Siesta911

Frozen squid is very good bait for kingfish provided no contact to freshwater is made. Once it touches freshwater, usually it is useless for kingfish fishing...

Nice fish mate. Well done. Leaping Bonito is one of best fish for Sashimi - but they don't stay fresh too long. Better to bleed and take the gut then ice it right away, and have sashimi within 5-6 hours time. I hope I can catch one or two this season too. Cheers,

Fished there on Friday and caught a legal size king (78cm) nearby the Scotland Island. Used a relatively large size live squid as a bait.

Well done mate. If you like sashimi, freeze squid for a day or two. Doing so will sweeten the meat. You cannot get sweetness by just keeping in the fridge. Never use fresh water to clean though. Please use paper towel.

Hi there. Good luck on your first boat fishing! For yakkas, we usually catch them at Roseville, Balmoral or Little Manly. If you get there early in the morning and use berley, you shouldn't have any problem. As for rig, we usually don't use any float while targeting kings from boat. We use paternoster rig. We adjust depth per fishfinder readings. Hope these help.

Totally agree. Unlucky on lost fish, but 65lb braid is probably too much for such a small reel. Also baitrunner 4000D may not be big enough to fight hoodlum class in my opinion. 7kg drag is just not enough...

You can try Clifton Garden, Balmoral Jetty, Little Manly (Spring Cove side on the rock) early in the morning – around dawn time. If you can get the point around 5:00ish, you should be able catch something decent size for a couple hours. Remember to use burley while fishing mate.

You can catch heaps at Little Manly too!

Float fishing (no sinker) with use of occasional burley during the first few hours from the dawn always produce good fish for me at most of wharves. If you haven't tried, please try once. thanks.

Re: whiting, if you can get live beach worms, you will be guaranteed to catch them. Better to fish early morning though.

Sorry I didn't mean to hurt you mate! I am sure that it was your first King. Having said that Amberjack is as good fish as Kingfish And it is more rare catch here, so you will be as happy as you are now if you catch one in the future!

Well done mate. Any chance of the fish being Amberjack by the way? They look quite a like, but Amberjack is usually much fattier than Kingfish. My mate mistakenly released a fat Amberjack thinking it was a undersized Kingfish. Just a thought. Cheers,

Well done gents. Looks awesome!! Have hoodlums turned up during the morning or afternoon tide change by the way?? Thanks.

I usually use 8-10lb line. Hook, smaller the better I guess. I use a children's rod for bait fishing. It is easier for me. For bait I use chicken because it is tough and I need a thumb size only to catch 10+ yakkas. Most importantly you should burley. I use staled bread disolved in to seawater. This way burley sinks slow and yakkas come up to the surface fighting for food. It is easier to catch while they are visible (for me). With live yakka I think you can expect tailor, salmon and kingfish there. I usually use float to ensure I know where my live bait is swimming to avoid tangling with other people. Cheers,

I've fished more than few times in a similar condition. As long as you stay within the Pittwater it should be okay. You may have difficulty anchoring the boat though. It can be choppy there, but no direct swell coming as long as you are well inside the Pittwater. I caught a huge cobia and amberjack when it was in a similar condition there... Good luck.

Kingfish is a pelagic fish, so the risk of them being contaminated by dirty Sydney Harbour water should not be as bad as those fish like bream I reckon.

Cheers mate!

These leaping bonitos make excellent sashimi, but doesn't stay fresh too long, so you should be careful when handling. It is better to bleed/gut/ice right away and finish by the evening

I know how you feel. Same happened to me last Sunday in the Harbour. 50cm bonito fought like a king, so during the fight I had no doubt at all that it was a king! I took it home and had nice sashimi though

Sorry for you mate. I've lost a gear I loved exactly in the same situation. Sad, but we have to keep our eyes on our belongings all the time...

Thanks. We have tried almost every weekend for the past 3 months to catch king land based. Had few bust off and spat out situations only... That's why we went out to the North Head. Catching King from the boat is much easier than estuary land based I reckon. Cheers,

Both came probably 1-2 meters above the bottom! Cheers,

My work mates wanted to go to the north head yesterday to catch kings, so we hit the water at the dawn. Because we heard Balmoral jetty is closed for maintenance work, we've decided to go straight to the north head and catch yakkas on the spot. We've tried for 45 min. or so, but failed to catch any live bait there, so I started to think that we made a huge mistake going there without any. Then something reasonably big attacked my sabiki jig I was using to catch yakkas. I've fought carefully, but unfortunately the line got busted off. 5 minutes later, one of the work mates sabiki was also attacked. He was using a $29 gear for children he bought for catching yakkas!! Because the other work mate just boated a bonnie a few minutes prior to his hook up, three of us all assumed it was also a bonnie. We were all wrong... After a long 20 minutes fight, he boated a just illegal size king (60cm ish - attached photo)!! So, I quickly sank another sabiki and fished for 10 minutes... After losing few pilchard slices on the sabiki, BANG!!! I also hooked and boated a king in similar size. Because they are illegal size, we let them go, but we were quite happy catching kings by very light gear with sabiki jigs as we have always been in a brief that we catch kings only on live baits... We will go back in a few weeks time to catch legal size king then and of course with sabiki jigs!! FYI: Yesterday was quite productive day. We took home two bonnies and 5 fat trevally of 40-45cm in 2 hours. We let go quite many fishes.

Wow. Impressed. Thanks a million Captain Spanner! You seem to have covered everything!! I think I will try everything you shared and let you know how it goes. Very happy to know someone there like you who help out people!!! Cheers,

Hi Raiders. I am taking my mates to the middle harbour and heads area by boat during the upcoming Christmas holidays for live bait fishing targeting kingfish. We will be using live yakkas and squid. My question is, what sort of rig we should use when targeting kingfish from the boat. Should you use sinker to sink live yakkas? Should we use a float like when we fish from the rocks? Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks.