jdanger

A double hookup normally has me stoked, can't complain with a triple bag out. Well done!

You'll catch fish all day but the first half of the run-out is best. The higher the tide the better. A good bit of wind helps too.

The age old dilemma! First week I got dusted twice and I concluded my drag was too light (still getting used to the straight through fluro). Second week I tightened up a little and instead pull the hooks on a couple of fish, but at least I kept my lure. Last session I was goldilocks You're probably right - I'm yet to really build a decent fly catalogue. The deer hair I'm using is a bit on the stiff side and the flies lack action so I'll invest in something softer. BMS patterns look good in the water so they're on the to-try list as well.

Had a few sessions in the last month at our usual spot around Hen and Chicken. Gotta say, the fishing still feels like summer. Not a heap of action on surface (we rarely have much success on surface lures here), but you couldn't stop them from smashing our plastics. As usual, Zman Grubz in Motor Oil, Gudgeon & Bloodwoorm with a smidge of S-Factor on a light head did the trick. Had some love on the hardbodies, but the plastics were far and away the winners on every occasion. Overall the fish have been small, with only a handful of legals caught per outing, though we're not complaining. We have even started trying to crack the place on fly. So far Nick's dropped a flattie and I've managed a chopper tailor on a gold crazy charlie. I had another go on the fly today after we had to pull the pin on a fly fishing charter. We hit the bay again and after I'd secured a strong lead on the fish tally using our usual methods, I switched to the wand with some home made charlies to no avail. After Nick hit a patch that gifted him half a dozen fish in matter of minutes, parity on the score board was restored and I went back to the spin which immediately got me onto more undersized flathead and bream. Is it cheating if I use a lightly weighted plastic on the fly rod?

Like everyone has said, thanks for your efforts to keep the place going in the first instance. It's been awesome, and I'll miss this place.

Ya might be onto something there, Macman. Flathead usually aren't far off either. Follow the bait, I suppose.

Hi all, Had the absolute pleasure of being invited down for my workmate's annual Tassie fishing adventure to target the summer browns on dry flies through the Chudleigh Lakes system on Tasmania's Central Plateau, along with another fur'n'feather guy who came the year before. The route was planned based on Greg French's work and I was in experienced hands to assist with the hiking and fly fishing as I'm relatively new to both. My fly rod (G Loomis Pro 4X 6wt) and reel (Daiwa Lochmore SLA) arrived a fortnight before (how do I cast this thing!?) we were due to fly into Launceston on Feb 18th, so after a quick stop to pick up some flies (nymphs, adams parachutes and red tags), I found myself standing by Middle Lake, in the snow, watching thousands of duns break the surface whilst being molested by rising trout who were all well out of reach. The fishing began relatively slowly, with Nick managing the first fish after a day and a half. After a couple of days of wind, sleet, snow and rain, we finally caught a break in the clouds and the super clear water began to turn it on, with Nick braining 5 good fish in a short space of time during our session at Nipps. Peter had managed a fish the evening before and dropped another that day whilst I was still working out the best way to avoid bushes behind me ("you're still dropping your cast!") Day 3 rolled around and I was quick to get out of bed before the sun, thinking "this is the day I open my account". The morning was still and the fog heavy. Nick and I began stalking our way around Halkyard looking for tailing fish in the shallows, coming across a few, but only once we'd spooked them. Incredible how fish that size can be invisible in water that shallow - nothing but a subtle fin or steaming bow wave to give them away. Anyway, we work our way around to small backwater bay off the main lake and Nick spots a rise close in, to our right. "This one's yours" he says. I creep down to the water's edge and start working my fly out in increments - not gonna line this fish! The fish rises again a few metres away, a further to the right again. I place a silent cast a foot or two to the fish's left and let it sit as per Nick's instruction. The fish turns slowly and a bow wave heads to the dun imitation sitting in front of me. The heartbeat gets louder as everything bar the wave and the fly fade into the background, then, finally, a head appears and sips my fly below the surface. I wait for the instructed "1-2-3" / "God-save-the-Queen" / "Don't-f&&&-it-up" before striking.... only for the fly to come back at me. I'd missed the bloody fish. Spooked another fish that morning and struggled to land one the rest of the day. Depression was beginning to set it. Nick and Peter continued to enjoy success with fish taken at Dead End by both. Finally, on day 5, we made it to the appropriately named Snake Lake where we came across the first tiger of the trip. The wind was howling and polaroiding was proving difficult given the incredibly patchy sun. After almost doing a lap of the entire lake, I found myself on a rock with the wind flying from left to right. I opted for a speculative cast along the rocks & down the wind lane, like I would for bream back home. I began retreiving my dry to re-cast, only to hit what I thought was a snag. "Hang on, dry flies shouldn't sna-..." ...and off swam the rock. After a few minutes of tripping over my line, I landed my first fish on fly, a healthy brown at 48cm. Stoked, I made clear that I didn't care if I caught nothing for the rest of the trip, as long as I had my first. I doubled my catch for the week while polaroiding Lucy Long and dropped another in a stream on our way back to the car on the 7th & final day. Average fish for the trip went 50cm with the largest hitting 60, and a couple of smaller models in between. Grey and brown adams parachutes accounted for most of the fish, with one taken on a stone fly pattern. Muddlers worked well in the evenings, scoring one fish for Nick, one for Pete, and an unconverted hit for me. We saw some snakes, hundreds of wallabies and almost every lake had a platypus in it. The fishing really was a bonus! Sorry for the long read - if you can't tell, I'm excited and can't wait to throw a fly at something else!

North Point is fine in suitable conditions, though I tend to avoid it in swell 1.5M and up depending on directions. I actually prefer the south under Icebergs. More sheltered and not short of salmon & tailor. Blackies & squid are around as well. Also agree that prawns in the beach gutters at night are a bet for bream & trevally. Haven't seen good whiting but I'm sure they're there too.

Done, thanks Wellzy!

Hi all, Managed to get Tuesday off work to fish Woy Woy with a mate. The plan was to try our recently purchased Sugapens on whiting. Until now I'd had very little luck with my surface luring attempts. I've had follows, misses, hookups and a few dropped fish but I can't recall ever really ticking the box properly. We hit the flats at the top of the tide. I tied on a shallow Fat Dog and Nick had his trusty Towadi, prospecting the surface. It wasn't long before I'd dropped a solid bream and Nick drew fish blood with a snook of all things. We were surprised initially, but the snook proved to be the order of the day. We had a number of bream, flathead, tarwhine and juvenile reddies fall prey to our plastics and hardbodies, but the only players in the surface division were the masses of angry, hungry snook who proved to be very obliging targets. They weren't fussy about the retrieve, sometimes hitting it during a rip and other times on the pause. Once decided they like the look of the lure, there was no stopping them. The Sugapen thankfully lived up to its hype, with fish taking a swipe on the first cast and hooking up shortly after. All up we would've landed over a dozen snook each, the smallest going 30-35cm. I wouldn't call them hard fighting for their size, but the visual aspect was awesome fun. Fish of the day was the snook which took us by surprise, falling victim to the Sugapen 7F like his smaller friends. This thing cleared the water on its first swipe, missing the lure twice more before finally nailing it on the pause.

Cheers guys, glad to get the seal of approval. Definitely a very pretty stretch of water. This was my first time fishing the Colo and as its the last seemingly pristine waterway within a Cooee of Sydney, it deserves some serious respect. The bloke I was fishing with has been fishing the Colo for the past 50 years, give or take. He's heard of one flatty caught up as far as we were in that time, so seeing two in a day was pretty special. There were heaps of mullet around and as Day's Fishin says below, they move up during a dry spell and we were up there just before this week's rain. Water was drinkable where we were so the flatties seemed pretty well out of place. Colour change was amazing on them - I knew they changed their mottles to suit the environment but I didn't realise the extent. White as on the sand, and by the time I found the second one in the snag, I thought she was a piece of submerged timber! Chris alerted me to the snake danger as well. In the shallows, he's come across red bellies that look like sticks, basking on the sand bars in the sun. Lucky we were there on a cooler day! Glad to share, mate. Half the fun with these videos is listening to a good track on repeat through the editing process So THAT'S what the giant hose in the middle of the river was! [edit] Got an order in for a Loomis fly rod due to land early Jan, a Tassie trout trip booked for Feb, and just got a second hand vice from another workmate. Fishing is about to get a lot more addictive.

Fished the Colo with a retired workmate last Friday, spending a lot of time on the river flats, targeting shallow, shady snags. Mullet were everywhere and plenty of rat bass were caught on shallow divers in the channels near the banks, often in a foot or less of water. Largest went to Chris and guestimeasured in the late 30's but the average fish would've been low 20's. The clear water made for some good visual fishing despite the cooler weather deterring a strong surface bite. Highlight(s) of the day were us spooking a couple of healthy plate sized duskies right up in the fresh. Even managed to get one on film.

Only fished it a couple of times. Unweighted baits work best as there's not much current and the water tends to be clear.

Hectic. How far out did you get your baits?

As you say, any bream on a lure is a good bream. Totally agree. I reckon you'll increase your chances of a big one dramatically if you drop your leader to 4lb. Can make the flatties a menace and expect to lose a lure or two but you've gotta be in it to win it! General area where the bream were caught?

Whiting video (Part 2 - Saturday session)

Fantastic session! Water's definitely warming up and your report has me inspired.

Top bream, and props on the release. I'm in the same boat - since realising how old the big ones are I've got too much respect to keep them.

Happy days, except for the %%%%%. Stab is another word...

Cheers guys. We travel light so same setup for both plastics and hards. I've got a Daiwa TD Commander Tiger Division which is a 7'6" 1-3kg rod and a Pflueger Supreme XTS2000 reel. Nick's got a Nitro which is a bit shorter, 7' I think, also 1-3kg with a Luvias 2004. Both running 6lb J-Braid and a couple rod lengths of 4lb leader. Depth depends on the lure as we use a mix of shallow, mid and deep runners, but we're never really fishing more than 1.5m, and normally closer to 0.5-1m deep.

Awesome! You make it sound so easy, good read.

Nice work and nice yak. We fished the lakes that afternoon once the wind picked up, good thing you got in early!

Hit our usual at Hen and Chicken last Sunday before heading to Narrabeen for an afternoon session. Hit the water around 630, a couple of hours before the high. Despite a few tailor busting up, things were very quiet until the tide began to run out. The three of us pulled double figures of mostly small fish over the next couple of hours with plenty of small flathead to 40cm amongst a scattering of bream. I found my best fish up in the canal whilst the other two had as much fun at the mouth. Nick then showed us what it was all about by scoring his PB 42cm horse of a bream, mere metres from where I got dusted a few weeks prior. C called it a day so the remaining two of us headed to what turned out to be a very windy Narrabeen Lakes. Despite the blasting wind in our faces, we found ourselves quickly hooked up to a pair of small but respectable bream. Things soon got a bit tougher but as we worked out way along the weed beds, we slowly but surely piled the numbers on the board with more small bream, flathead and whiting added to the catch. Biggest flatty went 50cm, whiting went 29 and bream around 25. The flathead and whiting never made it home. The wind had stirred the water and sand up like crazy which meant that most were caught very close to shore and often at our feet. Z-Man grubs in bloodworm did pretty much all the damage, and we left them biting just before sundown, leaving my partner in crime in the bad books Despite the grief, we got our papers in order and managed another quick Bayview flick this afternoon. We found a number of just legal bream in the canals and again continued the fun into the runout with flathead to 45-ish and bream to 27. The hardbodies accounted for most of the fish until Nick once again put on a show with the Zman, pulling in this 42cm torpedo of a whiting. Not wanting to tempt fate, we pulled the pin upon release and left on a high.

Pm sent

Not my area of expertise but you could try for luderick off south Bondi rocks near icebergs using a weed fly. Rose Bay would be another local spot to try for estuary species but not sure what patterns to recommend.