josamill

Fantastic fun! Hasn't Pittwater served up some entertainment this Summer!

Great video! Looked amazing with that fog on the water - good on you for releasing....... She looked fighting fit swimming off.

If kingies are around, you're a surefire bet - but obviously not on 3lb.........when I catch squid at non-kingie times. I put them into a plastic sandwich bag - zero contact with fresh water - and freeze them. Have caught sharks and jewies off the beach with this.

We've been catching them last 2 weekends in Pittwater - excellent fun for my 9 year old son, and therefore me too! You can catch 20 in an hour. I flattened the barbs on the treble so zero fish damage. We have caught larger mack tuna around Broken Bay in years passed, but I have never see these smaller ones in such numbers.

What a champ releasing her........great fish and a photo that will last a lifetime!

Ripper guys...........thanks!

Any Northern Beaches wormers out there? I finally had some success down the South Coast over Christmas and wondering if beach worms exist in good numbers in Sydney around Palm Beach - Narrabeen. The Northern Beaches sand is very different - coarser, crushed sand stone and I'm not sure if beach worms would 'dig' this??? Deadly bait

G'day Brett......similar..........fished Pittwater both mornings. Fish around for sure but we weren't good enough. Highlight on Saturday was a 60cm flathead at Mackeral Beach, but that's pretty much it.......a just legal flounder & bream, and a huge bust off on a plastic after 1 minute and some massive head shakes.. zero crabs from 2 nets so you beat me there! Kingfish everywhere both days, but couldn't entice them with live yakka or fresh bonito. Girl on boat next to us caught one - 70cm - on a pink K-Mart rod, frozen prawn.......took her 20 mins..........my live yakka had been 30 meters away all that time????? I'll be back though!

Mate just anchor off the pill box at West head and yakkas will come to you easily also some squid. Over the kelp 50 meters off the rocks. no requirement of a sounder for live bait around there.

Well done..........what a great kingy. Looks like South Avalon.....saw a few boats out there yesterday. Can't really beat squid, even though it can take 2 hours to find one sometimes!

Brilliant fish! Yet to catch one so I'm jealous.

G'day RichieR At this time of year I keep it very simple re the rig......7 foot rod, 8lb braid, small ball sinker to a swivel, 60cm of 8lb fluro trace, long shank hook, and beach worms. You can cast this set up 40M and that's more than you need to get into 6-8 feet of water in a gutter. Always keep in light contact with the sinker..........if there is a lateral rip, walk your rig up the beach...............you are never in the water for more than 5 mins. Around April i'll get the longer stick out, heavier pyramid sinker at the bottom, and gang hooks and surf popper further up the rig for salmon/tailor. Hope this helps......beach fishing is so productive, but the biggest key for bream and whiting is live worms I reckon. Nippers fall off, pippies good, frozen stuff......you'll jag the odd desperate bream.

Cheers guys They were the smallest salmon I have caught, but salmon none the less with the speckles, longer single fin and rounder body...........my son reckons his salmon earlier this year will take some beating though! (Sorry for the sideways shot)

Nothing much happening for us in the Tuross River last week.........too many boats-per-M2 Decided to hit the beach Saturday afternoon, stormy South Coast, moderate swell, fishing the edge of a gutter on high tide.....live beach worms. A really hot session. Crumbed bream fillets and salmon patties were demolished by the kids.

That's fantastic mate..............well done and congratulations!!

We always fish 2 x plastics & 1 x live poddy on our South Coast estuary.......score is about even I reckon but we tend to get bigger fish with the mullet. Have caught 3 over 85cm........biggest on a plastic 66cm. Maybe just co-incidence, and so much more satisfying to jag one with an artificial!!

Squid!

Great catch! And probably $100 worth of flathead fillets... We always fish a live poddy mullet out one side and flick SPs out the other......the bait is more tempting, but the plastics cover 100 times more territory so I guess our score card is probably SPs just ahead. Our biggest - 92cm - came on a pillie tail when we couldn't find any mullet. I'm heading south to catch her again in a few weeks.

Nice work mate!

I'm heading south over Summer....Tuross. Various websites say miud crabs inhabit as far south as the Bega River. That surprised me....thought they were just North. Anyone had success south of Sydney?

Always been an 'up the river' flathead, whiting & bream fisho..................but, living in Avalon and hearing reports of kingfish in Pittwater I figured it was time for me and my 8 year old son to act like men and chase a real fish! Have been improving the squid form in recent years but only managed one in hour at West Head on Saturday morning. Came back into Careel Bay and saw something going on on the surface...........something I will never forget. The patch was the size of a football field, they were kingies, and they were rolling and boiling on the surface. Great news...........no birds, so only one other boat with 2 fly fishermen found the school. I forgot about the squid and threw lure after lure at them.............halco blades, gold bombers, stickbaits, soft plastics............nothing. But for half an hour they stayed there moving slowly north and with just one other boat. Finally I got the squid going on a rig with a big hook and a treble stinger..................awkwardly cast it towards the school with a clunky old overhead combo, and gave the rod to my son. After 5 minutes, the school started closing towards our boat. I saw 20 fish up close and 2 of them were definately around the 1 metre mark after factoring in water making things look bigger. "Hang on mate.....this is it".........bang! Sorry to take so long to tell you about one 74cm kingie, but it was our first and I'm still buzzing!!!! The kingies were feeding on what I would call glass-eyes.................small translucent fish with big eyes. My soft plastic was a pretty good match I reckon. In hindsight, the only artificial we didn't try that may have worked was a popper??

I've been fishing Tuross each Summer since 1968 and in my opinion it has never been better. I have some haunts well west of the Princes Hwy that hold big flathead and bream in brackish water.

Yeah I didn't measure but I would say 65cm.........no crabs...... and I tend to rip up some pilles for the nets, nice & oily.....which explains the salmon I guess. Next time an 80cm jew would be nice.

Unusual to chase blue swimmers in July I know, but had a plentiful Winter in 2013 so got the witches hats out on Saturday. Scooted up to Spencer to visit a mate and found this guy 3 hours later. Probably illegal I guess, but not much you can do about a nosey salmon! As you can see my son was pretty upset about it all...

Palm Beach is a really productive beach for bream, whiting, Tailor, salmon and flathead. I've never brained it off the rocks though. Go the beach itself. Usual story, high-ish tide, edge of a deep gutter, a small swell but not totally flat. The best gutter is usually around the middle of the beach where the road turns inland towards the golf course. Live blood worms, and another rod with a pillie tail or ganged pillie & surf popper for salmon, tailor and flatties. Cant remember not catching fish in there.........dart and rays can be a pain. well done with your flathead!