vibe make them unattractive . Plastics can be used to keep contact with the bottom all the way back to the boat or shore . What Im talking about here is bouncing the bottom , not just staying close and there seems to be a huge difference. Hitting the bottom and then taking off again seems to trigger an aggressive strike response . Maybe it’s the puff of mud as the lure takes off of maybe its just a natural wounded baitfish characteristic , who knows but this is the first time in fishing history where we have bounced the bottom properly in water as deep as 40 ft .

Subtlety

With the exception of the very rare suspending bait (neutral buoyant minnow) a minnow lure will rise to the surface if you stop cranking . This , by default , takes it out of the strike zone and creates an unnatural presentation . If you stop cranking a metal lure it falls rapidly to the bottom and , once again , this is not conducive to a natural presentation. Plastics have the advantage that you can add or subtract weight so that they do anything in between sinking fast or floating but most importantly they can be weighted for neutral buoyancy. In an uncomplicated but not entirely technically correct definition , this means that they can be suspended mid water. This is very good and natural and is exactly what the swim bladder of most fish is designed to do. You can see the advantage of being able to imitate this. A wounded baitfish does not rapidly sink to the bottom or float to the surface when it stops swimming --- it suspends.
The extra benefit of this natural presentation is our ability to hold the lure in the strike zone. A well weighted plastic can be allowed to sink to the required depth (even though this may take some patience) and then worked as slowly as you want without rising or sinking out of the strike zone. A sharp flick will educed an erratic dart from the lure but then you can do nothing for 10 seconds and be sure that the lure is still in the zone.

Scent

Plastics , with their porous skin , optional ‘pockets’ and ability to ‘cook’ additives into the mix , lend themselves very well to scenting. The new Storms have a hole right down through the middle so that you can soak a piece of cotton wool in scent and jam it in to create a trail that will sustain for many hours. If you doubt that plastics are porous then try leaving one in water for a few days.
Scenting is an obvious advantage but the challenge in the future will be to determine at which point a lure becomes a bait. Im surprised that this hasn’t already become an issue on the tournament circuit. . Take for example a Berkley power bait , I know for sure that fish will eat these lures ?? even if they are tossed out on a hook and left to sit on the bottom without any retrieve at all . Is it a lure or a bait? . This issue will be further exacerbated by the manufactures claim that they are biodegradable. This may not seem a big deal to the average fisho but when you consider the five figure prize money now creeping into tournaments , you can see why this will have to be defined shortly . Maybe the definition could include a clause as to whether a fish could derive sustenance from the product as , after all , anything else is a deception as per the definition of a ‘lure’

Hook size

A single hook point is easier to set than two points of a treble and a wide gape hook gets a better bite than a small one . The hook size of a soft plastic is always bigger than an equivalent sized trebled lure . This means that they are easier to set and that they will hold better . This equates to less missed strikes and less pulled hooks. An upward riding hook as those found on most sinking SP’s will snag up less on the fall into timber snags and on the bottom . With well designed bottom bouncing plastics the upward riding hook offers better exposure when a fish picks a lure up off the bottom.

Hits on the fall

Whether it’s a natural buoyant stick bait sinking horizontally or a grub or paddle tail fluttering from water pressure on the way down , most plastics are ‘working’ before you ever turn the reel handle. This can often compensate for bad retrieve techniques. This means that , short of just leaving your lure sitting on the bottom, you are in with a chance no matter how bad your retrieve technique. It also means that you have to be ready for hits on the fall. As discussed above the soft feel gives you more time to strike and this all adds up to being a good lure for first time chuckers. Having said that there is no doubt that a refined technique turns these lures from good lures to phenomenal fish catchers.
So here we have a lure best suited to beginners and pro’s alike.

Versatility

The massive options of combinations found with plastics means that we have a lure type suitable for everything from bass to billfish. We have the option of working everything from surface popping to the deepest fishable depths. Take for example the traditional 4 inch grub tail. You could put it on a heavy lead head and fish the depths of an estuary for flatties or jew. The same tail could be pinned on a slow fall head and used to fish a mid water snag for Murray cod or yellas. You could then put it on an un-weighted worm hook and fish surface smashing summer bass.
Big stick baits have been used to take billfish , tiny grub tails on bream and whiting , lightly weighted grub tails on burley trail snapper and uncooperative ‘match the hatch’ salmon on tiny stick baits.
There’s no other lure type than can match the versatility of plastics.

August Report 2006

Despite winter water temps getting down to their average winter lows of 15deg the fishing quality is holding up very nicely.
Salmon have made their reliable appearance around the heads but as usual at this time of year they are hard to catch. They will be at the heads for a few months feeding on the small stuff and then will gradually move into the main harbour over the following months with the bait . As the bait grows they will become easier to catch..
Trevs are coming in in good numbers a little early this year and are at a good average size. They are spread throughout the lower harbour with the main concentrations in north harbour. Burly is a necessity for trevs and small soft baits like pilchard fillets floated down the burley trail will bring them unstuck. Trevs are a very underrated eating fish but I can assures that they make great sashimi and are great dipped in flour and quickly pan fried . They must be fresh though to get the best out of them.
An unusual catch lately has been plagues of chinaman jackets. We always get china jackets in the harbour but usually in sizes so small they are not worth targeting but the latest run are up to thirty center meters and make great eating. They are in such plague proportions that we have even been getting them on trolled lures and if you are bait fishing for other species they can become a nuisance. If you want to catch a feed try small prawn baits around Reef beach and north and middle heads.
Blackfish are our mainstay through the colder months and they haven’t let us down this season. They have been in good numbers around all the lower harbours structure and are gobbling cabbage which is easily gathered of the ocean rocks throughout winter. They bite best around the turn of the high while the water is moving but don’t be surprised if they go off the bite abruptly when the tide peaks . Don’t give up now though because as soon as it starts running again they will come back on the bite.
We had an amazing session on Jews and flatties up the parra river while filming for our new DVD with local expert Jewie Jim Siarakas . Despite water temps being only 14degrees we had a SP session that would rival any in summer , landing 3 jews and 17 flatties . The flatties were all about 2 lb and the best jew was 21 lb. All the fish were taken jigging rather than cast and retrieve and as long as we kept in contact with the bottom the fish just kept coming . We were working one of the deep point holes up above Gladesville (I promised Jim I would keep the exact location a secret – sorry ) and I can assure you that it really opened my eyes to the quality of winter fishing available up this way . If you want to give it a go sound the river till you find a deep hole . There’s lots of them but the key to success is to find the one’(s) that are holding the bait concentrations and then keep your lure in contact with the bottom.

May 2006

Late May and June can be a great time for fishing in Sydney harbour. Water temps will have just stared to drop so there should still be some summer species lingering and the first of the winter fish will be moving in. The fish that stay in the system like bream and flatties will be feeding up big to ensure that they put on enough fat to get them through the cold times. Jewfish will move upstream , presumably chasing the returning mullet run and will be a prime target for lure throwers. It’s a time of mixed bags and good lure fishing for demersal species like bream , flatties and jew.

Big flatties exhibit some strange behaviour at this time of year. They move upstream into what appears to be the coldest water in the system. My theory is that they are going into a hibernation and use the cold water to help shut down. I back this theory by the fact that the ones I have caught didn’t fight at all either on the line or once they were landed in the boat and that they do have access to warmer water elsewhere in the system. . Obviously in this condition they will be hard to catch . They wont eat or move often and wont go to much effort to chase down a feed. Lures probably have the edge over live bait under these circumstances in they can be used to cover vast amounts of ground. The trick is to bounce a lure right past a flatties nose . Heavily weighted soft plastics are ideal for this task. Mostly they are in the deeper holes -- water down to 30 -- feet but occasionally they will come into very shallow water in the uppermost extremities of the system , almost in fresh water.
The two key elements in finding these sleepy fish is to maintain contact with the bottom and cover lots of ground. Pick a suitable location , usually a hole , and fan the casts from your extreme left , almost parallel to the shore , right round to your right hand shore . each time you make a new cast land it no more than 2 meters from the last . Let the lure sink right to the bottom . If you are using braid line and conditions are good you will be able to clearly detect when the lure hits bottom . Your line will be taught as the lure sinks but will drop slack with a noticeable bump when it hits bottom. Your rod tip should be low and pointing straight down the line so that the rod continues on the same plane as the line . Once the lure hits the bottom its time to whip it up immediately . Whip your rod upward in a series of three strikes until the tip is directly overhead. Now its time to pick up the slack line that you have just retrieved with the rod by winding as fast as you can with the reel while lowering your rod tip quickly back down to its starting point near the water surface. Your lure will now be on its way back to the bottom after having been whipped up a couple of meters . Your line will once again be tight and you are now watching for the bump and slack in your line as it touches down again . When this happens repeat the process over again and so on all the way back to your feet. This process is the standard procedure for working the bottom for a whole range of bottom species and it is critical that you perfect it if you are going to get the best out of your plastics. The main variation in this technique for application to other species is in the style of the ‘lift’ .

For bream the lift is a much more subtle affair . Dump the ‘whip’ and instead just lift smoothly and more slowly. For Jew also eliminate the whip and lift smoothly , firmly and slightly faster than you would for bream. The trick to the jew lift is that should be done firmly and at a speed that allows you to feel the vibrations of the lure through the line.

Bream feed up along the shores and there’s not many features where you wont find them . Their style of feeding makes them capable of exploiting the food source of most structure. On the sand and mud they will find worms and chase small baitfish and prawns . In the rocks and snags they will seek out crabs and crack shellfish. High tide will give them access to the shallow intertidal areas that are exposed at low . On the rising tide they will work the deeper rocky shores and snags. Keep moving along the shore till you catch a fish and then work that area extensively. In most cases there will be more than one bream working a suitable area.. Don’t be afraid to drop your lure within a meter of the shore and as you work it back you will need to allow more time for each drop as the water depth increases towards your boat.

Jews spend a lot of time sitting round doing very little. Their feeding sprees are short and furious . This gives you two choices , either find where they are sitting during down time or work their feeding grounds at prime time. Downtime is most of the time between tide turns , while feed time is the two hours around the turns , mostly the high. When they are up the river at this time of year they are chasing fish , mostly mullet , so lure fishing becomes more effective now than at other times of year when they are chasing different prey – mostly squid and cuttle in deeper water.
During downtime they sit quietly in the deepest part of deep holes . In a typical estuary situation they are easily accessible as they are usually in structure free water.When they are further downstream they favour wrecks ,caves and reef edges all of which make them hard to reach with a lure. But upstream they don’t have these options and are sitting in clean water. Work the holes between tide turns during the day .
During the tide turns , especially the ones occurring around early morning and evening work the shorelines – particularly the deep ones -- and in the narrower channels and creek junctions. One final tip for luring jews in these quiet upper reaches is , when at all possible , fish from the shore. If you do work from a boat be as quiet and as low profile as possible . You will get away with clunking around for bream and flatties but not jews

March 2006

With the water at its warmest now I thought it might be a good time to talk about some of the occasional tropical and sub tropical ring-ins that ride the east aust current down the coats and into the harbour. Autumn is the best time for these species primarily because the water is at its warmest despite air temps starting to cool down. The larger of these species like the pelagic amberjack , Samson and cobia will head back up north when the water cools. Sadly though many of the smaller demersal ring-ins that have come down as eggs or fry will perish. These smaller fish haven’t come down by choice but rather taken at the will of the currents. The exception to this is the occasional Spangled emperor that manages to find a warm patch or adapt long enough grow up to 2kg.

We picked up a small cobia of about 4.5kg this season and my skipper Mick got one
25 lber last year . Apart from a small one Pete Clarke got a few seasons back while spinning for flatties , they are the only ones I have seen caught in 25 years of fishing the harbour and Ive heard of only a handful more. Your chances of ever catching one are slim but might be improved if you target them specifically. They have all been caught between February and May. Most captures have coincided with a large influx of sharks into the harbour and captures of Remora in the same area. The fish I cleaned recently had three stingrays in its gut which is a fair indication that they feed on or near the bottom . Discussions with LGB boys revealed that the best locations are rock platforms that fall onto a sand bottom. Pete Clarkes Cobia was caught while jigging along the bottom with a small plastic. Best baits include sand crabs , yakkas , squid and slimies. Best spots in the harbour would include Cannae pt , Nth Head , Middle head and Clifton gardens. They are the most delicious pelagic I have ever eaten and is more like reef fish than game fish . This most likely reflects their diet .

Samson fish are much more common but fluctuate in numbers with our best year producing over 50 and our worst only 2. Generally they appear to be coming more common. They can come in as early as December but are most prolific around Easter You will also find that the years that Amberjack are most prolific the Samson are least and vice versa. They are most often taken in the lower reaches but we have caught a few upstream in middle harbour. They are caught in most of the spots that you take kings and are usually a by catch . We have taken a few trolling lures along the washaway/dobroyd run and over in quarantine bay but they are primarily a bait target. Best bait is squid by a long way followed by yakkas and slimies. I generally fish just below mid water for kings but if you are specifically targeting Sams then drop it a bit deeper but not on the bottom . On average they run at about 3kg but we did get one weighing 6kg one year. Best spots are Fairlight pt , Dobroyd and Quarantine bay. They are good eating

Amberjack can at times be very common . One season we were taking one amber to every two kings. Their average size is about 2kg but every year we get a handful at 6kg and once again usually a by-catch of king fishing. Unlike Sams they are targeted specifically with exactly the same method you would for kings. The little ones are happy on squid strips but all the big ones have taken live squid. We have taken a couple on deep jigged slug-go’s but they are mostly a bait proposition. We have caught them in Feb March but they are at their best in April May. . Prime spots include the Spit for the larger fish , Dobroyd , middle head and Nth head . We have taken a few up at Pickering pt in middle harbour.. They have very similar eating qualities to kings.

You will see the occasional rainbow runner but like cobia they are very rare . They are always small around 1kg and swim with kings . The few we have picked up have been on small squid strip baits but we caught one on a slug-go.

Watson’s Leaping Bonito come in rarely . I can only remember 3 seasons when they have entered the harbour but they were in huge numbers so they are feast or famine . You will catch them with small metal slugs just as you would normal bonito. They often swim with frigate mackerel They are ordinary tucker being very red meat , certainly much more so than bonito . Ive never seen them leap.

Tropical Long Tom come in most years in large numbers but are seldom caught simply because they are so hard to hook. If you get them to swallow a small unweighted bait they are great sport leaping high and often . They are mostly in the lower reaches ,particularly around Nth Head . They are very visual making them very popular with those crazy fly boys who have a saying ‘Me love you Long Tom‘.

Febuary

The hype surrounding the recent dioxin scare in Sydney harbour was a classic example of a combination of bureaucratic bungling and media sensationalism..

Headlines like ‘ Fishing , both commercial and recreational , should be banned in Sydney harbour from today ‘ is what confronted readers of the early morning tabloids with the precarious placement of the word ‘should’ being the first hint of the totally misleading and inaccurate nature of the article that was to follow.
“Recreational fishers will be told to throw back their catch” and "It effectively makes the harbour a marine park," said a source last night’ were among the inaccuracies
A total ban on taking fish from Sydney harbour was the general theme of the various media reports over the next few days .

The facts are ; There is no ban on recreational fishing in the harbour
Recreational fishers were not told to throw back their catch
Sydney Harbour has not effectively become a marine park

Here is the only official advice given to harbour recreational fishos ;
• NSW Food Authority and NSW Health advise that the eating of any fish caught in Sydney Harbour should not exceed 150g per person per month. Eating of prawns caught in Sydney Harbour should not exceed 300g per person per month.
Even that advice in itself is misleading in that the only fish tested was bream . They don’t know whether Kingfish for example have toxins or not but issued this as a broad statement in order to , in its crudest term , cover their arse

The minister Ian Macdonald added;
“I would like to point out that water quality in Sydney Harbour is the cleanest it has been in decades. The issue is with sediments on the harbour floor, which have been exposed to industrial pollution dating back over the past 100 years, and the migratory patterns of fish from polluted areas like Homebush Bay into the cleaner waters of Port Jackson.

Here’s some other things to consider ;

1; Of the 50 angling species caught in Sydney harbour and over 500 species over all only 1 , the bream , have been found to have toxins. That represents only 2% and .2% respectively of all fish.

2 ; If Fisheries had banned all angling as the media proposed then the ban would have effectively have to be extended to all NSW waters because we all know that the Kingfish that are in the harbour this week could be in Pittwater next week and Coffs harbour the following. Many of the harbours species are migratory.

3; Toxin levels in the tested bream haven’t changed for 20 years . It was in fact the international standards on acceptable levels of dioxins that changed. We have been eating the same fish with the same levels for years.

Despite the obvious conflict of interests between rec and commercial fishos , my genuine condolences go out to the pro’s who have lost their livelihoods . I know what it feels like to think your job is threatened but I cant imagine to think what it would be like to wake up one morning to find out that’s your means of supporting your family has been pulled from under you. This Dioxin problem is a community problem and the Pro’s should be amply compensated . Having said that , I personally feel that there will be some commercial fishos who would welcome a buyout. Some weeks back there was an add in a local paper for a harbour trawler (including licence ) at $16 grand . You don’t have to be Einstein to work out that the business is worth zip.
The removal of the pros from the harbour , while devastating for them , is the obvious upside of the story for recreational fishos and Im sure we will witness a vastly improved fishery in the future.

Testing is currently under way in the harbour on other species and Im sure we haven’t heard the end of this issue . My personal belief is that the worst we could face is a catch and release fishery on affected species but more likely we will only see more advisory warnings like that issued by the NSW food authority on bream . After all the precedent has already been set by governments as to their position on toxic substances like cigarettes and alcohol and the consumption of billfish and shark with high mercury content. They issue a warning and the rest is up to you. International precedents like that on The Great Lakes region , Michigan usa and of European farmed salmon are in line with this.

Other that that I think we have opened up a can of worms for both rec and pro fishos throughout all of NSW. Dioxins are found in rivers where ’ pesticides and herbicides have been heavily used’ in their catchment . Can you think of any rivers in NSW that fit that description ?-- ie; all of them! Furthermore advice on how to reduce dioxin intake in our diet (its present in nearly everything we eat to varying degrees) includes ‘do not eat any freshwater fish at all’
In relation to Dioxin I think the only difference between Sydney harbour and many of our other waterways is that they have done the tests . I hope Im wrong

Prawns
In light of all this there has been recent talk of letting the prawn trawlers back on the harbour for the taking of prawns for the recreational bait market only . This creates a very interesting situation in that we , the recreational anglers , will become the sole market for their produce. This puts us in the box seat in deciding their future -- quiet a dilemma Im sure you will agree.

Here is the bottom line of this situation , its ugly but lets not beat around the bush

If you buy harbour prawns for bait you are a direct sponsor of the harbour prawn trawl industry. If you buy them you can never again complain about estuary trawling and you become partly responsible for the environmental damage that the trawlers do.

If you sell harbour prawns you are a direct sponsor of the harbour prawn trawl fishery… I would like to see bait suppliers and tackle shops who sell harbour prawns display a sign saying . ‘WE SUPPORT AND CONDONE ESTUARY PRAWN TRAWLING’.
If we don’t buy them then they wont catch them
Sorry guys but these are the hard facts.
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On the fishing front things are going ballistic. Kings are at the best I have seen them for three seasons with our best catch being 38 in one two hour session (most released) but average catches of 12 fish a day. Squid is still number one bait and they too have been plentiful over the kelp beds this year. There’s lots of sharks in the harbour and as a result the kings keep on the move . So while the kings are abundant you need to keep on the move to locate them and there’s no guarantee that the wild action you find near a marker buoy today will be there the next morning. Middle harbour is quiet for kings at the moment but should pick up towards the season end near April May.
We are nearing an interesting situation in that the water temperatures is about to top 25deg. Past experience has shown that kings get sluggish at this temp. In fact the last time this happened was during the phenomenal Spotty Mackerel run of 1999 where temps toped 26 , spotties were abundant and kings all but disappeared. There’s a very warm current offshore now and a strong SE wind due to push it in . Lets see what happens.

Flatties are on the chew in all the lower harbour bays . Try the’ blue hole’ in Rose bay and the moorings around north harbour with Storm shads in pink pearl 3 inch. They should continue like this right through to June. Mango put me onto a good tip recently for flatties in deep water . He recons if you rig a paternoster with a soft plastic trailing off about a meter off the bottom you can drift the deep water (30 – 60 ft) of middle harbour with great success . Its passive fishing where the drift and rocking of the boat does the work but highly successful on fish that would otherwise be difficult to reach with conventional lure methods.

Salmon have been big and abundant around Nth head during the day and washaway beach early morning. They are taking live yakkas or trolled lures. They are not as obviously on the surface as they were earlier in the season so you will need to rely more on your sounder and thorough trolling patterns.

There’s been a decent run of bigger than average snapper in the harbour recently . In fact we caught our biggest ever the other day near nth head . It weighed close to 5lb . The runs seem to coincide with a bit of rough weather and the fish are in close and taking fresh squid cubes.

January Bait Special

You will hear all sorts of different interpretations as to what's the most important aspect of fishing success. Some think its line others think its hooks or high tech rods and reels. The bottom line is , that the quality of the bait determines weather or not your hook is going into the fishes mouth.
Bait is the vehicle that takes the hook into the fishes mouth.If the fish rejects it then it will lay there on the bottom and it doesn't matter how expensive or high tech the rest of the outfit is there will be no fish in the tub.
A bait might get taken for a number of reasons . Smell or taste is one , the other is movement. For example , the question must be asked , does a flathead take a prawn bait on the drift because it's moving or because it smells like food . A flathead will take a lure bounced along the bottom and it has no smell or taste. Therefore a natural baits presentation must be taken into consideration when concluding why a fish might have taken it.
On the other hand , take for example a lure like the Berkley 'power baits' range of soft plastic lures. They are primarily designed as a lure but I know as a fact that fish will take them as a bait if they are left to sit on the bottom . Are they a bait or a lure? This is an issue that will surely come to a head as the popularity and prize money of lure fishing tournaments peaks
We can assume that an unscented lure has been hit because of its movement but we cant always assume that a natural bait has been taken because of smell. There's no denying though that a bait is very often taken because of its initial smell. I am trying to highlight the importance of bait presentation.
Assuming that a fish can be coaxed into taking a bait on presentation alone there's no denying that once it is in the fishes mouth smell and taste come into play. An artificial bait with no scent will be rejected almost immediately. A natural bait will be rejected on a time scale in accordance with its acceptability to the fish. Stale baits will go first , right through to a point where the bait is fresh enough for the fish to decide to swallow it. Fresh or live bait is therefore the obvious choice.
In summary its all very simple;
Presentation is very important , your bait might be taken on presentation alone especially by predatory fish. Presentation doesn't just mean the way the bait is put on the hook either. It also refers to the way it is presented in the water ie; moving floating or fixed etc.
Fresh bait is important for both the initial attraction and it's acceptance once taken
Live bait is the ultimate . Providing it is presented properly live bait offers the best in sensory attraction. Firstly it's wriggling , throwing off reflection and vibration -- it might even be kicking up sand or mud offering further visual attraction. Once it's taken , it feels right , it smells and tastes right because it is right.

LIVE BAIT
Most of the frozen packet stuff you buy , with the exception of things like gut and fillets, can be obtained one way or another in its live state. Its exactly the same creature as in its frozen form but infinitely more effective.
Availability of live baits through tackle and bait outlets is sparse. The cost of collecting and then maintaining live bait is the limiting factor.
Prawns and shellfish are commonly available , live , through the fish markets thanks to the needs of our ever growing Asian population. Livies available through tackle and bait outlets include worms (beach, blood and squirt ) and Nippers or yabbies. If you want anything else live you will have to catch it yourself.
Prawns
Most of our rivers estuaries and especially lakes have prawn stocks to some degree. They are gathered at night using a bright torch and a scoop net or a drag net. They keep well in either an airated bucket or in wet ribbon weed or sawdust. Keeping them cool is very important. Live prawns are the ultimate estuary bait and will take virtually every species. To hook a prawn a number 4 - 1\0 , depending on the size of the bait , is pushed up from underneath the last segment towards the tail and out through the top of the shell so the barb is exposed.

Yabbies
Yabbies are found in the sand banks towards the lower reaches of rivers and estuary. The only practical way method of extracting them is via a yabbie pump. I've had an alvey pump for over twenty years and have replaced the washes only once. We brought it for about fifteen bucks , and have , over the years , pumped probably thousands of dollars worth of bait. They also work on squirt worms so as you can see they are well worth the investment. Yabbies are kept alive in much the same way as prawns. They are pinned on a number 4- 1\0 bait holder pattern hook by pushing the hook along the body , starting from the tail , until it reaches the eye of the hook. The point and barb should come out on the under side of the yabbie.

Fish
The most effective live fish baits include yellowtail , garfish , mullet and herring. If your living in a part of the country where cast nets are legal then they are a very worthy investment and once you've mastered them are highly effective method of collecting live bait. In other areas a good burly trail , light line and a size 12 hook will do the job. Alternatively , for mullet , a bait trap baited with bread is highly effective. Hook size varies greatly with the size of the bait and could range anywhere between 1\0 and 8\0 . Hook placement depends on how the bait is to be fished. If it is to be fished under a float then it is best placed through the shoulders just behind the head. If it's to be free swimming ( unweighted ) or anchored to the bottom then the hook is pushed through , just ahead of the tail. In both cases the hook must not penetrate the lateral line. The lateral line indicates the position of the backbone . It runs the length of the fish and on bait species especially , is quite prominent. Livies are kept alive in a container of airated water with regular water changes necessary for prolonged life.

Squid
Squid are one of the estuaries top live baits for big predatory fish. They make a pretty mediocre bait as dead bait. The best way to catch them is with a squid jig fished slowly around the kelp or ribbon weed beds somewhere near deep water. They are very hard to keep alive but high airation , plenty of water changes and room to swim are the key. As with live fish the hook size varies according to the squid size. They are pinned around the middle of the tube being careful not to pierce the intestines.

Worms
The two major bait worms used in the estuary are blood and squirt. Squirt worms are found on the sand banks well up stream towards the waterways freshwater reaches. They are best extracted by pumping sand into a fine gauge sieve. You can also place a empty jam tin over the hole and stamp on it, forcing the worm out the other entrance but I prefer pumping. Blood worms like the firmer mud areas upstream around mangroves and weedbeds. The only effective way to extract them is to dig them out . This is a fairly destructive practice and large scale digging on Sydney harbour eventually forced it to be banned in that area. They keep for short periods in a well airated container of water or for longer periods in a box layered with Hessian . The bottom of the box is perforated to allow water to drain then a layer of Hessian is placed on the bottom . The worms are placed on the Hessian and another layer of Hessian is placed over the top of them . Store them under the house where it is cool and dark and periodically pour water , taken from where you caught the worms , over the top layer of Hessian so it rinses them and then drains out the bottom. The worms are threaded lengthwise along the hook until a bunch forms , it is then nipped off about three centimetres below the hook leaving a small length waving about enticingly. Hook size varies from a number 8 to a 1\0 depending on species.

PACKAGED BAIT
Prawns
I always buy big frozen prawns and I have found none better than the big Hawkesbury prawns packaged by Bellissimo Bait. They are essential if you want to consistently catch soapy Jew up to three kg. If they are too big for bream then cut them in half or into smaller pieces for the likes of leather jackets . A 400g packet is usually adequate for a days outing. The hook is fed along the body starting at the tail with the point protruding out from underneath . It is very important that the prawns body lies straight along the hook. Good quality prawns are the next best estuary bait to live bait.
If you buy Hawkesbury or Harbour trawled prawns then you are in no position to protest against trawling . By buying their produce you effectively become a sponsor of this highly destructive and unsustainable industry
Gut
The two common gut baits include mullet and chicken. Chicken gut is often marketed under the brand name of fisho . They are both readily available and cheap and make a conveniently bait . The gut is cut into lengths about eight cm long and thread on in the same manner as a worm with a short length trailing free.

Fish Flesh
Whole fish or fillets can be either purchased packaged or caught yourself. There a number of ways to use fish flesh
Fish such as whitebait and pilchards can be used whole either on a single or ganged hooks.
Fillets of fish like yellowtail , pilchards, mullet and slimy mackerel make a very attractive bait by threading the hook through the tail end of the fillet so that the hook comes out with the barb on the flesh side
Fillets of much larger fish like tuna and tailor can be further cut into smaller baits by cutting across the fillet widthways and feeding the hook through so , once again , the barb comes out on the flesh side.
Tougher flesh fish like trevally , yellowtail and the tail end of tuna make excellent flesh baits by skinning the fillet and cutting the flesh into cubes or long thin pieces

Weed
Cabbage and hair weed collected on the ocean rocks or the fine strand weed found on the upper reaches of rivers and estuaries (especially Parramatta weed) is used primarily for the capture of estuary blackfish. It's easy to collect once located and easy to keep . It will last for about two weeks kept in a damp Hessian sack in the fridge , or for months by putting it in an ice-cream container , covering it in water and freezing it. When you want to use it just place it in a bucket of water until it thaws. Cabbage weed is threaded on and hair or strand weed is platted on a size 10 or 8 hook.

There are heaps of other live and packaged bait used in the estuary but these are the most common and the most successful.

January

Things have really fired up in the harbour on the pelagic front over the last few weeks . Kings have been in good numbers and of a much better average size than I can remember for years. Salmon and tailor have come up on top and are thick around Clifton gardens and Balmoral. The only thing we need to complete the list is Bonito and reports from the north indicate that they are on their way.
Here’s a few tips for getting into them with lures.

1 Trolling lures is a great way of finding some species. It works exceptionally well on bonito, tailor and spotted mackerel. Its only average on salmon, strippies, mac tuna , frigates and trevally. Its success rate on kingies is poor. Trolling is best done with minnow style lures. Metal baitfish profiles and skirted type lures the likes of Christmas trees are good when the fish are high up in the water. Those types of lures will ride high at the trolling speeds required for pelagics (4-8 knts). Minnows offer deep diving capabilities or at least reliable depth control. My favourites are rapalas CD7 and 9 and Producer lures Barra Mauler No4 and 5 after an upgrade on the Producers hooks.

2 A trolling pattern must be established in order to locate the concentrations of fish. This usually involves a close run first and then moving a little bit wider on each run after that. Troll both directions on each run because its common to find fish biting in one direction and not the other. Keep an eye on; your sounder for baitfish concentrations , other boats trolling to see where and what they are catching and so you don't run into them, birds working the surface , current lines and most importantly knarly waves , bombies etc.

3 Most people I know would rather cast to pelagic fish than troll for them. What do you do though if you want to cast a lure or fly to pelagics but can't visually or electronically find them? Troll until you find them and then cast. Elitist fly fishermen who refuse to carry conventional gear on principal, are doing them selves a disservice in this respect. Trolling lures is a legitimate fish finding tool , even if you do not like or intend to catch them this way.

4 When the time comes to approach the school there's a few things to keep in mind. Don't charge right up to, and never into, the feeding school as this will almost certainly put them down. There exceptions to this, where a rapid approach is essential. Certain species will , at times, feed in very short bursts and if you are not there quick you will miss your shot. You must approach fast but keep your distance. The obvious distance to pull up is at the extremities of your personal casting range.
You must consider your boat shadow as this will put fear into your school long before the engine noise. Shadows are the early warning sign of a large predator where engine noise is unfamiliar and fish have proven to be to be far more wary of dangers that they are familiar with. The basic rule is to never get between the sun and the fish. The lower the sun is in the sky the more this applies.
Try to anticipate the direction that the fish are moving and be sure not to but your boat in their path.
In windy conditions you can use the wind to make a quite approach on a school but position your drift to take you along side the school and not over the top of it.

5 Never assume that the fish you are seeing on the top are necessarily the fish you are catching. In these situations it is not uncommon for fish of different species to layer , ie Salmon on top , bonito under them and then trevally under them. Your first few casts should be retrieved immediately but later casts should be allowed to sink to varying depths before the retrieve. Many pleasant surprises have come from this technique.
Silver trevally rarely feed right on top but are quite common below the winter salmon. They will take lures at these times , often on the fall.
Kings are regulars below tailor and bonito . The first sign of them is when one follows a hooked tailor or bonnie up to the boat.

6 Kingies are the easiest of all the pelagics to locate but usually the hardest to catch. Their biggest downfall is their love of shade but to some extent its also their saviour. Structure creates shade . Structure is very easy for us to locate but it also gives the kings something to wrap us around. They will face into the current when they are holding
Avoid lures that rattle for kingies and that includes anything with trebles and split rings. Sluggo is no.1 but you will occasionally get away with poppers as the splashing sound helps mask the rattling of the hooks and rings.

7 Although most of the pelagics make much better table fish than they are credited for they are primarily sought after as a sport fish. I don't intend to do recipes or preparation of individual species but there are a few golden rules for pelagics if they are to be kept for the table.
-Bleed , gut , gill and ice asap.
-Fillet and skin just before you intend to cook them.
-Most pelagics don't freeze well although trevally, kingfish amberjack and Samson are ok for a few months.
-The species that don't cook up to well, will probably be good sashimi. ie frigates strippies and mac tuna
-Fillets are best cooked as you would a rare steak. Overcooking will dry them out.
Australian salmon are the exception and fully deserve their reputation as revolting.

December

Its been a great start to the Kingie season with lots of fish that are bigger than previous years average. We have caught plenty up to 7 kg and been smoked on several occasions by some really serious fish. Best spots so far have been north head and all through middle harbour but by the time you read this they should be right through the main harbour as well. We have also picked up some early season Amberjack which is a sure sign that the really warm water of the east Australian current is on the way. North harbour and the shallows of Balmoral are chockers with baitfish and its looking like things are about to explode.

If you go to the trouble to learn to catch squid you will always catch a lot of kings and that is the only way , I know of , to do it . If you go to the trouble of going to the fish markets and buying very fresh squid you will catch a few kings, sometimes.
If you want to catch them on lures a lot you must use the six or nine inch Slug-go or saltwater flys. Poppers are OK for a few kings occasionally

Traditionally Sydney harbour kingies move in in about October. For some reason their distribution at this time is limited to the Spit and lower Middle harbour region. They are usually a bigger run of fish than the average summer fish and range from 70 --to 120 cm . There is no visual or electronic signs of them . The only way you will know they are there is to fish for them . They don’t come near the surface and they mostly hold under the marina and the moorings making them hard to find on the sounder. The major stronghold of arrow squid is in this area and my bet is that this is why the kings are here too.

At about Christmas time the rats come in . These are the fish that will swarm throughout the harbour all summer and autumn The first signs of them is on the surface. That time of year sees a lot of surface action with bonito tailor and recently salmon on the lower harbour. The kings get in on the act as well. They are hard to catch at this time and your best bet is with a fly.
They are feeding on ‘eyes’ (tiny baitfish) and its hard to interest them in anything else.

Once they go off the “eyes’ they move in around the marker buoys and yacht moorings. This happens in about late January. Now they are much less selective and this is the time to catch large numbers of them on Squid , Slug-go and flies. You can see the fish visually and on the sounder They are smaller fish ranging from 50 to 70 cm and they are real silly puppies.

Kingies mostly hold from mid water down so obviously this is a good place to present your bait
High tide and the first two hours of the run out ,early morning and late afternoon is when you will find them really feeding . That’s also a good time to catch squid. You wont have to worry too much about tides or time of day it you pay very close attention to what I said earlier about the bait the guts and the ink. Kings are easily turned on and then off again if you know what buttons to push. The worst thing you can do is to keep presenting something that has been rejected , in the same manner. A school of following kings can be turned into a school of taking kings by something as simple as changing the presentation angle, . This applies to both lures and bait. If they follow a lure or show interest in a bait for more than three times without taking it don’t present it again.
They are the exact opposite to barra in this sense. Barra can be teased into striking where kings can be teased out of striking. They are stubborn bastards and the more you shove it in their face the more they’ll reject it
Change lure size , let it sink , change presentation angle or best of all go away , try another spot and come back in half an hour.

Big Kingies do like whole live squid but small ones don’t. Big kingies will just as happily take a squid head . So by using a squid head you will get lots of big and small kingies. But if you use live squid you will get fewer fish but they will be bigger on average. A whole squid gut is not only an exceptionally good bait but it is also the best burly that you can use for kings. Its all about the guts. Use the guts and especially the ink to entice the fish You can burst the ink sac before you send the bait down or you can let the first king burst it for you. The gut is always the first bait to go which must mean it’s the best bait. Strips of squid cut from the tube are good baits particularly after the guts and heads have got the school in a frenzy. Rub it all in Ink

To turn them on , surprise them. Rock up to a spot noisily. Throw your anchor with a big splash and then get all your baits out there quickly. Let the baits sink to the required depth and then rip them back in. Just as an excited dumb dog does stupid things so do kingies. As soon as the anchor hits the water they come straight over to see what is happening . The key is to not give them to much time to think about it . Trick them into an impulse attack. Action excites them but not for long , so work quickly
In addition to this you are better to have five or six baits in the water rather than just a few. Once again this is more likely to excite them. If you can’t handle six rods just take a few out of action once you have the fish on the bite.

One final but equally important tip is to fish with your reel in gear and with your normal fighting drag. Don’t feed kingies any line when they take your bait . Once a take is felt lower the rod down and move with the fish. Once the rod reaches the water its time to strike.

November

Kingies have made their first appearances at the time of writing and should be full bore by the time you read this. As usual their first stop is middle harbour because the water temp is slightly warmer than the lower reaches at this time of year. By Christmas they will be right throughout the system including the lower harbour channel markers and will be taking stick baits with gusto. Best lures are either the original slug-go or its Ausie equivalent the Plat-slug by Platinum lures. If you are going to use bait squid are number one closely followed by live gar fish. Gar are swarming all over Sow and Pigs reef right now . You can catch them with a bit of surface burly and a tiny 12 to 14 hook under a light quill float baited up with small pieces of prawn or pilchard gut. If you have any gar left over at the end of the day they make an excellent feed. Cut off their heads , gut and scale them then tenderize them lightly with a rolling pin or a meat hammer. Dip them in egg and flower and deep fry them. You can eat them whole as the bones will have become crisp from the deep fry. To use them as bait swim them out on a 4/0 to 6/0 octopus pattern pinned under the lateral line through the fleshy area behind the gut cavity. Pinned above the lateral line the weight of the hook will eventually drag them upside down and kill them .Pinned under the lateral line will keel them in a natural position. Swim them out either unweitghted or a meter ahead of a small bobby cork . The take is usually in the form of a spectacular surface strike.

With water temps warming up Flathead will be on the chew from now right through till June. They are always a good back-up when all else goes quiet
Flathead spend most of their lives buried up to their eyeballs in sand or mud. To their prey they are virtually undetectable and when you combine this with a cavernous needle lined mouth and lightning fast reflexes you come up with what could possibly be the ultimate piscatorial predator. This makes them very susceptible to lure fishing.
Most lure fishing for flatties is done in three to twenty foot of water. Trolling is an option but the most fun is to be had by casting around the shallow sand banks and weed beds. A lot of this type of fishing is visual and in shallow water ,on lures, the flatties reputation as a poor fighting fish goes out the window.
The boat moorings in the back reaches of most of the harbours bays offer a sanctuary for flatties. The moorings are usually laid along the drop-off with the shallowest being in 8ft of water and the deepest in about 30. They are all on sloping sand which is number one pre-requisite for flatties . When you combine this feature with the mooring blocks , the shadows from the boats and all the associated growth , crustaceans and baitfish you have everything a flattie could dream of.
There's three main types of lure that I carry when I chase flatties -- stick baits , soft plastic\jig head combinations and diving minnows.
To work the weed beds there is no better lure than the soft plastic stick bait. With the hook point lying flush with the lure they are virtually weed proof and can be very effectively worked over around and even through the weed . The Slug-go is an ideal choice for this purpose.
To fish the drop-offs and deeper channels soft plastic\ jig head combinations are my first choice. The old twin tail 'Mister Twister' in orange or pink is legendary. The main advantage of this type of lure is its ability to be bounced along the bottom regardless of water depth. This means it can be bounced down a drop-off or along a channel bed meaning that it spends longer in the target species strike zone.
Finally , for trolling you will need to carry lures that can be relied upon to maintain a specific depth. Trolling is used to prospect the more featureless areas like over the tops of sand or mud banks at high tide and along the channels at low. These areas are usually a fairly constant depth and can be covered more extensively by trolling a lure a foot or two above the bottom.

If you want to take the more passive option then flathead are a sucker for a moving bait. Drifting is a great option if you have dead bait. Maintaining contact with the bottom is critical so you will have to match your sinker size to the boat drift speed and the current. White bait is probably the best drift bait but only if its rigged properly. There’s lots of ways you can achieve this including making up a set of small ganged hook or nose hooking with a single tarpon pattern hook but the critical factor is that it is rigged straight so that it doesn’t spin .
Live baits are still the ultimate although the gap is closing rapidly with the highly effective range of plastics and refinements in their use . Bait size depends on what size fish you are after with poddy mullet , yabbies and very small yakkas being suited to average flatties and big mullet being the best for big fish. Big flatties prefer deep water and are best targeted after dark.

October

We have had a bit of a weird current push in recently that has brought both warm water and some ocean species. Big oceanic chinaman jackets have come in close round north head and along with oceanic toads are causing havoc. They will bite anything including swivels sinkers and fingers. Nip-offs are infuriatingly common and I can only suggest using long shank X strong hooks with the sinker sitting right on top of your hook. Avoid swivels and make sure there no scraps of bait on your line. On the upside the Jackets are big , fight well and taste great. Prawn and squid are the best baits but in reality there’s not much that they wont have a go at

Australian Salmon have , in the last couple of years , become a year round proposition but September/October is traditionally the month when they appear in the lower reaches of the Harbour and Broken bay. The closing of the cannery at Eden has seen decreased commercial pressure on stocks in the last few years and it appears that numbers have increased quite dramatically . Salmon fishing has been sensational lately and should continue right through Christmas and into January. They are massed along north head from Quarantine to north head in massive schools as I write this but traditionally will move further into the harbour and Balmoral in the coming months.

Keep an eye out for large flocks of sea birds working the surface as they are a good indication of the position of the Salmon schools. Although they are a little bit fussy at the moment they are a lot more catchable than they were a month ago. Flies and SP stickbaits are the best bet but they are just starting to look at metals like small Raiders which is great because the tiny SP stickbaits are a nightmare to cast.
You will probably be sharing the school with many other boats , especially on weekends , so keep your wits about you in respect to navigation. What ever you do don't go charging through the middle of the school as it will put the school down and attract plenty of verbal abuse your way from the other boats

One fish that should come on in good numbers over the next few months is the silver trevally. Trevs are a very under rated species being an excellent fighter and if they are prepared properly also an excellent eating fish. They are only found in the harbour in their juvenile sizes which is around up to two kg's but half to one kg is more common. They are a schooling fish so where you catch one there is usually more. Although normally considered to be a winter fish , I find trevally to be far more prolific in spring. Trev's are a schooling fish so providing you keep the burley flowing there's no reason why you shouldn't be able to take half a dozen of more. They are a lot like yellow tail in the way they station themselves in a burley trail. Normally they feed from mid water to the bottom but on a good day you can burley then right up to the back of the boat. Given this situation there's no need for heavily weighted rigs which will in fact take the bait away from the fish. The trick with trevally is to present the bait as if it were part of the burley trail. This means very lightly weighted rigs where there is flow in the water and possibly even no weight at all in the quite bays where there is little current.
Trevs prefer small soft baits like peeled prawn and pilchard fillets. They are the only fish that I can think of that don't respond well to fresh baits and in a lot of cases they have shown a marked preference for packet bait over freshly caught and filleted bait. The exception to this is when you present them with a live yabbie or blood worm which are second to none.
The trev's have a small soft mouth so small hooks and light line are the way to go. I prefer a no. 4 VMC baitholder and three or four kg line. The light line helps avoid pulling the small hooks from the soft mouth.
You'll find Trevally right throughout the harbour depending on how much rain we've had . They like clear saline water , so after long dry spells they can be found in the upper reaches. After heavy rain they will be confined to the lower reaches. Trevs should be bleed immediately and iced down straight away. Filleted and skinned then pan fried in egg and flour they make an exceptional feed.

Morwong , normally an offshore species , have moved into the harbour and taken up residence around the deep reefs and headlands. They are running up to about 1.5 kg and are caught almost exclusively on squid. The best rig I have found is a light , two dropper , paternoster rig much like you would use when fishing for estuary leatherjackets. Number six baitholder hooks baited with a small piece of prawn fished on the bottom should do the trick. Try Quarantine pt and Dobroyd reef.

AUGUST
I suppose we are really getting into ‘shut down’ time now. This is about the coldest time of year in the water even though land temps will gradually start to creep up as we start to come out of winter. There’s always a lag between water and air temps and sometimes we don’t see warm water until November . Despite this fishermen get fired up by longer , warmer days and expectations go up with the temperature. Unfortunately fish are in their lowest cycle with slow metabolisms and fighting sickness. Just like most animals including humans, cold weather lowers their resistance to disease and fish tend to be at their weakest at this time of year . Higher expectations and slow fish can lead to some disappointing trips.

There is an upside though. The classic winter fish that are still around are firing and usually in good numbers and you usually have them all to yourself. Ive had days , even on Sydney Harbour where I haven’t seen another boat. There’s no queue at the ramp and no one at even the most popular spots. With either dead calm weather or , at worst , prevailing offshore winds pushing close coastal waters flat , conditions can be very pleasant.

There’s a few trick to success at this time of year.
Upstream is very cold and quiet. I caught a big Flattie up past Roseville bridge one day on a live bait when the water temp was 13deg. It didn’t fight at all in the water and could barely muster a head shake once it was in the boat. It was in its deepest hibernation and the live mullet bait must have thumped it on the head to wake it up. In summer a fish like this probably feeds every day whereas in winter it might only feed once a week So you can see that your chances of catching this fish in winter are reduced by 1/7 .
There is a few blackfish , some dory , the occasional Jewie and a few other bits and pieces up stream but all up its very quiet and hardly worth the effort. The trick is to fish downstream somewhere within the reach of ocean water ,which is considerably warmer , on the incoming tide.
Good stable high pressure systems and the full and new moon periods fish better. This also applies in summer but is much more important in winter if you are trying to avoid the shutdowns. Fishing early in the morning or late in the arvo isn’t as important as the other variables at this time of year

You must fish hard and this means moving a lot till you find the fish , using plenty of burley and fishing a variety of baits and rigs. My average bait spread would include; an un-weighted piece of salted mackerel for Trevally , a lightly weighted piece of steak or heart on the bottom for bream , a live bait near the surface for tailor or salmon , a live bait a few meters off the bottom for dory and of course the token prawn for miscellaneous. I would also have some cabbage weed on board ready for a Luderic session .
If you are going to troll do it deep and always have a small metal slice ready in case a salmon pops up.

Species;

Salmon are usually found around the heads and wont venture too far in till the water warms up. You can get then trolling or casting if you can see them . If the seals or dolphins move in give it up. They are at north head now but so is a seal

Trevally like the deep bays and good water quality . Use lightly weighted baits and lots of burley. Parsley and Vaucluse bays are fishing well at the moment in amongst the moorings.

Dory also like deep clean water but are almost exclusively caught on live baits . They bite particularly well around the tide turns ,especially the high , and even more so if they are in the main stream where there is a bit more flow.

Bream can still be found in winter in the lower reaches around the moorings. My old mate Lionel came down from Orange to join us on a charter and turned up with a heart and a jar of garlic. I wasn’t sure whether we were having a BBQ or going fishing but by the end of the day , despite the boat smelling like a Greek picnic , the old bastard had out fished us all – mostly bream . Cut the heart (lamb) into small cubes roughly 2cm square and dip it in the garlic. Once again Parsley and Vaucluse bay is going well.

Flatties still feed occasionally in the cold and are even still worth a shot on SP’s . We picked up a good one amongst the moorings , on a softie , in north harbour recently.
They will take baits too , especially live baits and are usually in deeper water than you will find them in summer.

Luderic are a great standby or even the mainstay of winter fishing. They are abundant through the lower harbour and can be found around nearly any structure or rocky shorelines. Use plenty of burley (chopped weed mixed with sand) and luckily lower harbour luderic will happily eat cabbage weed which is abundant now.

July
Its pouring outside as I write this , the best rain for years in fact , sending a very much needed flush of fresh water and nutrients into Sydney waterways. While this wont do the fishing much good in the short term , long term it should induce a vast improvement. A lot of our winter fish like dory , trevally , snapper , drummer and salmon are clean water fish that will move out or shut down till the flush clears . After it all settles down they will move back into the harbour and be ravenous . The jewies that have been biting well in the upper reaches of the harbour and middle harbour wont mind the disturbance at all as they take advantage of the cover of the cloudy water and the disoriented fish and crustations.
Its about this time of year that the baitfish spawn and they rely heavily on the microscopic nutrients that a flush like this will provide. The success of the baitfish now will have a big bearing on the quality of the fishing right into the coming season.
The salmon are milling around the heads now and its only a matter of time till they move in in search of the newly spawned baitfish. They will be hard to catch for a while as the baitfish will be tiny at first but as they grow into the season matching the hatch will get easier. In the mean time sharpen up those tiny Raider 10g slices and make sure you have plenty of small Storm wild eye Sprat and Finesse minnows at the ready. Flys are worth a go too.

So for this has been one of the best Dory seasons for many years . They can be caught from May through to October but June to August is the peak time. They are accessible to both boat and shore based fishos and are most commonly taken on live baits but are definitely an option on lures. The setting of your bait is the most critical aspect of dory fishing. While they will occasionally pick up a bait off the bottom they are more commonly a mid water hunter so suspending your bait off the bottom is a better option. From a boat this is done by setting your depth before you put your bait on. Drop your unbaited rig to the bottom until you can feel the sinker bouncing on the bottom then raise it up about 2m and set your rod in the holder. Now grab the line by hand and retrieve the rig . Pin the bait and throw it out without altering the depth. You will find it difficult to set the depth with the bait on due to the fact that the constant swimming of the bait will make it hard to get the rig to the bottom. You will eventually find bottom but when the bait finally gets tired and stops swimming it will settle at the wrong depth. Off the shore a bobby cork will be your best option for keeping your bait suspended.
Boat anglers should look for spots with deep clear water preferably in the vicinity of structure like reefs , moorings , Jettys and bridges. Shore based fishos are a bit more limited as you will need to find deep water in close. Jettys offer your best option . Try Clifton Gardens , the old gas works at Manly , Parsley and Bantry bay and Balmoral. Don’t neglect the upper reaches of middle harbour particularly in dry periods.

The blackfish have started to come on the bite in the lower reaches and will move further upstream in the coming months and as the rains clear. At the moment they are firing around Sow and Pigs , the Wedding cakes and the shoreline along the Zoo wharf. Cabbage is doing the trick but nippers and blood worms will work early in the season.

Surprisingly my mate Peter Clarke caught Kings in Sugarloaf bay just before the rain in late June . Even more surprising was that they were taken on lures and were feeding on the surface. Ive caught kings up middle harbour as late as august in the deep holes on fresh squid baits but to have them feeding on top at this time of year is very unusual. The kings that we took in August were as plump as that fat chick on Big Brother and Im guessing that they were planning to stay there throughout winter. So if you score a couple of squid its always worth a drop at Pickering point or Bantry bay.

Trevs are on the chew if you can get through the Slimies. Use lots of burley and unweighted or lightly weighted baits. A little trick to help you get past the slimies is to burley heavily close to the boat and then flick your baits as far away from the boat as possible. This way the slimies greedily race into the burley while your bait sinks down behind them to the trevs which generally sit a bit deeper.

There’s some big tailor around the lower harbour but they are sitting deep . Try deep divers along middle head and Washaway to Dobroyd or baits drifted down a burley trail near the red marker just inside South head.

April Report

The feral aquatic plant Caulerpa taxifolia is creeping its way up Sydney harbour. I found a chunk of it on my anchor in Rose bay and after consultation with fisheries confirmed that this was a new outbreak. The next closest stand is about 2km across the harbour at Clifton gardens. .
The long term impacts of Caulerpa are unknown but from experience with long term outbreaks in the Mediterranean have shown a definite drop in biodiversity. Its not all bad news though , as early studies have shown that some species will happily use Caulerpa as a hatchery or nursery area after the caulerpa has overtaken native sea grasses.. Furthermore Caulerpa has a similar effect of stabilizing sand drift as does the aquatic vegetation that it replaces. Caulerpa is native to Australia and is a good example that just because some thing is native doesn’t mean that it cant cause problems. In a country as big as Australia, environments , local adaptations and species diversity can be as varied as that between South America and Siberia. So the potential for something imported from Western Australia to the east coast to go feral is as great as it is for something imported from OS.. Caulerpa is used extensively by aquarists as it is one of the few aquatic vegetations that will thrive in salt water aquaria. As a result cold water strains evolved as an adaptation to the widely varying conditions found in the individual aquariums kept throughout Australia and the world. In other words , once it found its way back into the wild it had evolved to handle a range of environments well out side its normal boundaries.
A representative from the aquarium industry claims that he was unable to give me the current figures on what the industry is worth annually but according to one study (Mckay 1977) it’s the worlds biggest fishery valued at $4 billion in 1971 and $80 million in 1973 in Australia alone. Imagine what it is worth now ?. I accept the fact the aquarium industry cannot be held responsible for what individuals do with their fish and plants after they have purchased them . However as the aquarium industry is the window through which most of this stuff enters the country I feel they should be contributing at least part of the cost of the clean up . They currently contribute nothing Furthermore in over 20 years of keeping aquariums myself and literally hundreds of visits to retail aquarium shops I have never received any information relating to the dangers and responsibilities of keeping exotic fish and plants. In the short history of the aquarium industry in Australia already at least 4 exotic fish have escaped and proliferated in Queensland waters alone . An average of 8 million aquarium fish are imported into this country every year. Amongst these millions of plants and fish imported are many considered to be ‘sleepers’ , that is they have great potential to go feral should they ever escape. Ironically they never receive the esteemed title of ‘noxious’ until they actually go feral despite their great potential. There is clearly a lot of cleaning up to be done within the aquarium industry. A good alternative is to keep native fish of which Australia boasts some beauties particularly amongst the rainbow and Blue eye family.

To help avoid the spread of Caulerpa inspect all fishing gear , boat hulls , trailors and particularly anchors before moving on to a new spot and particularly a new river. It can live for a week in a damp anchor well. Have a look at this www.fisheries.nsw.gov.au/thr/species/fn-caulerpa.htm

On other fronts the fishing in the harbour has been very good especially for big kings . April May and in some years even June are the prime month for larger kings , though you wont get them in the same numbers as the smaller earlier season fish.
The best spot at the moment is middle harbour with the stretch from seaforth to Bantry being the best. As usual you will need fresh squid which have been very prolific this year.
Its also the time when you can start to expect a few jews and flathead mixed in with your kings and time to start chasing them upstream on SP’s.
There’s some big tailor in middle harbour although they are not very lure friendly unless you are trolling deep off a downrigger. Down lower there are some very big salmon and a few straggler Watson’s leaping bonito. Your best shot at surface action is frigate mackerel that should stay till end of May.
There are still a few of the smaller kings in the lower reaches . A good tip for this time of year is to switch to smaller baits and lures. A cube trail of small squares of squid will get them going . Every now and then slip a small ( no 4 ) hook into one of the cubes and float it back unweighted.

March Report
Middle harbour differs from most other estuaries and rivers in that it is a flooded valley. Unlike the Hawkesbury , for example , whose path was cut by running water falling off a huge catchment area , the middle harbour valley simply filled up when sea levels rose at the end of the last ice age. In a way it is a lot like an impoundment in that it is very deep and the main features are the old creek bed and all the landform features that made up the original valley when it was dry. Because of the tiny catchment salinity levels are similar to that along the coast and at its deepest point it reaches 120ft . You need to go half a kilometer off sydney heads to find that depth. As a result Middle harbour offers a perfect environment for big fish and oceanic species that would otherwise find your classic river or estuary environment quite unsuitable.

Dolphins come in as do big sharks. A 3m bull shark was netted by fishermen at grotto point in 1999 in only two meters of water and I have no doubt that it was either on its way up or back out of middle harbour. Six fatalities have occurred in middle harbour , four well upstream near Sugarloaf bay and two in the shallows near Balmoral. This makes Middle harbour the shark fatality capital of Australia.

The only obstacle to very regular visits from big oceanic fish is the shallows of Hunter bay at the mouth of middle harbour. The deepest Channel through here is , at best only three meters but this hasn’t stopped big blue grouper , jewfish , kingfish , northern bluefin and yellowfin tuna , spotted mackerel and cobia from making the trip upstream in previous years.

Hump head snapper were regulars in past years and we still get bonito , salmon , frigates and spangled emperor regularly enough to make them worth targeting.

To give you a clear example of the uniqueness of this situation , a few years back anglers were battling northern bluefin tuna only one hundred meters from the mangrove flats that they had been catching bream and whiting on only an hour earlier .

Right up the back you find intermittent fresh , just enough though to support a few estuary perch . Ive heard rumors of bass but ive never seen one in the flesh and Im guessing that they were probably misidentified perch although there are bass found in other harbour tributaries so I suppose its possible .

The reason for this quick run down on middle harbour is that it is firing at the moment with the highlight being Peter Kelly’s 25lb Cobia taken in Sugarloaf Bay. Fishabout Tours Guide Mick Collins had the boys on a hot kingie bite when the cobia appeared behind a hooked fish. For the next half hour they tried everything until finally it took a fresh squid strip .

On other fronts Jewfish have been reasonably common with the best of them coming from the Spit and Pickering pt. They have all been daytime fish and mostly taken on fresh squid.

There’s plenty of kings through middle harbour mostly in the stretch between Sugarloaf and Bantry bay and you guessed it --- fresh squid.

On the surface there are Bonito , salmon and big tailor around Sugarloaf.They are taking trolled minnows or cast Raiders.

The main harbour has been invaded by plagues of Frigate macerel. They will respond to high speed 10g Raiders as will the longtom that are feeding alongside them.

Washaway beach is fishing well after a cloud of anchovies mover in. Salmon , tailor , Bonito and Leaping bonito and hammering them in the wave line. Fish your raiders right up in the suds. Bounce a softie through the bait clouds as there is some good flatties sitting under them.