Lane Cove River Help!

[Guest dicko1]

Hey everyone! This is the first time iv used fishraider so i hope someone out there can help me out a bit!! Im going up lane cove river on my boat this sunday and sleeping on it a couple of nights and coming back tuesday night... I was hoping someone would be able to give me a few tips on where to concentrate my efforts and what works better up that way softies or bait? Is there anything other than flatties and bream up there? Iv actually never even been up the river so any tips would be great!!

Also, we are using my 30ft boat as a base and fishing off tinnies when need be. The big boat takes about 4ft of water max, how far do do you rekon i would be able to take it up? Is the river very deep and is it wide enough to turn around in?? Stupid questions im sure but i thought id be better off going up there with some idea than totally clueless! Thanks heaps in advance!!

[Piss'n'Broke]

Welcome

Dunno about the deep of the river but the majority is very narrow, an in a 30ft i dunno how quick you will be able to turn or manovuer a boat of that size in LCR just take care

As for fish, the locals of Nth Ryde RSL, love a cool one swear by down the back of Nth Ryde RSL,,, but all Ive ever got is snaggeds, lol.

You could get almost anything in there,,,,, bull mullet, big sharks, rays, HUGE eels,, bream, flathead,,,, an alot of others I cant think of right now.

Hope you get a few

The flats around figtree bridge at the bottom of LCR are producing bream an flathead I was told was in the "local barber" :-D

Edited January 17, 2007 by Dan and Greg

[Davy]

where abouts at lane cove river? im not too sure about boat sizes in the river and all that but you can try fig tree bridge as Dan and Greg mentioned, drift in the tinnies along the channel for some decent flatties. although ive only seen bream and flatties come out of there.ive heard reports of mulloway and trevally at newcombe point by drifting near the markers. but thats further downstream from fig tree

good luck with it

Edited January 17, 2007 by Davy

[PPSGT]

Hi Dicko,

I live at Lane Cove, near Fig tree bridge. Its a great spot to fish, fishing the edge of the rivers

main channel on the incoming and out going tide would be a good start.

I have caught bream, tailor and flathead all through this stretch, all on lures/soft plastic and

have seen plenty of fish caught on bait.

Watch out for the Toadfish (fugu) that live along the rocky edges, they are lightning fast and love

the taste of soft plastics.

Before going up there at night in a 30 footer I'd get down to figtree bridge at low tide and do a bit of recon (drive under the loop road on burns bay rd) and have a look at where the main channel is and where the sandbanks are. There are a lot of areas that are high and dry at low tide, and might be hard to navigate, at mid tide - the main channel is marked.

Drifting over these shallow areas in a tinny, over the drop offs you'll do well.

Tambourine Bay would be a good place to spend overnight, its the last bay on your right heading up the river just before the figtree and there always unused moorings you could tie up on

Good luck and let us know how you go

Jason

[snag]

Hi Dicko,

Mate id stay at the mouth of the lane cove, deeper water and no chanal markers to deal with.

If you going to figtree bridge id watch the markers as they cut from one side over to the other and ive seen many a boat get stuck on the big sand bank just out off burns bay.

Take care and have a good time.

[Guest dicko1]

First off id just like to thank everyone for their help. it was all much appreciated and was put to good use!! We had an awesome trip up there and were lucky enough to have stinking hot weather the whole time so spent most of the middle of the days swimming and waiting for the tide to turn.

We spent the first half of the first day fishing around the mouth of the river up to newcombe point without catching a thing and so later moved up to fig tree bridge. Due to the fact that my boat is the slowest thing on earth (5knots about top speed!) we didnt have enough time to go back and fish the lower reaches again, however it does look promising if you are prepared to put in the time with some big drop offs and bait schools appearing on the sounder. We spent the latter part of the day catching poddy mullet and pumping up a couple of nippers for the arvo session. The boat did get momentarily stuck on the sand whilst we were on shore as i wasnt watching the tide still running out, but we were lucky enough to arrive back in time to push it off! My mate tinny fell through and so when we wanted to go wade the flate we were forced to swim to shore with our gear, with me a bit scared about the shark reported up there, like the one that ate that guys jewie just around the corner.

The arvos really seemed to get the fish firing, esp around low tide, with the nights on a high also producing. That arvo we caught a few flatties on plastics off the sand banks, the biggest going 46.5cm (a PB on plastics 4 me, and pictured below) .

That night we went up to Epping rd bridge, as far as i was prepared to go as there is a sign saying 'navigation hazardous beyond this point, proceed at own risk', and i think it is unmarked beyond there. That night we had a crazy bream session and they just wouldnt stop biting. The smallest was 25cm and the biggest 35cm (pic below) and we must have caught about 10 each in the upper range of that size! We wanted to go to sleep but decided to wait til the bream stopped biting, but they didnt! So we fell asleep at about 1 with the fish still going nuts! They seemed to hit the poddy mullet super hard, but the biggest fish fell to a frozen prawn, and chicken gut caught the most fish that night!

The next day was pretty slow, heaps of medium tailor, a couple kept to put out as jewie/shark bait that night, but we ended up letting them go as were so buggered from the heat. At low tide, the fishing picked up again around fig tree, nailing another 3 flatties on plastics, and a friendly man fishing LB under the bridge catching 8 monster bream! We released all fish except for one flattie which we filleted up and tasted beautiful! The fish up under epping rd bridge were the slimiest fish i have ever felt but were an awesome clean, silver colour despite the brown water. Does anyone know why they are so slimy??

Thanks for the help again guys! Hope to c u all out on the water sometime!

[pk-fishn]

top report mate and nice catch there!!!

cheers pk