Fishing Report 6-7/10/07 Menai-opposite Side To Lugarno....

[jewgaffer]

[

Hi Everyone.

I hadn't realised untill a couple of weeks ago that the fish have been way up river for quite some time in the estuaries. I believe good size fish are there to be caught in the warmer and shallower backwaters where there is a noticable absence of the clearer water which is around in the bays and in close around river entrances, around Sydney at the present time.

I have been fishing downriver close to the river mouths for the past few months, waiting for the winter schooling jew that haven't come as they usually do in average winter conditions. This did not happen this year according to the Port Hacking and Taren Point jew blokes and many others as well.

As you may know, the Hawkesbury. with it's deep sea like conditions as to reef, structure and depth of water is colonized but still has it's surf gutter and near reef areas cousins, the "marauding" jew who come in as extras to hunt mainly at night, the same as they do in most other coastal estuaries, seeking bait fish schooling up again and moving around in accordance with the run up to and out with the the top of tide. The Hawkesbury can produce top results in day time hours.

The Georges has many signs of colonization and the Parramatta River is thought of as such to some extent but the jew seem to be at their worst in late winter when the other two rivers show year round activity and the Port Hacking almost closes down, having no accecss to freshwater and it appears migration often takes place as there are no conditions for colonization.

The larger yakkas, as many fishermen would know have been around for some months now , and have been running round unchallenged and without the usual thrashing they get from winter jew and kingfish which school up in estary mouths in the warmer spring weather.

King fish have not appeared as yet in numbers where you catch one, then you get thirty one, due to the temperature this spring, after a winter where the south wind was prevalent, which has put a stymie on good ongoing fishing results on most species in the estuaries.

That's a good point to check on, double check and confirm again for next time, so that you can get a bit closer towards picking the eyes out of of the days and the times of the day you go out to fish in future, so that fishing will become not only quantity but quality time for you, the captain, your family and kids and the mates you take out on the water.

I decided to test the waters and do a two day landbased session at Menai on the opposite side of the old ferry terminal at Lugarno and have a day out with Little Jewgaffer and report back to the members no matter what the results were. I have also decided to let members know the spots and will continue to do so, as secrets spots are only for the birds to know and if we can't work that out it wouldn't matter much anyway.

At the start of Saturday's southerly, I chose to fish from the beginning of an expected southerly cold front coming over a couple warm westerly and north westerly days, on the strength that I had good results before during the very start of a southerly change under similiar conditions. However the southerly weather was then falling upon more days of hotter weather which had been gradually building up, rater than what we had for a long time this season, with only a couple of "luke warm days'' and winter heating still being turned on and off in between.

Con the Greek, a landbased expert at Menai and a friend of Fishraider member Cungee George had fished a semi double on Wednesday, after the gusty winds ended and came back for a day session session on Thursday and an short early high tide go on Friday evening, which was the night I intended to go myself for the high thru to te early morning low.

Unfortunatley Con the Greek a friendly quasimoto style of a short Greek in his sixtees, who is an expert on catching and using natural baits, had caught next to nothing over the few days prior to last Saturday.

If you ever go down to Menai you would probably see Con the Greek with the bream and jew rods out. Con is a very approachable chap who has a history of catching good fish from the Menai platform.

I believed as did those who had some fairly good results over the past month or so, that the schools of larger fish have been well up river in the estuaries due to an unusual season following the big rains and floods. This was followed by many cold fronts and southerly currents which demonstrated a shortage of predator fish in river mouths and also in wide out reefs.

Menai is a great place to fish with not many snags at all and it's easy to get yourself comfortable and easy to fish in a variety of good water, handy and easily accessible spots around the area.

It's great place for kids to learn to fish and they'll catch plenty of fish in close on the average days.

Con is also the man who cemented in the rock rod holders everywhere for his mates and everyone else to use and he is very proud of his achievement and takes everyone around giving them a running commentary on each rod holder.

I chose the Menai side of the Lugarno area so that Little Jewgaffer and myself would be able to fish on the downwind side of the expected southerly due around midday on Saturday which had settled into blowy as we arrived around 3pm. I decided to leave home in the early afternoon because the tides were topsy turvy this week for middle of the day fishing and the usual daytime pickers and the wasted time from about 9am onwards would be only be as expected and generally regardless of tide or conditions anywhere in the Georges River.

I rigged up two beach rods for day time jew which is not the best time to fish for Georges River jew like the many other coastal rivers whereas as the Hawkesbury is unique for it's day time jew and gives excellent resuts even in the midday high sun and I also had with two bream rods to use with baits only.

Little Jewgaffer, my ten year old grandson was to concentrate on using burley all around the shallows to catch live bait and little black crabs which a terrific bait to use and to add to the prawns, and the poddy mullet which can be found where the water runs up from the shed on the left of the main Menai rock platfiorm, so that he could fish for flathead in the last of the run up and early run down in the adjacent mangroves near the lttle sandy alcoves up from the old blocked off boat ramp.

My jew rods were rigged up for the day with Penn SS spinning reels, a Sh/pere Centron and a Tica on 80lb braid and 6/0's as a good each way chance for that part of the Georges River. My bream rods were yankee ugly stick Intercoastal and Sh/Pere President with a nibble tip add on and Fenwick convertable fly spin on 8lb Ande braid with tanden snelled fly hooks as I lift firmly on tight drag and don't strike as such and I hate missing.

Cungee George called in with coffee at 6 pm and by that time I hadn't lost a bait. Little jewgaffer could not find livies anywhere and there were no signs over the 26 hour session, although a couple of mullet were skipping every now then and appeared to be quite happy in the southerly inactivity of predators on the day. I was very pleased with him coming back covered in mud, bringing about twenty five little black rock crabs which are under just about every rock down there and they are a magic bait for bigger fish when left out struggling on paternostas.

Anyway Cungee George, on crutches from knee surgery on Thursday left to go home to Illawong around 10 o'clock, leaving us in the wind with the wharf to ourselves and there were only a couple of jew blokes fishing off the rocks at another good jew spot which is on the point leading to good water around two hundred meters up to the right of the rock platform where we had our car backed up to the rods.

So it's certainly a good place for convenience and it can be one of the best landbased spots for jew, flathead and bream in the Georges River. I would like to add that although the old boat ramp is barricaded off you can back in with a bit of trailer work from the side of it and the moored boat area in front of the Lugarno restaurant is as good as it gets to anchor up and wait for the action at night.

By midnight near the bottom of the tide we had caught nothing whatsoever. I had a big bend in a jew rod but it didn't go on with it and after waiting a good half hour longer on that rod I bought the big squid back in two pieces. That was the only show on the jew rods and my bait assortment was fresh slimy fillets, whole garfish, mullet fillets and W.A. pilchards and squid. All the fish baits were from a good bait shop and my own Hawkesbury squid were nice leftovers and I had a few frozen Dolans squid from my mate Taren Point Julius.

We had little black crabs Little Jewgaffer got and prawns for the bream and intended using salted pilchards on the flathead but never got around to fishing round the corner myself on the run in at day break on Sunday morning.

The results of the day were over twenty undersize bream by about an inch which were all caught bar a couple on the jew rods, in very close around two hours up from the bottom of the the tide at around about 2.30 am about two hours up the run in on Sunday morning and the school came out of nowhere just after the wind dropped to calm and the run of the current became very slow. Little Jewgaffer who fell asleep in his fold up chair caught the only table size fish for the whole of Saturday, a bream at 29 centimetres on a lumo float and a smidgeon of prawn.

The result on the bream was just about even on them taking rock crabs and prawns, whereas my good quality pilchard tails were hardly touched.

At around 3.30, asleep on the chair I was awoken by the screaming drag on the big Penn and nearly fell in the water to find Con's mate, who had just arrived playing a joke on me. Con arrived about 3.30am and gave us a new lease of life and the tide was about 3 hours down from the top so we fished with almost every rod we had baited up for jew and Con and I hardly lost a singe bait.

The good old southerly done it's job on all of us despite a pretty good assortment of bait.

I never take much notice of the moon's influence on my own fishing nor did my Dad as we could never get a constant. However I did notice itthe moon was at the stage of having a narrow sickle shaped white area on the right hand side and a very large area of the black on the left. I do not know if that means the moon is waxing or waning but can recall that stage as being a bad one for fishing for some reason as I stated in previous posts.

We continued to fish till 6PM on Sunday. Con get one run at around 2pm on Sunday but started to feed out line and when the fish took more line up, Con took the slack up and wound slowly, with no lift, no strike and had the fish on but droppred it soon afterwards and mumbled something to himself in Greek. Well to each his own hook up style and Con has had plenty of good results down there all the same.

AT 3Pm Little jewgaffer caught the fourth table size bream in the alcove, down round the bend of the mangroves fifty metres down from the old boat ramp while fishing on whole pilchard for flathead after getting tired of casting out lures and catching nothing in the wind. He was casting, behind the tree line into the little alcove on the run back up. He said he lost a flathead after he saw the fish and there were no signs of any others only the bream he caught.

Cungee George rolled up again with a couple of rods this time for a jew and we all talked till six o'clock on Sunday night without checking a single rod for the last two hours and there was no need to whatsover.

Cheers

jewgaffer I'll post the night time pics when I manage to resize them.

Edited October 9, 2007 by jewgaffer

[gretsch]

Man.. that took me 15 minutes to read...

I hate the old "pull the drag when he's asleep" trick.. has happened to me on many an occasion.

[troutcod]

Man.. that took me 15 minutes to read...

I hate the old "pull the drag when he's asleep" trick.. has happened to me on many an occasion.

Jewgaffer I dont know what the bloody hell your talking about half the time but geez I love your reports mate, its like an ol Vic McCristal story. Well done champ

[Aloosh]

Awesome read as usual jewgaffer

[Novicefisherman]

awwesome read mate. keep up the good work.

[Bigfoot]

Mr Jewgaffer,

WHAT ARE YOU ON???

and more importantly

WHERE DO I GET SOME???????

Too good

Catch ya

bigfoot

[bart]

On Yer Jewgaffer,

Another top report. As usual you have put in aaaaaaaaaaaanother big effort. We can also see why this is so. You seem to put as much time into your fishing outings as you do your posts. Your reads are much appreciated by us Raiders.

Cheers BART

Edited October 9, 2007 by bart

[ophet]

Sorry to hear you did not get much action Jewgaffer, you certainly put in an effort. Great to see Jewgaffer Jr show some commitment as well.

Thanks for taking the time to share your experience and thoughts with us.

[Simonator]

Cungee George rolled up again with a couple of rods this time for a jew and we all talked till six o'clock on Sunday night without checking a single rod for the last two hours and there was no need to whatsover.

Cheers

jewgaffer I'll post the night time pics when I manage to resize them.

JG I live just around the corner, literally, from that spot and regularly fish off the small platform about 100 metres to the right of the boatramp, near the submarine cable. I get a fair few undersized bream and flatties there. However haven't ever seen a blink of a Jew, unless that's the big hit that simply snaps the line and buggers off once in a while!

What would you recommend for land based jewies of the point nearby that you mentioned, I would love to catch a decent sized fish as a 32 cm bream is my PB for anything.

Simon

[jewgaffer]

Hi Simonator that point is a hot spot so up the gear to identify the fish and no more of those bust offs.

I recommend, seeing you live just around the corner, is that you spend a whole night there where the top is around 9pm and you fish from 3pm till daybreak so if you want to stay on till 9am as I would, you get a double go at the top of the tide. Fish on both sides of the point using two rods, with one rod in the "wrongun side" of the current now and then.

You need livies and a large bucket with a D battery for a bait tank.

Get a set of cap lights and some glow tips for the rods and rod alarms should you fall asleep, with 80lb braid attached to your big toe to make sure you don't get another bust off. Jew like tug o war games on tight drag so you better put a heavy duty spring round your big toe

jewgaffer

Edited October 9, 2007 by jewgaffer

[damariboyz]

Hi Jewgaffer another mighty effort mate well done to you and Little Jewgaffer. I had planned to put the boat in at Oatley and slip up to Lugano for a Bream session on Saturday morning. But a phone call to drive a truck for a bloke put that idea to the crapper. Interesting read mate and once again you got me thinking outside the square.

Russ