jim77

the biggest you can find! You might want to look for them on some os websites - lunkercity.com - is a good place to start. 9" sluggos or even bigger are good for the big kings.

A lot of work for one King - but well done you persisted and got yourself one. The offshore reefs at this time of year are a bit hit and miss and its a long way and a lot of petrol if you go there and the Kings aren't there, which is more often than not. You should persist with the harbour as there are far more Kings and bigger ones at that at this time of year. Scout around at the likely spots and try on different states of the tide and sooner or later you will find them. Make a mental note of the time and state of tide - store it away in the back of your mind and then go there again the next time you're out and the tide is at the same state. After a while you will find a pattern and be able to locate them regularly...- or thats the plan anyway.

Well done mate - nice fish. Strange he's so skinny given how much bait there is around! I think there will be plenty more metres around this year. I have seen a pic of the 15Kg it was caught by McGill. I was sceptical of an 18Kg.... That was until this afternoon when i saw with my own eyes a HUGE king that followed up a hooked fish. There are some BIG kings in the harbour atm - get your heavy gear out and have a crack!

Got a call from a mate this arvo asking if i wanted to go for a quick fish in the harbour. He had to fix his trailer so it was a good excuse to get out for a quick hit. To summarise - got on the water at about 5:45pm. Hooked the first King at about 6pm - caught about 30 fish in 90 minutes - back at the ramp by 7:45.We caught a lot of rats but also some better fish. The highlight was a double hook up both in the 90s and both agonisingly close to 1m. Mine went 98 the other 93. At one point we also had a huge fish come up and have a crack at the plastic hanging out of a hooked fishes mouth. It was easily 15Kg but could have been more - it was HUGE!!! All fish caught in the main harbour. Judging by the influx of good reports the fish have suddenly turned up in the last few days. Just in time for silly season... Get out there! Pictured below 98 and 85ish (didn't measure the smaller one)

Totally different fish mate. Yakkas or Yellowtail scad are NOT juvenille Yellowtail Kingfish.

No Dave you're not alone! It is pretty tough out there. It started off really good in about October but it has dipped dramatically since then!!! It is very slow compared to last year - admittedly i do get to spend a fair bit of the summer on the water but this time last year it was firing big time. Similar to you i have only had about 10 or 12 legals so far his season since October and lots of fishless trips in between. Seeing as i caught 3 legals in one trip and 5 on another that is a lot of times i have got donuts! (i don't count bonnies or Rats) Heres hoping it will pick up dramatically in January... Hope you get your boat sorted soon - if you don't let me know and i'll take you out on a trip or two. I think you have my number - if you don't pm me. Cheers Jim

Don't worry Jembro - very believable. One of the kayak fisherman hooked a Marlin at the Colours last year and they are often caught close in up at Long Reef. It makes sense that they would be in this close with the amount of pesty bonito that are around atm... but i'm surprised that they are this close given how cold the water is/has been. Would have been a great sight i'm sure. Thanks for the report. Don't be surprised if there are now 00s of boats out at the colours trolling bonnies on heavy gear!!!

I'll second that! It started off well back in early October but it has gone down hill rapidly since then. Maybe it will just be a dud year. Every week i keep telling myself that this will be the week that they rock up in numbers (the better fish that is) but i keep having my hopes smashed every week after wave after wave of cold and crappy water keeps appearing! Fingers crossed its a January and February to remember!

Good on ya Dave. At least you got a fish and got to tangle with a better one. Any idea what water temps you had where you got the fish? As to the gear - you often have to learn the hard way that cheap gear isn't really designed for hard and fast pulling Kings!

Jeremy - I reckon when they are live they are on a par with squid ... And a few people i know swear by them when trolled dead, so hopefully we can convert a few of them into decent fish!

With average weather and water temps, and only 000s of bonito and pesky rats being caught in the harbour we deciced to leave the boat at home today and go for a dedicated bait gathering session from the land. With a trip to jb coming up next week we wanted to try and get some gars with a hope that we can convert them into some XOS kings down there, or whatever else might fancy taking a trolled gar! Went to a wharf where we knew there had been plenty of gars in the past and started burleying up. It took a while for them to come on in numbers but once they did we were catching them pretty quickly and easily. Good fun sight fishing for them! After a while one of the biggest bream i have ever seen came cruising through the burley trail. It would have been nudging 50cm and was so wide across the back! It disappeared for a couple of minutes then it came back and casually came up and hoovered up my bait. I gently lifted the rod tip and he was hooked. The fight lasted all of about 3 secs. I was using a length of 5 lb line tied straight to the end of an 11ft light rod - just using it as a pole with no reel, to swing the gars in. With no extra line or drag etc it was no match for a fish like that - still a buzz to see and hook it. I quickly started to rerig and just as i was doing so a big school of Kings came charging through and the gars came showering out of the water as they fled - a great sight to see. Not surprisingly after that the Gars shut down but we had already caught a pretty good number so we were pleased with our efforts. A fun 90 minute session and a nice change from scratching around looking for Kings. Just vacuum packed them - now got to wait a week to get em wet and see what they can tempt... Good luck if you're heading out.

Martin - this is actually pretty poor compared to the last couple of years, or at least for Kings anyway. The Bonito and other surface action is good but the Kings have been very slow to fire due to the unseasonally cold water currents we have been experiencing. Hopefully you will get to experience some Kingy mayhem in the next few months!

Nice fish and a great effort on that light gear... But there is no way that that fish is 15 Kg. More realistically it could have been 15lbs, which is about 7kg, which judging by the size of it looks about right. Anyway - whatever, good fish, would have been a nice bonus when you probably weren't necessarily targetting them.

Great work Humesy - pretty good way to start the school holidays for you!! Might have to meet up for that fish we have been planning if the Kings don't come to play soon. Hopefully plenty more for you in the next 6 weeks... Cheers Jim

To catch yakkas just get yourself a light handline (6-10lb line) and a size 12 longshank hook, and either fish it unweighted or with a really small split shot. Use a small slither of pillie or chicken for bait. Others may suggest using a sabiki rig - they will work but they are often a pain in the arse as they get tangled easily and you spend more time untangling them than you do catching bait! They are also far more expensive than a handline and single hook! Once you get good at it you will catch plenty of yakkas quickly and efficiently using this method. As for catching slimies in Sydney... I'm not the one to ask as i suck at it. Anywhere else they are easy and almost jump in your boat but slimies in Sydney... Good luck

Great fishing well done. Good to see some action despite the arctic water temperatures! Hopefully the rest of the school are swimming towards Sydney!

Jeff - its 17 degrees at the Waverider this am, so it might be slightly warmer at the 12 but not much! Sea surface temp maps don't look too promising.

Went out for a look around this morning. I had been watching the offshore water temps in the hope that things might finally have improved. After temps over 22 degrees earlier in the week and plenty of fish in that warmer water i was hopeful... Then towards the end of yesterday the temp at the Sydney Waverider dropped from 22.3 to 18.6 - not good signs. Anyway i thought i would go and have a look outside anyway just to make sure. After gathering livies up the LCR with the water nudging 23 degrees i was sceptical but as i hit the entrance to the heads there was a line. On one side it was 20 degrees plus... on the other it started to drop and quickly. The coldest i got was 16.3 but i had a mate who went to the colours area who had temps as low as 15 degrees!!!!! It was so cold that it was causing mist to form and and you could actually feel the coolness in the air. Anyway to cut a long story short - there was absolutely NOTHING offshore, not even any bait. As soon as you get back in to the warm stuff in the harbour there are fish everywhere. As others have mentioned catching bonito atm is like shooting fish in a barrel. I had trolled all of about 50m before my first hook up. They were good size bonito however and good fun on light gear. I also scored a rat king on a rapala. I soon got bored of that and went off searching for some bigger Kings. tried a few likely spots in the harbour and finally managed to get a 70cm King - although it was one of the skinniest Kings i have ever seen! When is the summer going to start properly and produce some consistent fishing??!!!!!! Good luck if you're heading out.

Yeah its pretty tough atm... By the sounds of it you were fishing outside or at least near the heads. I have done it tough the last few trips out there as have a lot of other good fisherman i know. There are plenty of Kings at Long reef (or there were a couple of weeks ago) but i think even those have moved on with the cold water pushing in. If i were you i would focus your efforts on the harbour and middle harbour. The water is really warm in MH and the Kings have pushed really far up stream on that. There is a mountain of garfish. if you can catch some of them and fish them live you will be a real good chance of getting a good King. Good luck

G'day mate I run 2 downriggers on my boat. One side has a cannonball bomb the other has a pancake. Whilst the ball has more blowback the sounder does seem to pick it up easier than the pancake one. It will still pick up the pancake but it doesn't seem to do it quite as easy. Others might say different but those are my observations.

I wouldn't be in a rush to head outside the bay at the moment Kosta. The water is seriously cold atm and the fishing has really shut down. You will probably fare better sticking inside the heads and fishing inside as the water is much warmer in the bay.

GOLD! Nice work Billy. Only a couple more years before i get my young bloke out there :-)

Good work on the squid mate - bad luck on the Kings. It is pretty tough atm. There are fish around but you have to work really hard to find them, or you got to get lucky and stumble across them by chance!

Well done - good fishing. Decent kings have been hard to come by of late!