bombora

G'day Iron, beach end. Just watch your backcast if fly fishing: may hook a jogger, nuclear family all on various bikes or a pet dog being taken on walkies! Labradors fight harder but jack russels jump like tarpon. Goon still pretty dirty from recent heavy rains but worth a shot if you can time with last of rising tide. Stinky humid and threatening storms can switch the place on, but it's either ON or OFF, seems no in-between! Certainly don't wade if you have any cuts etc on feet/legs: that's how the old fella died. Even be careful around the margins which in some places are pretty muddy from recent high water levels.

FW saying most likely an escapee from a nearby fish farm after the recent floods. Bet that's the same for the coffs fish. Sorry but no reason to buy a barra outfit.

G'day Tom, haven't seen a Bigeye Trev there Iin the past couple of years. Before that got a few of em and they are a total blast in shallow water on bream gear. Haven't even seen any Bigeye bust ups recently, but might just be I haven't been around when they've shown their presence. Haven't heard of any jacks or GHs recently either. But you never know at the goon. EPs though seem really healthy, have got em between 8cms and 43cms so healthy size range. Pred-ator the Crecsent Perch (also called Crescent Grunter) are cool little critters. Razor sharp gill plate spikes too! he's on an angle which makes his tail look smaller than it is. Fiesty little fellas.

The barra found in the Parramatta River and in many other parts of Sydney Harbour have all been religious releases by buddhists (ironic in that they release store bought live barra to get karma for saving an animal from death in a restaurant kitchen, only for the barra to suffer a slow death as waters cool in autumn). nothing to do with currents and climate change. But every one of these Harbour/Parra barra have been classic plate sized fish you find in restaurants. This one is heaps bigger. My guess: either the lake is so full of tucker the released barra got bigger and fatter quickly, or someone really needed a lot of karma points!!!!

Popped down to Queenie Lagoon for a couple of one hour mid arvo sessions between various chores. Scored a bit of variety on hair/feather homemade jigs and Strikepro blades. Scored a few more flatties and little baby bream as well. And a couple more whiting, Best lizard was about 50cms, the rest 38-40cms. Eps about 32cms. Last fella's a little crescent perch, a semi tropical visitor. They go like blazes for small fish, much faster and longer fight than same size baby bream. Got another as well. Good fun for two 6o minutes sessions. Sometimes pollution is good. No one takes fish from the goon. So toxic it killed an old fella a couple of years ago.

Rushcutters, Rose and Double Bay are generally super clear water fisheries, unless there's been a heap of rain. And they are places which get a lot of attention. I wouldn't go over 8 pound for flatties in those places. Regularly use 6 pound and even 4 if the water's crystal clear and its midday. . You'll get far more hits, and leadhead jigs often get jaw hinge hook ups which protect that light leader. Just make sure to keep your rod tip low when the falttie comes near you to lessen chance of head shakes which see leader cross their gill spikes or teeth. You'll also get more bream strikes with light leader. Go to a wharf, chuck in some bread, watch how the baitfish which get attracted swim, they'll pause, waft, shimmy and dart. Then try to swim your lures the way you watched those tiddlers swim.

Key is really shallow; top of trap should just b below surface. Too deep, I reckon, is biggest mistake. Or catch em with a hook, so easy you can catch as many as you wish in minutes. But you need a tiny hook.And I mean tiny. I once won letter of the month from a Pommie fishing mag for defending Oz attitudes to carp. Prize was a big box of carp tackle (!). Included was a bunch of pre-tied hooks and traces. The line was one pound and two pound, the hooks, snelled onto the traces, were size 20 and size 22!!!!

G'day MM, we just use a decent bean sinker. More simple than downriggers. Rig is short double, connecting knot of your choice to trace of about a metre and a bit, thread on sinker, then BB swivel, then another metre and a bit of trace to circle hook. Gives you a longer trace without the sinker being way up the line. Bridle the livie and it'll last forever, give better hook sets and little chance of the hook burying in the livie. Also, at least outside and trolling from a boat, we always have a livie unweighted and trolled a fair way back. So you are covering a fair bit of the water column with one deep and one surface bait. The surface livie often scores the biggest king (think how effective big surface stickbaits are!

Yep the rats are going feral! Was out couple days ago and when we found em, north of the heads, they hit everything. Poppers were an absolute blast as usual. So much so we took the hooks off a couple and watched the rats getting more and more angry as they smashed em all the way back to the boat. Got three between 75cm and 80cm on slow trolled live slimeys too. Water was super clear, running the right way and 20.6C. Stacks of fat slimeys in the harbour.

Good stuff. Turon Rainbows are such beautiful fish. And then there's that air-clear water.

Great report and fantastic picture gallery guys. We need some Spring rain!!

Had em in the burley trail too while getting bait near Manly wharf on Wednesday. First time anyone onboard had seen couta in the harbour.

Thanks Zook that's the one!!!!

Thanks Kaiser. Though not the one I'm looking for. This was a simple graphic line with heights on the side of the graph, ie straight line if river level was constant, then for example if a flash flood hit then a big rising bump in the line. Hope I make sense. Anyway thanks for the link.

Hiya, I can't find on the web the graphic which shows the river water heights in NSW, particularly for the central tablelands. Last river trout season I just Googled "(name of particular river) River heights" and it was about the first thing which came up. Now all I get is a crappy list of numbers. Still gives the height of the particular river I'm interested in, but oved the graphic form of this info but can;t find. Loved it when we had lots of rain, to see the height rise in a quick curve. Just me, or has something changed (govt cuts???)

Nibbles you write really well. Good stuff. And nice pics. You know you can't give up now!

Seacow it would appear to be Shooters First, Shooters Second, and Shooters Third. Fishers would not even make their top ten. By the way Katrina has now been told by Barry to appear before the inquiry.

That's damn interesting Boatart. DEFINATELY false advertising then. I am unware of ANY fishers who support cronulla moving.

So, can anyone say what the Shooters and Fishers party in NSW has actually done for rec fishing???? They have had some big wins, carefully exploiting their balance of power position, for hunters. But what have they done for fishers????? Silent on Aussie salmon netting, silent on commercial pippie harvesting, silent on the impact on the NSW coast of the Supertrawler, ineffective or more likely silent on Cronulla Fisheries Centre closure, silent on estuary prawn trawling and its impact on jewfish. In fact I cannot off the top of my head think of anything they have done for fishers. We should take them to court or a consumer tribunal and lay a charge of false advertising on them.

I think the bigger issue with all deep water fishing is barotrauma.

Was this blue near Browns? We were out a few days later and had the biggest blue any on board had seen biting the prop right on nightfall. What got all on board, with collective gamefishing experience of about a 100 years, was not just how long the blue was, but how thick it was. Two gun game fishos on board said they thought it was pregnant. Then on way home a charter skipper was chatting and was pissed off a client had wanted to keep a smaller blue caugh that day. As they were gaffing it ("he wanted to take it to show off to some relos" tool) it pupped. They reckon more than 30 pups spilled out and swam off. So wonder if the blue in the video is the same one we saw? _ can't be many that size swimming around _ and whether its thickness was also cause it was pregnant. The gun game fishos on our boat were calling it at "maybe" more than 200 kilos. And they've seen a lot of blues over the years.

Hope they ate the shark.

Hiya I just used canola. PS meant coconut cream not milk. Mlik too runny. Reackon would be even better with your own mixed and ground thai spices!!!!

Hiya 1829; Don't know if it goes with other firm fleshed fish. I tried it on kingie once and was disappointed, so haven't done it with other fish (though I think i overcooked the kingie, will have to give it another go). It just seems to go really well with silver trevs _ the coconut milk is a nice alternative to the usual egg, milk etc normally used to crumb coat fish. Really simple to do, too. Use a fair whack of Thai spice in the breadcrumb mix (then again i'm a smoker so my taste buds are probably shot).

Hope your kids are over 18