Help On Jewie Spinning

[shan777]

Hey everyone, wanting to get a few tips on spinning for the mysterious Jewie in the Hawkesbury.

I usually fish plastics and for Jewie, i use a sqiudgy fish, 110mm in black and Gold, 10lb line with 17lb leader.

The biggest area i need help in is locations and tides. I recently tried road bridge, rail bridge and Juno for many hours for nothing.

Would anyone be able to help me with spots for the present conditions in the river, and appropiate tides.

Also not sure where exactly to throw my plastics at rail bridge, how close to the pilons and which side of bridge in what tide.

I know I'm asking alot but any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks heaps,

Shan

[sanger]

Im no vetran but the up current side of the pilons as the fish sit in the presure wave in front of the structure.... well at least thats what ive been told and read. As for tides the hour before high tide until maybe an hour after when the water is slack is often touted as the best time. Also i beleive the first few days of the week leading up to a full moon are often dubed prime time!!!!

This info is only what i have read and heard though as i have never had a crack at jewie fishing but am keen to give it a go hence reading up on it!!!! Im sure there will be plenty others with some experience willing to give you some more ideas!!!!!

tight lines

[shan777]

Thank you ver much, i all helps. Can't wait to break my Jewie virginity!!!!!!!

[luderick59]

on jewfish [jewgaffer will help out here with his wealth of knowledge on spots in the river

peter

[warnie]

on jewfish [jewgaffer will help out here with his wealth of knowledge on spots in the river

peter

Hi Shan

as luderick59 said jewgaffer will be able to advise you but in the meantime.....

let me say i couldnt think of any thing more that would take as much dedication

persiverance, frustration and repeated determination, throwing a lure targetting

jewfish it dosent come easy....

but after saying all that i will never forget a mate of mine that caught one that weighed 23.4 kg cleaned caught

on a jointed rapalla minnow first cast when we were launching the boat for a river fish

at the ramp thats near the f3 road bridge at brooklyn just after xmas 2004 more ass than class.......

and if the river ever decides to go into flood again well some of the best jews you would

ever want to see get caught off some of the headlands and beaches at the mouth on

red and white feathers lures to but name one.......if you havent had much luck by that stage

the river in flood is a prime time.....though thats not much help to you at the moment.....

good luck i hope it comes together for you....

Cheers Warnie...

[Nolongeramember]

Hey everyone, wanting to get a few tips on spinning for the mysterious Jewie in the Hawkesbury.

I usually fish plastics and for Jewie, i use a sqiudgy fish, 110mm in black and Gold, 10lb line with 17lb leader.

The biggest area i need help in is locations and tides. I recently tried road bridge, rail bridge and Juno for many hours for nothing.

Would anyone be able to help me with spots for the present conditions in the river, and appropiate tides.

Also not sure where exactly to throw my plastics at rail bridge, how close to the pilons and which side of bridge in what tide.

I know I'm asking alot but any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks heaps,

Shan

I dont know much about fishing the Hawksbury, but just remember to strike at the slightest sniff of a touch to your lure. You will be very surprised what you might find connected on the other end. Nearly every jew Ive caught felt like something tiny having a nibble until I stuck and felt the heavy weight.

The technique is to lift or whatever you like doing and then wind down as fast as you can to get your line tight again and in contact with the lure to feel for a take. A faster reel retrieve is an advantge here because the more time your out of touch with your lure the greater the chance of missing a take.

Good luck man...

[jewgaffer]

Hi Shan 777. Soft plastics have been working very well quite recently at Taren Point. A couple of blokes who fish for bream using an electric around the pylons got a couple of school jew only a couple of nights ago.

I reckon it would be a real feel gooder to actually target jew and catch them on soft plastics and soft plastics fishos have caught jew as a bi-catch when fishing for bream. I have seen quite a few people specializing in targetting jewfish on soft plastics on the Hawkesbury and have seen them pulling up bream instead of jew. Yet I have seen bream fisherman getting break offs on what appeared to be jewfish runs.

As Warnie said it would be very frustrating and a lot of patience and perseverence would be needed to target jew only using soft plastics and if anyone was classed as a successfull fisherman based on actual results, Warnie would be one of them.

I would always have the feeling that I was missing out on more jew somewhere else if I was moving around pylons flicking lures for jewfish.

Still there are some top fishermen who know the right conditions from the wrong conditions to go out and target and catch jewfish.

Jew Hunter for example got two jew over 60lb near the mouth of Narrabeen on surface poppers in pouring rain after a flood in the lake one year.

In luderick59's gallery of pics, there are some very good jew which Peter caught on livies, yet knowing and seeing Pete's fishing ability myself, he would have got the jew in the surf up there on chosen soft plastics just as assuredly.

Shan777, you would need to persevere to find out which particular brands and models of soft plastics have the best swimming action to tempt jew to rise though, remembering that Hawkesbury jew can boil in any time windows in conditions which you have to determine by trial and error to have a better chance of success in the time you have as you could spend a lot of time around bridge pylons on days when, if you had an underwater camera, you would only see a few blackfish and a ray here and there.

Otherwise jigging, raising and dropping weighted jigs would be more favourable in normal conditions or times when you need to have rods out for hours on end and trying different baits and changing locations. On the days when you literally have to dig them out on a non specific time of the day would be lot's more work and it would be hard going working soft plastics on only one rod basically.

Still the world of high tech soft plastics is going ahead in leaps and bounds, so you have to keep up with it and if fishermen persevere with lure fishing and get good results as technology improves, artificial baits may well be the way of the future.

A mate of mine Chris from the water police, a relatively new member on Fishraider (waterrat) told me they pulled up alongside a bloke in a little 8 footer with two jew in toe about 4 feet long, Chris said.

I was told by one of our kayak blokes that the bloke works for a tackle shop around there somewhere and knows what soft plastics get jew resuts.

By the way Taren Point and Tom Ugly's bridges are the most underestimated places that I know of for good sized school jew coming in and going out again and there are not many small soapies hanging around there much at all. Also Mick the fishing secretary of St, George and Sutherland Anglers Club told me the other day about several thousand jewfish fingerlings being released into the Georges a while back.

Georges river jew seem to school up for months around the Lugarno, Alford's Point, Picnic Point area in the same way as jew have been schooling up around Spencer and Wisemans, and Gladeville and Iron Cove.

I regard the Taren Point area jew as fish who inhabit the reef areas and the surf gutters and the rocky headlands and go up river for only a short time as I have a feeling that I am seeing a slight change in colour sometimes, but maybe it's only that they are adapting differently up river, I'm not all that sure sure though. In Ballina the night marauders at the river mouth seem lighter in colour than the soapies up near Wardell which is a good twenty minutes drive up river in the Richmond.

When fishing the Georges, I start off on the late afternoon bottom of the tide around the moored boats just back from the first pylon. It seems to work out at Taren Point that jew come in and round up the bait fish and hunt them towards the first pylon for another lot of the school jew waiting around the pylons. I have caught them near the moored boats and one time when the anchor slipped and held on not far from the first pylon, I landed two in a row casting near the pylon. They seem to spook if you drop one in a small area like that and I've noticed the blokes who use electrics and minnows for bream around the pylons getting busted off.

I am from the old school of bait fishermen and I would not contemplate using soft plastics unless I already had a couple of jew in the boat and felt they were coming at the time. I will often drop a plastic squid down occasionally when I have other rods out and jig it off a 725 Alvey off the bottom and have had quite a few hook ups especially when I have fish tails hanging out of bigger squid profile lures.

It's definatley new age fishing these times and some of the high tech plastics swim better than baitfish on hooks. There's a maritime bloke who fishes the Hawkesbury only using soft plastics and moving around the pylons of both bridges and he's been doing well on the good days, I've been told.

I prefer to launch all the rods with local squid as my first preference, then struggling livies and just sit back and wait for the jew or just sit a plastic jig in a rod holder and give it a bit of a shake or two every now and then. I reckon on the Hawkesbury local squid is number one jewfish bait and fish baits are number one on the Georges and at Burraneere Bay it's about the same between live fish baits and cuttle fish strips which are a good bait for the table size snapper bi-catch that seem to come in near the top of the tide before the jew and often in spring instead of the jew.

Cheers

jewgaffer

[shan777]

wow................ that was a massive amount of information, thank you a thousand. That will definatly get me into it!!!!!

Thanks once again for taking the time to write such a big reply, and thanks to everyone else for your help- extremly appreciated!!!!

[kingpig]

I have not caught any jew on plastics but have caught quite a few on hard bodies over several years.

We used to target jew in areas were bait schools up specially in area were ther is light on the water at night time. One great area was the brigde a Stockton when the mullet were schooling. I have even got jew here on poppers at night. If you fish them a lot you will will hear them hitting the surface attacking bait. This is when you pull out a big diving lure with a nice slow action and wined it faily slow. Or a big popper that you make bloop and then let rest for several seconds before the next bloop.

I have also caught them of the rocks on lures usually in gutters than run right up against the rock faces. Here we would throw the lures and wined slowly when the waves were coming in but not at all when the waves were sucking back. The wash would make the lure dive and keep it's action going.

The only way to succeed however is to put a lot of time in and this is the case wether bait fishing of lure fishing for jew.

Good luck

King pig