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January Fishing Reports |
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Monday 25th January 2010
Report courtesy of Royal Volunteer Coastal Patrol MERIMBULA Fishing at sea turned out to be a bit tougher last week through high winds and the disappearance of the hot water encountered over the last few weeks. Its not all bad news though as the warm water is now back and with it marlin have been hooked as close to shore as 40 fathoms in with the schools of striped tuna and mackerel. Kingfish are also on the chew with Mowary and Greencape being the most consistent but fish have also been taken from the local Merimbula headlands. The big numbers of tiger flathead have moved on but anglers fishing in close to shore still managed to catch plenty of sandys up to a kilo. Gummy sharks are still being caught regularly and are a welcome bonus to all anglers when fishing for flathead or on the reef edges. The inshore reefs are also patchy with morwong and leatherjackets being the main species to take a bait and the estuaries are still firing with dusky flathead, trevaly,whiting and bream all keen to a bait or lure. Friday 15th January 2010 Report courtesy of Bermagui Bait & Tackle BERMAGUI The push of warm water discussed last month in to our offshore reaches has proven quite productive with high levels of bait in many areas in particular between 70-110 fathoms. Water temperatures have been between 21-24 degrees and inside the 100 fathom line where less current prevails plenty of Slimy Mackerel have been holding where the continental shelf itself creates an up welling of cooler water and food stuffs creating the right environment for bait to stay within. Between Christmas and New Year a solid marlin bite occurred and on some days individual boats were able to raise multiple fish. Both lures and skip baits being highly effective, obviously the conversion rate on lures is considerably lower than skip baiting and switch baiting. Teasing a marlin and then feeding live bait back to it is highly effective as long as you have the people on board to manage the method. Key areas holding fish include the 12 Mile Reef, Bait Hole, inside Bermagui Canyons and the ‘Kink’. Should the pattern of ocean currents hold similar to what it is today we’re looking at a reasonable marlin season. Most of the fish range in size between 75-90kg at this stage with the odd to 110kg. Wide of the shelf where the current picks up some boats have stumbled across smaller Yellow Fin Tuna to 10kg and even a few 2kg models have eaten whole Slimy Mackerel rigged as skip baits. Highlights included Wobbles of Hotshot taking 5 marlin after 4pm last Thursday afternoon. Dave Cassar of Slammer got 2 from 3 the following day. The run of Kingfish continue and have provided a mixed day offshore where some boats have headed to the Island in the morning to catch a feed of kingies and managed a marlin wide of there in the afternoon. The Tru Dee V managed do this 3 days in a row and landed 2 of the marlin switch baiting on a spin rod and reel (Saltiga 6500 and T-Curve 15-24kg Spin loaded with 60lb Super PE). The kings are fickle and the use of jigs will more often than not landed you plenty of undersize fish and the odd keeper, even jig choice can determine whether a size or under size will result. The use of soft plastics is highly effective as long as the bait is more than 4 inches in length it will generally produce fish but ensure your jig head weight is sufficient to work the bait properly in line with how much current there is on the day. Live baiting and fresh strip bait of squid or cuttlefish continue to produce fish most days. The Island has shut down a couple of times when the northerly current has eased but not for more than a day or so and many return home with a few keepers and have thrown plenty of undersize (<65cm) fish back. The lack of rainfall in recent months has lead to local estuaries staying closed and water levels within them a falling quickly. This has resulted in better fishing in places like Wallaga Lake where legal size Snapper are being caught regularly, Tailor of good size can be taken readily on poppers and pillies or strip baits drifted beneath a float. Those trolling new and old school 1-3m diver lures around the edges are catching Flathead of good eating size between 40-45cm. Only a handful of larger models have been landed whilst whiting and bream on the flats in the lake beneath the powerlines are worth a bash with either surface lures or lightly weighted soft lures such as 2 inch Gulp shrimps and Squidgy wrigglers. It seems that with the closure of so many local estuaries small school sized Mulloway are becoming a more common capture along numerous beaches, the majority of these fish are around 3-4kg and some beaches to the north of the township have produced fish to 10kg on occasion. We can only assume these fish want to move in through the estuary mouths this time of year but are not able to and therefore are holding on the beaches often in good sized schools. Despite not prime time for Drummer they are being taken regularly from the rocks and cabbage has worked as well as cooked prawn and Cunjevoi this month. Those spinning from the rocks have been catching Salmon of reasonable size and the odd Tailor. We have only seen a couple of smaller Kings this month amongst it. Calamaris are patchy and the larger cheaper style jigs seem to work best. Areas to try are the rock walls in the harbour, the Blue Pool, 1st and 2nd point. The use of poppers across the flats continues to gain momentum and over the past 5 years it has produced some excellent captures from whiting to Bream to Flathead and when surface temperatures peaked during this past fortnight there was a lot of fun had by all whether using the cheaper Sure catch lures through to high end Japanese stick baits such as Fakie Dogs, Sugerpen 70’s or Gunfish 75’s etc. The river is producing better sized Duskies but remember the larger fish are a breeding female and their release is certainly preferred. Monday 11th January 2010 Report courtesy of Royal Volunteer Coastal Patrol MERIMBULA Fishing is great with heaps of flathead on the chew caught in waters north of town and if anything has improved on last week as the inshore reefs are now starting to fire with reports of snapper hitting the decks when fishing Haycock and further south. Gamefishing is starting to get into top gear as marlin have started to be seen in numbers and plenty of striped tuna and the odd mahi-mahi have been caught. Estuary fishing is great with all species on the bite and beach fishing is still firing with salmon and tailor on lures and pilchards and bream,whiting and flathead keen to take worms and cockles. Monday 4th January 2010 Report courtesy of Royal Volunteer Coastal Patrol MERIMBULA Our 2010 Gala Weekend was held last weekend and thankfully the weather was picture perfect on the Saturday with boats finding quality sized tiger and sand flathead north of Merimbula from 20 metres to 80 meters of water. Gummy sharks, gurnard and whiting were very quiet but the biggest downer was the presence of the gear pinching chinaman leatherjackets. Everyone lost plenty of sinkers, hooks and trace gear once the sun lifted over the horizon and again I will say that you must be early to not lose the gear as the mongrel pinching guys don't seem to come out till 7am or later. The reefs are still very hit and miss with only a few snapper caught but morwong, nannygai and leatherjackets were all keen to take a bait. Estuary fishing is still on fire with plenty of dusky flathead, bream, trevally and tailor on the chew and yes the beaches are still producing salmon and tailor. Gamefishing was a little quiet with the kingfish only turning up on the odd occasions down south and marlin and yellowfin were scarce. Striped tuna were caught from 40 fathoms to over the shelf and plenty of small mako sharks were found by anglers when drifting for bottom fish. FOR FISHING REPORTS IN 2009 - CLICK HERE
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