Hello everyone
Winter is only just around the corner and so far fishing in general has been better than most years, this season we have seen probably the best run of Tailor seen in many years it started around early March and has continued with catches still coming in of most beaches like the Blacksmiths /Belmont stretch, Catherine Hill Bay down to Birdie beach in particular.
There have been a real range of sizes with most around the 35-45cm mark mixed in with fish up to 1.5 kg plus. Deep divers such as the Strada Luana and Raiko deep divers and Rapala Taildancers are working the best. Two weeks ago Patrick and myself were catching fish up to 1.75 kg on deep divers when a huge school of fish started busting up the surface. We quickly changed our lures and started casting 40gram metals when Pat started yelling at me, a Tailor he had hooked was being monstered by a huge Tailor at the side of the boat, this fish which I estimated around the 5kg plus mark had his fish in its mouth and wouldn’t let go. It seemed to be in slow motion and all I could do was look at it in amazement, it finally decided it had enough and swam off. Since that day we have had several sets of treble hooks either straightend or broken by big fish and the season is only going to get better.
On the weekend both Patrick and I fished Saturday evening landing a few fish and one nice size Red, this is the first one I’ve caught on a deep diver it certainly nailed it. On Sunday I went for a run on the Running Bear with Duncan and George Clift. George hasn’t been 100% for a while so, it was good to get him out and he had a great time landing a dozen or more Tailor while Pat was in our boat with his mate landing a few bigger ones ( I think I have taught him too well ) and it seemed everyone that was out on the lake was pretty much doing the same.
Tailor aren’t the only thing happening in the lake at the moment with plenty of school Jew and Flathead and the odd Reds are been taken on soft plastics and metal jigs. Just yesterday I spoke to one lucky angler who had landed a 3kg Red off Coal Point while chasing Flathead, there appears to be quite a few of these fish in the lake at the moment and with the amount of bait around its going to make it an interesting Winter. I’ve had a number of calls from anglers asking if the Salmon are back in Salts Bay and at this stage the only Salmon I have caught have been mixed in with the Tailor. Even off our coast at the moment there are not a lot of Salmon around with a few still been caught off Blacksmiths / Belmont beach and a few up at Stockton. Its only early days yet but when we had lots of Salmon around there were no Tailor so it’s more than likely just a cycle only time will tell.
I caught up with John Frith the other day and he has been catching good numbers of Bream throughout the lake this month, a lot of fish around the 500- 800gram mark and most of these fish appear to be what we call travelling fish, they have a small head and high back. John isn’t the only lucky angler at the moment, the Pelican RSL had a weigh in on Sunday and there were plenty of these Bream being weighed along with a few Flathead. Darren McNaught had his 10 Bream ,Flathead up to 2.8 kg and a nice Mulloway around the 6kg mark. Not a bad nights effort.
Offshore is still been affected by the weather more than lack of fish. For those who have been able to get out there’s still plenty to catch. Trag are still around in good numbers both down south and up towards Redhead. Both Bream and Tarwine are starting to appear, while I have only had a few reports of Snapper – most coming in from the Farm / Nora Heads area, it’s just a matter of picking the weather conditions, which just might not happen this weekend looking at the forecast.
Now to the real business at hand: the Department of Primary Industries ( Fisheries ) have released a review paper on Salt and Freshwater bag limits. Some of the changes aren’t too bad where they are reducing some species like Bream and Tailor from 20 to 10. However, reducing the Snapper limit from 10 to 5 and the Teraglin (Trag ) limit from 5 to 2 has once again missed the mark. Snapper should remain at 10 per person but put a quota of one over 60cm thus keeping the larger fish to breed similar to Flathead regulations. As for Trag, the existing limit of 5 per person has already started to work, with this species making a big come back along the coast. In fact if, it hadn’t been for anglers catching Trag, most offshore catches amount to nothing! Why reduce our limit and still have commercial hand line fishermen still able to take hundreds of KGs per night. If they were endangered, one would think the limit would apply to everyone. We all have until the end of June to submit a proposal. I urge everyone to come in and pick a submission form up and take the time to fill it in, it’s up to us.
Regards
Jason
