Long Reef Beach

[brettmann86]

Hey raiders just thought i'd give you a heads up of what happened while fishing long reef beach friday night, nothing spectacular at all 3 metre plus port jasksons and one 50-60 kilo ray.. although i am quite glad i caught the ray as it did give me a chance to test out my new tackle all in all i was disappointed.. fished from early evening till early morning without so much as a hint of something plate worthy although all the conditions seemed right tried a bunch of areas up and down the beach with lots of tackle changes and critiques nothing could entice the big players out to play.. even with 2 bucket loads of fine berley being introduced.. perhaps i will steer clear of there for future reference and stick with mona vale and narrabeen as they have produced better results in worse conditions... if anyone knows any tips to the area give me a heads up as although it did produce in a way i was thoroughly disappointed..

[Geoff-]

I've only caught rubbish at long reef too, off the rocks you will get snagged no end. i have run a paternoster rig with a running float before which was better, but you still only pull in wrasse, rock cod and eels. yuck.

the place doesn't even look nice above the water, it's right down the bottom of my list now. apparently it's good if you kayak about 500m out into open water but i've got plenty of other places to go before i try that.

[Koalaboi]

The rocks at Long Reef can be very productive. I've caught snapper to 5kg and tailor to 5kg off the front. There's lots of luderick, bream and pigs to be had wading around the shallows on the high tide. I used to fish there all the time when I lived in Sydney. It's where we developed pussyfooting. Get there a few hours before the high tide and collect your cabbage for bait. Starting at the waterline, retreat to the higher rocks at the seaward end of the platform as the tide pushes in. Follow it back out fishing the channels and gutters leading back to deeper water. Luderick gut makes an excellent bream bait. You can fish there in swell conditions that wipe out most other rock spots and with the platform so big, you can find a spot to fish comfortably in just about any wind direction.

If you walk to it over the top along the cliffs you can see the schools of bream and luderick in the shallows as they turn on their side to nibble at something. I've stood on the high rock at the seaward end on a high tide fishing back towards the headland seeing the tails of hundreds of blackfish breaking the surface as they feed. Awesome. Either side of the front rock are some excellent rockpools to fish on the high tide. The deeper water off the front is a great fishing hole but the cunjie covered slope means landing fish takes a bit of patience and skill.

Wading around at night with huge rays coming up to your baitbucket trying to steal some bait!

Watching the Sydney fireworks going off while you catch fish.

Look up the thread on blackfishing that Roberta started to learn more about pussyfooting...the same technique can be used for bream out there too.

Longy is good. Don't give up on it.

Koalaboi