Hello everyone
The prawn run last week appeared to be a lot better than previous years one main difference was the prawn size , most been around the small to medium king range and the odd big Tiger prawn mixed in and it seems it’s the same story down around the Tuggerah lakes where the size has been the best for years . Last weekend saw the NDAA Estuary competition held in Lake Macquarie / Hunter river this year’s event was hosted by Charlestown Anglers with the weigh in at Warner’s at the Bay , the overall winner were Burwood bowling club with Golden Eagle runner up Senior champion was Jason Downie with a maximum bag of 30 fish mainly Bream and Whiting all caught during the prawn run .
This year Patrick and I entered for the first time with the Charlestown Anglers , we started off casting with soft plastics landing only 3 Flathead for the afternoon it was then we switched over to bait fishing with Tube worms managing a decent catch of Whiting and Bream for our effort in all I had landed 16 fish and Pat 12 which as it turned out gave Patrick a narrow win giving him Junior Champion .
Big numbers of rat Kingfish have been busting up around the Swansea bridge on the change of the tide with a couple of bigger fish mixed in which is keeping most fisho’s honest , the average size King has been from 55-60 cm which have been a lot of fun on both poppers and 7 inch plastics , the bigger fish have all been caught on live squid and at the moment there seems to be plenty of Squid in both the channel and lake , 2 -2.5 size jigs have been working the best in a natural colour , Shannon Malone from the warehouse was on the lake last week catching a few squid baits and managed a 12 kg Jew at 10 in the morning not a bad way to spend your day off .
Speaking of Jewfish last weekend a number of school Jew were caught during the competition most fish were around the 65-75 cm mark however this week it seems there have been a few up around 8-10 kg reported then just this morning ( Friday ) 2 young anglers came into the store looking for bigger scales to weigh there Jew one had already come in at 16.5 kg the other bottomed out the scales at 22 kg and at looking at it the fish looked around the 26 kg mark both fish taken in the lake last night .
Offshore continues to be patchy with water temperature up one day and down the next already there are a few Dolphin fish turning up around the Fad off Swansea and it seems a few other toothy critters just last weekend a 380 kg Tiger shark was caught just off Swansea this was the 3rd big shark in as many weeks and with the Northern zone overnight competition this weekend it could be a big weekend for those involved .
Along the beaches we are only just now starting to see a few Whiting appear this is due to the lack of water temp however it looks like things are on the improve with the temperature today getting up to 20 dec , other than Whiting we have had a few reports of Tailor and Mulloway during the late afternoons and nights .
Regards
Jason
