TheFishyFisherman

Hello raiders. I went to Clontarf with some prawns and pillows and fished right off the beach. We fished the big drop off but got nothing (it’s almost winter now) except toad fish so we gave up and went to Mosman bay wharf for the first time. We fished near the cafe (away from the ferry stop) and saw a couple of decent legal bream right underneath the pylons so we tried to lure them out with prawn heads as burly but only attracted the toadies. There were no baitfish around to my surprise so we started casting toward the pylons with little weight to not scare the bream but the toadie would smash up our prawns and pillies before it would reach the bream 🤬. Eventually, my friend started casting out but no hookups and tiny bites were felt. I persevered and painstaking went for the bream, desperate to catch something decent. Used a size 3 hook with bits of peeled prawn but the toadies were being annoying. I put on an extra big piece of prawn on a size 11 hook to target the fan belly leatherjacket that was swimming around but eventually gave up. Just when I’m about to give up I feel a big tug and pause. It reel my line in and it turned out that a bream was eating my bait and I unintentionally set the hook as I was reeling in. It was a short fight (lasted about 30 seconds. 😂😅) and had to haul it up because I was standing about 3 metres above water. I was scared of dropping it cuz i had it on my yakka gear but managed to land it (30 cm on the dot). It went in the esky after it was scaled and gutted for dinner. On my last cast, I get my line tangled on some seaweed but the seaweed starts wriggling and I realise that it was the camouflaged fan belly leather jacket that I was chasing before (34 cm. New pb!!). I jag hooked it on its tail accidentally! I cleaned it too and then head home. (Surprised that I didn’t hook any of the toad fish there🧐) Anyway, the leather jacket was an accidental catch so I would like some tips about the spot. Also my first time fishing Clontarf too.

Also how king should my leader be if I were to use live yakkas there for kings or tailor

I used a running sinker with a swivel and live bait circle hook. I just started doing using floats now though cuz I get more fish that way

Can they be used as livies? I catch a couple of them at balmoral

*when not then

Yeah!!! The leather jacket skin hurt my hands a bit tho then it wiggles in my hands 😂. The skins too rough

Thanks everyone. Heading out to see why beach today with my shimano eclipse lumo and gonna use beach worms. Hope I get something today☺️. Last time I only got 2 trevally (33 c/m and 35 c/m) and surprisingly I also got a luderick (38 cm). (Casted over the surf cuz I never get anything in the gutters 😭)

Thanks! Also, I made a typo on the shimano and accidentally wrote shuman. Sorry

Hello Raiders, I’ve only just started fishing with live baits. I went to Balmoral with a friend at about 11 am and started berlying with bread and slapped on some chum (a pudding bait I made with canned tuna and flour) on my Shuman raider. Pretty soon, we had the livie bucket full of yakkas with an aerator going on. We pinned the yakkas on the nose with our circle hooks but then disaster struck! Two greedy cormorants popped up and the birds tried to take our livies. We switched rigs to a sinking one on our rods and wait for the birds to go away. One they were gone, we set the livies out again with the drags loose and waited. My friend then went to the bathroom and left me to look after the rods when suddenly, the drag was screaming and the rod tip kept jiggling forward. I waited for a bit to let the fish run so it could hook itself and then I tightened the drag up a little bit (twisted the drag twice so it would be half tight - half loose). Whatever that was on my rod kept stripping line off the reel and the fishes head shakes almost made me drop the rod. My friend was heading back and as soon as he saw that I was on, he ran to help land it. I reeled in some more and then the fish tried to snap me off from under the oyster covered pylons and then my friend went to the lower part of the jetty and pulled the line and fish up onto land. I couldn’t believe it…… It was our first Kingfish!!! For a year, we’ve been dreaming of catching kings because we weren’t very experienced with fishing with live baits. We measured it (73 cm so it’s legal), bled it, gut it and scaled it and then put it in the esky. After all that, I checked if we had any yakkas left but we had only one. I burleyed again to get the yakkas feeding so I could catch them easily but then a fanbellied leather jacket came and started eating a piece of floating bread near me. It was so close to the surface and I grabbed it with my bare hands! My friend thought that it was probably sick so it couldn’t react in time (I gave the leatherjacket to a man who was fishing near me). I didn’t get a picture of the leatherjacket but I did get a picture of the kingfish.