Landing A Jew In The Georges.

[puregeek]

Hi guys,

A mate of mine recently purchased a small boat and we have been doing allot of fishing around the moons. There are some really nice whiting there at the moment. However by accident, i managed to land a small jew fish on a hawksbury prawn. It only measured up to be 42cm so it was a throw back, but for such a little fish they are good fun on light tackle. So now i have a misson to land a decent size jew.

It was about 7ish when i caught it, so do they only eat at sunset?. Or is it worth while fishing for them way after dark?. What natural bait should i be using?. I have tried live whiting and whiting fillets but that does work. I also tried the como bridge, we found a hold there just under the bridge (about 8-9metres) and dropped the fillet down. Waited and waited, nothing. I also found that around really deep water of the georges you can't seem to fish for anything (eg. bream or whiting). Or am i just doing the wrong thing?.

If anyone can shed some light on these question it would be great. I also attached a pic of some of the whiting we landed. The big one measured 37cm caught on nippers.

[tide'n'knots]

night time is a top time to catch jew, most of mine have been caught at any time through the night, you just never know sometimes when a jew will strike, but sunrise and sunset are probably peak times.

sometimes they can turn up at any time, last year my 3 biggest fish were caught in the daytime!

If you can catch some chopper tailor, a fresh fillet is a gun bait for jew. you can catch jew in suprisingly shallow water at times particularly if it is under the cover of darkness or if the water clarity is low. The thing to remember is that large fish generally have large appetites so look for areas that will attact food for the jew. Where i fish near wisemans ferry the water is only about 15ft deep but the bottom is quite sandy and prawns, squirt worms and mullet are in good numbers, in areas such as that if there is some relatively deep water nearby for the jew to cruise up from and hunt there is a good chance that under the cover of darkness you could score a fish, and dont underestimate large prawn baits in these types of areas. Around bridge pylons are another good spot to try where the water eddys around bait fish will sit in the calmer water and jew hunt in these areas, at night time they will hide in the shadows and shoot out just into the light to nail an unsuspecting bait fish or squid etc. In the day time try around the deeper areas where the water eddys past a headland or flows around a sharp bend in the river forming a slower run on the inside of the bend, if you can find an area of rock reef, fish at the edges where the reef drops into sand, jew are relativly lazy buggers at times, and they tend to sit behind the reef and allow it to protect them from the current and pounce on a meal as it swims past in the current. I have caught plenty at bar point in the hawkesbury river this way. Any bait that is caught fresh is generally the best bait to try, however frozen baits such as squid, mullet, striped tuna,and prawns have all caught fish for me at times just make sure that the frozen bait is top quality.

hope this helps

good luck,

Pete.