Niall

Solid effort mate. You'll never wanna throw anything else now 👍

Having never owned or used any watercraft more complicated than a boogie board, I saved up some shekels and bought myself a Hobie Compass a few months ago. The problem until recently has been, I'm a bit nerve-wracked by the idea of kayak fishing - just little old me out in the deep on this plastic tub? For a strictly land based angler this is a new and intimidating world. As a result of that, plus a couple of Covid mishaps with would-be kayaking companions, I've only managed to get out on the water with it once. Trying to be safety conscious, I'd told myself when I bought it that I'd start off by only fishing with other people until I got the hang of it. Those plans were binned the night before the 26th when my planned kayaking brother bailed out for wife-related reasons. My wife is cognisant of the fact that I'm a generally better person to be around when I'm allowed to fish. Looked like I was on my own for the morning. So I managed to get up at a respectable hour and, being an experienced Sydney-ite, elected to stay in my local and avoid the public holiday traffic - good call 👍 I launched from the pontoon at the very end of Rozelle Bay / Blackwattle Bay, on the water by about 0630. Headed straight over to the small marina next to the pontoon and started throwing around a Splash Prawn between the boats. It was a near-enough glass out which made manoeuvring the kayak for casting a lot easier than my first trip. Having a reverse mode on the pedal drive is pretty much essential for this type of thing I'd say. It's obviously do-able otherwise but I daresay it wouldn't be much fun. It wasn't anymore than a couple of casts till that familiar pop sound and my drag was peeling off. It's such a different experience fighting a fish from the kayak, even it's a small-ish bream. They're more than capable of dragging the kayak a bit. It definitely evens up the stakes somewhat - I'm often surprised by the pulling power of a 25cm bream. I managed three more off the same marina before I started making my way up towards the old Pyrmont Bridge. There's a few hundred metres of working boats, pleasure cruisers and the police marina to work your way through if you're so inclined. Having only fished it twice, I'd say the working boats at the far end and the ferries are unlikely to hold many fish (and haven't in my experience). Pretty sure they clean the bottoms of them regularly and whatever they use, the fish don't want a bar of it. Pretty sure the workers don't want a bar of kayak fishos in their area either so best to steer clear. The action really starts when you get to the police marina and the pontoons right up next to the bridge. In this area I was landing a bream probably every handful of casts. Often several fish off the same pontoon or boat. If they weren't on this or that pontoon there then they were on the next boat or under the wharf after that. Absolute swarms of them everywhere. When I wasn;'t catching I could hear bream eating off the surface around me. I paddled across to the other marina directly under the ANZAC bridge and managed a few off the boats in there too. This one can be hit and miss when I've been there on foot but produced some solid models in a bunch of places I'd never be able to get near from shore. Further down there's another set of pontoons next to the cement plant. The boats in here are generally quite old and static and the place is a bream wonderland. As soon as my lure hit the water next to my first boat it got pack attacked. Once again I proceeded to land fish one after another. Even after the end guide broke off the tip of my rod (I'd recently had the guide replaced), I still managed to catch fish hand over fist for another hour or so. On one boat that was offloading a bunch of water and warming up it's engines, I must have caught 5 bream casting next to all the splashing and churning water. My normally extremely cautious little buddies were all fired up! By this stage I'd lost count of the amount of bream I'd caught (easy 20+). I decided to have one last flick around the cop's marina. This was another good call - my last fish of the day was a stonker right on the 40 mark. That seemed a good note to end on. By now the wind was picking up and I was buggered and melting. Safe to say I'm keen for another kayak run. It was definitely the right move taking advantage of the good weather and getting out on my own. I won't have an issue jumping in solo from here on. Any other Hobie-sporting, bream-nerds on here that wanna come for a fish? I'm inner-west based and KEEN! Tight Lines People!!

Yeah Mike it fills up nicely on anything over about a 1.5m tide. Anything above 1.6 and you’re pushing right up past the bridges next to Tramsheds and round the bend up to the next bridge - I was out the past couple of mornings and got basically all my fish past the underpass. Probably averaged 7-8 fish per session over a couple hours. Nothing is too shallow!! 😂

Yep. Find the food and you'll find the bream.

It might look like discipline mate, but it's actually just obsession 😂 I really feel like surface fishing is 70% confidence and believing that it'll actually work. If you're ever gonna skip the plastics and dedicate yourself to it, then now's the time. Best time of the year for it.

Bit of a compilation of various bream sessions over the past couple of weeks. Mostly solo, but some with folks you might know from here. Finally got a chance to fish with @DerekD last week as he's been keen to put me onto his hassle-free blackfish rig. Having been Luderick fishing a few times with another mate, I'd always had a bit of an aversion to all the gear required to do it succesfully. Berley, buckets, nets, beads and stoppers and all the stuff for me was very frustrating as it too often tied us to a location which is basically the opposite of my lure fishing approach. If I'm not moving around a lot when fishing I can get pretty antsy. Enter @DerekD who had put the work in and found a way to successfully target them arounds Sydney's wharves using little more than a standard light bream rod, a float and a few weed flys. So we met early down at Mort Bay and had a cast for some pelagics off the pontoon first thing. Not a single bustup or boil in sight so it was a bit of an extended casting practice. Got some good tips from Derek for casting heavier lures - I'm out of my comfort zone casting much more than 20g. Casting gets old pretty quick when you're not producing fish so we bailed and headed for Balmain Wharf to try the new blackfish rig. We managed to get a couple of downs after not too long but with me on the other end of the rod, we sadly missed those hookups. The wharf didn't produce much more than that apart from a few pinkie snapper that took a liking to a green vibe I was chucking about. Another spot change and we ended up at Propellor Park - this was where our luck started to change a bit. Derek missed a couple of Blackfish early on just casting with his fly rod (Derek has a tackle shop's worth of rods in his car at any given time). I managed a just legal flatty on a Holt prawn. Mike, another fisho, rocked up with his blackfish gear and little bit of weed he'd salvaged from the wharf - it wasn't long and he was onto a Blackfish. I switched to topwater and found a bunch of hungry bream feeding all the way along the wall. Many hits and misses until I finally landed a couple up the beach end of the park. Nothing massive, but always good to see them race out and nail a lure. Derek was very keen for me to land a blackfish on the float gear so we headed with Mike back to Mort Bay and fished off the wall at Ballast Point for Luds. I finally managed to convert a down into a hookup and pulled in a (maybe just?) legal fish. I'll credit that one to Derek. It's very encouraging to know that they'll hit the weed flys readily. Once the bream season quietens down I'll have to give it a crack myself. I think the other two were encouraged by my topwater success so we decided to head for Five Dock Bay for a last ditch at landing some good fish. Derek was still pretty much on a donut at this stage - poor guy 😂 Started getting hits on surface immediately upon arriving at Five Dock. Such a fun venue when it's filling up and the bream are moving in. It's really a perfect place to practise the topwater bream thing. We missed a few hookups at the boat ramp end - Derek unfortunately missed a cracker on the bent minnow. Sometimes they just can't get a hook in their mouths. As we made our way up towards the back end the bites increased and I finally started hooking a few, including a couple of decent ones. Mike landed the bream of the day on a soft plastic - about a mid 30's model. He followed it up with a couple of flatties including a nice 50 model. Still couldn't get Derek onto a fish - many lure changes were happening without bearing much. We've all been there and hated it. The frantic lure change is a sure sign that your over-thinking. It's encouraging to see that even someone as experienced as Derek can fall victim to it. I've gotta say a big thank you to Derek. He's such a generous bloke with his knowledge and time. He's also determined and obviously doesn't crack the shits when it's not going his way - really the ideal fishing companion. I think we fished a solid 9-10hrs that day. I'd do it again any day. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I thought I'd drop a little report of the past couple days as well because they've been quite interesting. They've recently resurfaced and beautified a storm water drain / former creek near my place. I've done some reports before about fishing plastics in the drains and how productive it can be. The last couple of days were no exception. Yesterday morning I started early with the rising tide. I find the bream are following the tide up pretty much as far as they can get. This means I'm rarely fishing in anything deeper than about 30cm - the canal has shallow edges and a channel running through the middle of it that the fish use as a sort of highway and for cover from any birds (always a few hungry Kookaburras about there). I've been having success in there on topwater if there isn't too much leaf and debris on the surface. Pretty much any old surface lure works provided you work it slow and give it a good pause when it's sitting over the channel in the middle. 9/10 they're nailing it there and tearing off down the channel quick smart. Some very fun fights to be had when you hook a decent one - I've had bream in there up to about 38cm and they go hard in that shallow water. I even managed to get my wife onto her first fish in here on Christmas Day - it was my cast but I was very proud of her getting her first ever fish on a popper. Today there was way too much leaf litter on top to attempt any surface so I fished plastics all morning. This turned out to be very productive. Within 3 casts I landed my first fish, a respectable low 30's model that slurped the plastic up without me feeling him - my first warning that I was on was him tearing down the channel headed for bay. A good tussle and he was flipped over the fence. From then on it was basically a hit or a fish every other cast. As the tide shifted back and forth it was essential to move around and find where they were holding - nothing was too shallow either. I could see fish bow waving after my lure all over the place. Amazing. After about 1/2 an hr of fishing something unexpected happened and huge swell made it's way up the canal, pushing the tide further up and filling the canal another 200mm deeper in about 3mins flat. This must have been the tsunami predicted from last night. This basically turned the canal into a fast running stream that changed direction every 20mins or so. Various bits of debris created Eddys in the current and casting into the Eddys or drifting the plastic on a slack line with the flow would come up with a fish more often than not. Over the next 2 hrs I must have landed 20+ bream of various sizes. Def one of the better sessions I've had lately. Apologies for the long read. Hope you're all out there getting into em as well. Cheers Niall (sorry no photos. I've got some short vids but they won't fit as attachments)

Definitely a solid lure. The 95mm is a bit of a different beast - bigger splash and with very strong hardware but I casts great and catches fish for sure.

Definitely lucky to have a willing instructor. It took me the best part of a year's worth of trial an error before I landed my first fish on a Soft Plastic.

Big time!

Blackwattle Bay has been fishing well since the water started warming up. No doubt due in part to the fact that the works on Johnson's Creek canal have finished and the creek is once again open to the tide. Always been a good spot to hit on the runout tide and it's been known to attract a pelagic or two. This was my mission this morning - early morning middle of the runout. Signs weren't promising when I arrived just before sunrise - one lone seagull. No wind. Not a lot of outflow evident from the creek like I was hoping. Ah well, I've caught fish in worse conditions. I left the 95mm Splash Prawn on that I'd been throwing at Rose Bay the day before. Cast around for a bit to no avail. Was just about to change lures when a larger group of seagulls arrived. A pelican had started making this way slowly from the opposite end of the bay. Decided a few more casts wouldn't hurt. Next cast I was working the lure slowly after a good size cast - the lure was probably 30-40m from me when the water underneath it erupted in a trademark fashion that I took for a good size tailor. Finally some action - welcome but not the target species so I wasn't too excited even though it took a little bit of drag. I was thinking about how I was gonna get the hooks out with him thrashing about as tailor like to do. It was pretty weighty actually. As it got closer I still hadn't seen any silver as I was expecting and it wasn't until it got to my feet that I saw it was an XL flathead. Its head was huge. That was only half the battle. I tested her weight and immediately ruled out lifting her. The tide was getting pretty low - probably 20cm at my feet. The only viable spot was a set of stairs 100m down the path. Didn't have much choice and I knew I had a solid hookset and quality hardware so I walked her all the way and slid her onto the bottom step with my heart about to jump out of my throat. Had a quick measure and a photo before I popped her back. She swam off like a champ in spite of the ordeal. Not quite a PB flatty at 77cm but definitely a PB topwater flatty and my second ever. First fish I've had on the 95mm Splash Prawn as well. Another thing, that Splash Prawn is a great lure - comes in at nearly 30 bucks but the hardware on it is solid as. I dragged that fish all that way and the hooks were like new after. Very impressed - makes me confident I can put some hurt on a king without pulling hooks. Tight lines everyone 🤙

I've gotta say this one annoys me too (don't even get me started on the bloody barometer). It's painful for me to think of all the times as a beginner that I didn't go fishing because I thought the tides weren't right 🤦‍♂️ Sure, tides are important, but so are a million other variables that alter in their importance from moment to moment. The tide info is not useful unless you combine it with a more comprehensive set of data ie water temp, wind direction, water clarity, availability of food, structure etc etc etc Better yet, go fishing anytime you have a chance. You'll probably find over time that you can catch fish on any tide you like.

I've lost a fair few topwater lures to Long Tom attacks. Instant snip. Incredibly annoying.

Absolutely painful mate. They always wanna hang just outside casting distance as well. A couple of months back I was searching through my tackle for something wouldn't take!

Yep I reckon the same. Only hookup I got was on a bloodworm grub. Need to find some clear plastics. Someone else told me to tie a fly onto a metal 🤔

I managed to drag myself out of bed early for a few mornings this past week to fish the bays around Pyrmont - this is within 10km of my house. Every morning I'd park up and find stacks of bait flashing silver at the water's edge - always a nice encounter at the beginning of a session. Gives you an idea of what lures to tie on. It wasn't long before I found some surface feeding fish. Conditions have been pretty calm wind-wise all week so spotting bust ups on glassy water is pretty easy. Seagulls were scouting around everywhere as well. This was gonna be easy. However for the rest of the week I proceeded to do the same thing. FInd Bait. Find Fish. Cast at fish. Get ignored by fish. Go home frustrated after throwing everything in the bag at them. Metals, plastics, hard bodies, poppers, walk the dogs? They wouldn't have a bar for the most part. One day I finally hooked up on a popper and fought a decent kingie to my feet. This was the only bite I'd had in days. Somehow at the last second he managed to shake the hook. There are no adequate swear words. Trust me I tried them all. Another day I finally managed to hook a salmon on a grub tail plastic. He jumped once and shook the hook like a Barra. Gone. So finally this morning I decided it was enough. I'd been chasing bloody salmon or whatever they were for days. Walking miles around the harbour foreshore following birds and bustups. I was over it. So I took a walk around and did a bit of half hearted casting for bream around the structure. I'd seen a few mooching about chewing around the pylons and pontoons. Weirdly a few casts in with a little Jackall Chubby popper I got a follow. A few casts later and I actually got a hit. It was so unexpected that it actually startled me and I pulled the lure away. A few casts later I got another follow. This bream must have stared at my lure for 30 seconds while I twitched it. He must have spotted me looming overhead just as his mouth opened. Gone. Finally I came to a spot that I knew would hold a few. As expected I cast in and 3 came out to investigate. I twitched a few times and spooked the two smallest while the biggest steamed in and choked it down without a second thought. Straight away he ran and wrapped me around a pylon. I was only on 5lb leader but I'd made sure to tie a decent length - luckily the pole wasn't covered in oysters like most of them. I ran over and repositioned myself to be able to pull him out from a better angle. Thankfully instead of digging in he moved out into open water and made a dash under the pontoon I was standing on. After a few heart-in-mouth moments of scrambling for my net and gently dragging him out from under my feet I had him netted and on the deck. He was a tank. 43cm to the tip. Not quite a PB but a solid one nonetheless. He sure bent the hell outta those trebles. I'd take that over any salmon. Maybe not a King though 🤣 Cheers and stay safe everyone!

Nice Derek. That's a beast Lud. Not long till those bream start hitting the surface again. I'm definitely ready.

This might be a controversial opinion but I reckon the reel is way less important than the rod for finesse fishing. I'd put the bulk of my money towards a quality rod before spending big on a reel when buying really light gear. Obviously a different story for heavier stuff where the amount of drag pressure is more important. If I were in your shoes I'd grab the Daiwa Legalis LT and spend the rest on a serious rod upgrade. If you're fishing for bream on plastics this will make waaaaaay more difference than an expensive reel. Have a look at the cheaper end of the Millerods range or the mid range Daiwa Infeet series.

Good to hear some others have found them. Funny how picky they can be on a given day. I've snapped a couple of rods over this past summer - one of them flipping an oversized bream onto the deck. Definitely a bittersweet moment. I've stopped using my ultralight rod to catch them and I just leave that rigged for bream which I throw between moments when the salmon are boiling. Using a Daiwa TD Hyper 5-9kg which they still put a big ole bend in 😀. Much safer flipping them onto the deck with that thing. Might bump into you out there one of these days 🤙

If you're up early enough lately there's been a preponderance of jelly prawns stacked up along the edges of most of the bays throughout the Parramatta River - as a result there's been some good size schools of Oz Salmon / Kahawai cruising the shallows during the low light periods. I've managed to land at least a couple per session over the past 2 weeks. All in that 2-4kg mark - Solid fish. Seems like they behave a bit differently in each respective bay. Sometimes they're really timid and picky, other bays they seem to be a bit less discerning. I've had a couple of those sessions recently where the bite is so hot, you find yourself digging through the tackle box for random lures to see if they'll still eat it. So far I've had them on - Small grub tail SP's Small minnow SP's Large jerkshad SP's between 5-6" Little blades Large and small poppers of various brands Sugapen style mini stickbaits I even managed to track them up one of the stormwater canals and pulled a couple out of there. No guarantees though - found a load of them yesterday and 8 of us were casting everything under the sun at them for 2+ hrs and no-one got a hookup 🤷‍♂️ I'm more and more surprised that there's no Kings hunting the same grounds. Especially since anytime I've hooked a salmon or decent Tailor around Pyrmont or east of the bridge there's 3 Kings chasing it to the rod tip trying to get the lure out of its mouth. Get out there and get you some my land based brethren. Tight lines! Not great photos. There's a couple of vids on my instagram - @n_iallcameron

That net that I carry around sees very little use to be honest. Usually I'm fishing from way too high up to use it effectively. It's the Berkeley rubber net one with the short handle - made for kayakers. Fits nicely in the backpack and it has landed me a couple fish that wouldn't have otherwise so I still carry it. I'm trying to figure a solution myself. Not really up for forking out for an ISO net and even though they're telescopic it's still gonna be a pain to carry around and will stop you being as mobile - less mobile = less fish. I've been looking at maybe a drop net on a long rope. Would love one that folds up to quite a compact size. I find with surface fishing it's less of an issue because you can fish a way heavier leader and just pull the fish up with your rod - I have a Daiwa TD Hyper 1-2kg rod that does this amazingly. The thing just bends and bends and bends. Def should've snapped it last week with a couple of the bigger salmon I flipped over the fence and onto the bank. When I'm fishing light leaders ie 6lb and under I think the drop net might be the move going forward. Just need to find one that's decent quality. I really like the rubber netting on the Berkley stuff. Less lures tangled in the rubber.

I got one in Blackwattle Bay recently. I've always heard people talking about them being around in the bay. Worth a session either very early morning or night. I got mine on surface but you'll prob be better off using a plastic on the bottom. My suggestion would be to fish for bream and you'll catch EP's eventually.

Actually not much of a fight. It was more me freaking out about how to land him while he flopped about on the surface. The EP fought a bit better tbh. I'm using - Daiwa TD Hyper 1-2kg Daiwa Legalis Lt 2500 4lb Sufix Nano braid 5lb FC Rock Leader Fake Sugapen lure from Ali Baba

Nah mate. Miles away from there 😉

Definitely plenty of good fish to be found around the bays in the city. Time spent covering ground is the key imo. You've gotta be willing to walk some miles and cast into some stupid places. 😂

Yeah it went real quiet for a couple of weeks up here for me. Went from 5-6+ per session to maybe 1 pretty quick. I know the Crankas are killer but they're just not as much fun as the surface bite. They snag like a bastard as well 😂 It's gonna be a long wait till proper surface-season again. Last year was excruciating!