wchh

I share your feeling definitely! This is a familiar feeling to all our fisho. We all had a moment of losing a fish for various reasons and most of time we don’t even get to see what took our bait and hook. that “the one that got away” moment was the thing keeps us going back😁 Not sure what I could have done trying to land that king. King is known for hard fighting. I fish a lot off the beach and learnt the trick to use the wave. But off a spot like Doll’s Point, It is going to be hard as there is not much of waves for most of times. Heavy gears might be the only answer? anyway, that was fishing, sometimes we win, sometimes fish does. Let us just not give up trying!

The rod is a Kmart 12’ ft surf rod (sport fisher) I bought about 10 years back, I don’t know whether they still stock them nowadays. It came as a combo with an original price of $40. I bumped into them when they were on special price $19 and I bought three sets. The reel was not used as I bought a few Shakespeare Silencer full metal reel (3x 6000 size and 2x8000 size) as well. The one in the photo is a 6000 reel spooled with 25 pound Jarvis Walker mono line. All the things I use are budget stuff but I have not lost any fish due to outfit failures yet in my last 20 years of fishing. 😁

Thanks! I like the lighter coloured fish from the beaches, they look cleaner. Half pillie is definitely not too big for large breams. I also use heavy leader up to 80 pound in the wash for less chance of tangling, this heavy leader may have deterred a few bites, but better than untangling the lines every cast.

This one was also 44cm but from Maroubra

Hi mate:Yeh, big breams are my main target these days because my increased appetite for the steamed fish. I did catch quite a few 40+ breams off the sands lately, like the 44cm one in below photo caught on 8/11/20 from Wanda, it made the well legal blue spotted look like a baby. but they are not there everyday, I have to agree 😀

This kind of by-catch made me lazy to make dedicated effort to chase beach Jewfish. A few years back, I often came home the other side of the midnight, now I would normally get home before 9:30 pm. Average a two-hour session.

Better part was I caught it when the sun was still up, unlike those other photos I had to take in darkness, this smaller fish looks a lot nicer in bright daylight

The cleaner photo made the fish look even better😀

Me too! This is the 2nd jewfish I caught on pilchard from this beach when trying for bream. I also caught another two on a whole pilchard some years back from Mona vale beach. Those larger captures made me trust my servo pilchard more than anything else on the beach.

Too true. This fish came to the beach a lot earlier than one can expect, there were quite a few surfers in the water just outside the gutter I was fishing

Thanks! I don’t get them very often😀

At 86 cm, this is not a huge jewfish from the beach. what worthy of noting is this one was again caught as a bycatch when I was hoping for a bream. The hook was a 1/0 suicide hook and bait was half a pilchard. Caught on the corner of the mouth, almost straightened the hook. last bycatch in a similar manner and time of the year and day was a meter plus jewfish back in 2017. (27/10/2017 to be precise). This one happened just before 8:00 pm last Wednesday 25/11/2020. Both from Wanda beach. a friend fishing together took below photo.

Great looking gutter there, good fun catching salmon/ tailor from that water, would have also been breams flathead etc had the water been a bit calmer.

Are those photos copyrighted? My goodness, I can’t help but thinking about using them as my profile photo! well done!

I read a few posts you catching fish from those grounds lately. That is a surprise honestly. I normally have a walk on that section of the beach in the morning and often see someone fishing there, but never seen any fish caught. really well done! charles

The beach was a bit hard to fish this past weekends due to the large swells last week washed quite a bit of beach away and washed up mountains sea weed filling the deep gutters around access gate 6 and 7. anyway, if you do not mind a bit of walk to the north, you can still get a bit of clean water after the 2km signage. Water was shallower but it is nevertheless richer in structures. Managed two trips one in each nights. 6:30-9:00 pm on Saturday and 5:00 - 8:30 pm on Sunday. Yield was 7 tailors on Saturday and three on Sunday. I also took a 40cm flattie and a 35 treveley. The bonzer whaler is also back on the beach. I have not caught a shark for some time from Wanda but I came across them on both days this week. the larger tailors were high 40 nearing 50 cm and very fat. Only three below 40cm which is my favourite size for tailors. Two went down as green curry dish and the other 8 should last me two weeks no problems Charles

Well structured report and best presented catch and dinner!

I have not caught anything more than 5kg off the rocks so limited of direct experience. From the way you described, and the fish won at the end, I would put it an eagle ray. I caught quite a few from the beach over 10 kg. Those were always the fish harder to fight than a 20 jewfish.

Here is the photo. I normally fish 12-20 pound mainly line during day time, but will change to 30 pounds if I do a night session. For leader, I use 40 pound but if I know there was tailor around, I will add another section of 80 pound leader as shown in the photo. Hook size is normally from 2 to 2/0, but will use 4/0-6/0 if I target jew fish during night time using fillet bait. Sinker is 4 oz snapper sinker which has less dragging resistance than star sinkers. Hope you find this helpful. Charles

It is sort of modified paternoster rig. To make it quicker to change sinker and hooks, I tie a snap swivel to the end of main line. The sinker is tied to onto a swivel with a leader of about 15 cm long. The the leader (about 60 cm) for the hooks is also tied on a swivel. I will take a photo to share when I have time.

Yes, at that size, they fought like salmon. There were a few times I thought it was salmon until I pull it onto the sand and noticed it was jumping instead of lying quite.

There was a lot of weed south of the gate 6 this weekend so I walked a bit to the north searching for some cleaner water and fishable gutter. Located a spot a little bit further up to the Gate 2 where I think is bordering the 4WD area. There was no cars yesterday though. Made my first cast at 3:30. The first fish came a bit slow at 3:50 but it was a 50cm tailor so a keeper. After that, the bites got consistent averaging about 10 minutes per bite till I packed up at 6:40 pm. All in all, I landed 9 fish, being 4 large tailor and 5 salmon. The salmons were released. There was 3 or 4 missed hookups due to I switched to circle hooks for I don’t want deep hook the salmons but obviously I was not too used to circle hooks. There was a lot of small bait fish at the edge of the water, maybe that was what attracted those large tailors and salmons. On my way out, there were a few more people fishing and they also caught salmon. From gate 2 and the gate 6 exit , it was a good 40 minutes walk carrying my backpack, a loaded bucket and a 12-ft rod. I was soaking when I got to the car. Attached is the photo of the tailors I kept. The largest on was 58 cm and very fat! Charles

Interesting thread here. I fish Wanda beach quite a bit and most of time I try to stay south of the gate 5 because I don’t want get bothered by those dogs that constantly come up to investigate your bucket. This weekend is a bit hard to stay south end due to mountains of weed piled up around gate 6 south ward. I did a afternoon session today walking all the way to gate 2 hoping there won’t be many dogs around that far. Amazingly around 4pm, tens of happy dogs and their owners marched over passing me. There was a family of three (a dad with two young daughters about 13 and 7. hurdling two dogs, one German shepherd and one blood hound, both large in size. I don’t think those three people are able to control those two large dog effectively. They were about 50 meters from where I was fishing, but the hound came up to search in my bucket four times and every time the owner only called “archer” which sounded like the name of the dog. I had to stop fishing and came to fend the bucket with my body standing between the dog and my bucket. I was really worried the dog would get angry and attacks me. What got me more was why the owner did not come over to get the dog back. I was actually bitten by a dog last year at my local Brighton-Le-Sands beach and started to grew fear of dogs after that. By the way, I was once told by a walker it is illegal for me to fish on the beach because there were people walking.

Top fish! By reading your report, it is obvious you did not catch this one by luck! Now everyone will be looking for break walls.

Heavy swell from the south means near impossible conditions for beach fishing, this is especially true for my usual fishing beach Wanda/Cronulla. Still itchy to get out, the only option for me is to try Maroubra which I have not fished for some time. Arrived at the beach about 6:00pm and managed to locate a small section of the beach looked fishable. The are some nibbles within 5 minutes of the first cast, which confirmed there are fish around. Within the next two hours, I landed 5 fish. Apart from the three in the photo, there was a largest banjo I have ever caught(would have been 50cm across which gave me some a lot of trouble pulling it up with 15 lb line), and a small kelp fish. The snapper is about 34 cm which is a rare catch for me as most of my fishing was from the beaches. Pilchard was the bait last night. I now also have the pike kept for bait for my next trip. (The photo of the beach was taken during the day when I tried to check out the beach and tried luck for spotting whales) charles