A Nice Little Afternoon Session In Sydney Harbour - Sunday 23Rd May 2010

[jewgaffer]

Hi Raiders

Sydney Harbour is fishing very well at the moment Raiders and, according to my friend Jim Bowers who is down from Ballina and staying with Shirl and myself for a while, the water in Sydney Harbour is presently in prestine condition.

Jim came down from Ballina to do some catching up in Sydney among other things and get in as much fishing as possible with me at the same time.. Jim and I have been close friends since the eighties and at one stage Jim worked for me for quite a few years; I always call into Ballina on my way back to stay with Jim and his Mum and quite often for weeks on end, whenever I travel north to fish with my Queensland relatives and friends..

Report:-

Conditions:- Ist calm day after Saturday's turbulence plus heavy afternoon rain

Bite period:- last half of the run in tide

Barometer:- sharp fall of 3 points to 1021mb after showing 1024mb and steady at 9am

Water temperature:- Water temp was 21 degrees in that part of the Harbour around 2pm according to Jim.

Wind:- A complete and noticable change of wind direction from the previous days of ongoing Southerlys to a light North Westerly direction which commenced around midday..

Jim was delighted to be able to go out and have a fish today with his 7 year old Grandson Estevan and his daughter Jessica... and accordingly, Jim made arrangements to go out and have a session this afternoon knowing that the Harbour was still around 21 degrees in temperature and Jim commented that at 21 degrees it was still like fishing during April which is the prime time in Sydney for a vast species of leather jackets...

In fact Jim's primary target today was leather jackets would you believe as both Shirl and Jim like eating leather jackets fried in butter most of all among other recipes of theirs.

From the moment they arrived it was obvious to Jim that the fish were going to be very active at that point in the tide and Jim subsequently used the words, it was like "feeding time at the zoo" when describing the action they had in the harbour this afternoon..

The first point of call was Milson's Point where Jim had originally planned to fish around the Jeffery Street area but unfortunately the noise from the pile drivers working on the re-development of Jeffrey Street wharf would have been enough to spook any fish in the vicinty... it was starting to rain heavily at the time, and it was interesting to see that no one else was fishing anywhere around Jeffrey Streat wharf..

Jim then decided to go over and have a look around the railngs along the foreshore near McMahon's Point..

I find leather jackets to be a nice tasting fish for a change of tempo tho I find them to be a little on the bland side if eaten for too many days in a row... Still Shirl and I were very pleased to see the variety that Jim brought home as the different cooking styles of Jim and Shirley will make all the difference to me as I must admit that I prefer eating flathead for my next fish meal after more than a day or so of eating leather jackets.

The variety of leather jackets that Jim, Jessica and young Estevan caught included fan bellies, six spine, yellows and the common harbour rough skin jackets which Jim regards as the nicest tasting of the species.

At this point of time I'll bring in the fact that I put a timer on Jim from when he started to prepare and clean the leather jackets...being a former commercial fisherman it only took Jim 4 minutes to clean 12 leather jackets, and put them in our freezer bags..

Final Tally:-

12 take home leather jackets destined for my place plus some for Jessica and young Estevan, half a dozen jackets were released along with Groper, parrot fish, bream. sweep and a dozen or so undersize red bream which kept young Estevan extremely occupied and a very happy little fisherman at the same time...

Jim hooked up a couple of fish that unfortunately were of the unstoppable variety for the light gear they were using and finally resulted in bust offs.

I must say, young Estevan is a very keen little fisherman for his age, happy to be catching his share of fish and only too willing to learn all about fishing with soft plastics and he really enjoyed fishing with his Mum and his Grandpa today which to my mind is not only the most important part of a young child's day out but a large part of his growing up and future relaxation in what is fast becoming a very busy world in general.

I didn't realise it was so late, Jim's already asleep and we'll be meeting up with old Geoff at Grays Point at 5am or so and we'll be going outside the Hacking for a fish in Geoff's big Webster tri-hull as my side console boat is presently up at Huey's having the 35hp Evinrude replaced with a 60hp Mercury Bigfoot at a very good changover price too which I couldn't be any happier about by the way...

With a bit of luck tomorrow we might be able to add a few more varieties of fish in general to our refrigerator supplies..

Nite, nite Raiders, hopefully Jim, Geoff and myself might be able to do well enough tomorrow to report a decent sort of a catch back to you and at the same time provide some general information on the present fishing situation outside the Hacking.

Tomorrow morning we'll either be fishing outside along the National park cliffs or the Boat Harbour side but I'm not sure which side at this stage...first stop will probably be Gymea Bay for our livies, might even poke our nose into South West Arm and then it'll be Mainbar for our nipper supply, rather than having to spend too much time fishing for our live bait supply along the National Park cliffs or the bait grounds at Shark island either..still we'll talk about that when we get there as old Geoff knows the area backwards and Geoff is a quiet achiever and has been fishing outside the Hacking for years..

Cheers

jewgaffer

Edited May 23, 2010 by jewgaffer

[marcel haber]

Well done boys - good to see Jim and co putting half a dent into the jacket plague.

Hope today went well.

Twin 1

[Ray R]

Good onya guys, nice leathers too I think a lot of us started our fishing with catches of those fanbelly jackets.

Great report too Byron...

[wannabefisho]

Great catch Byron- Some super sized LJ's there too

Tight lines

Anthony

[james7]

Jim did very well Byron and it's great to hear that young Estevan was getting into it too!

Great catch of jackets. That'll be one very tasty meal.

Do the different jackets taste the similar?

Great report and a good read. Thanks Byron. Hope you did okay on the Hacking and/or outside.

Cheers

Peter

[tide'n'knots]

good report byron - I dont mind a feed of jackets myself and have stopped somewhere in the harbour for half an hour or so on the way home to get a couple on many occassions, sometimes they are the difference between going home with a feed or missing out completely!

good to see young estevan into em at such a young age - kids who fish rarely get into too much trouble from my experience.

pete.

[arpie]

Gee some stomper jackets there, Byron! And so easy to gut & skin! Sweet meat too. Well don & hope you have fun whilst Jimmy is down!

Roberta

[rickb]

Hey Byron, If you keep that up,Jimmy won't want to go back to the good fishing grounds.

Good to see you up and about.

Has the vet give you any good news.

Have you intrduced Jimmy to Carr's Pub,or is railway under new name.

Cheers Rick.

[Penguin]

Its good to see the adults taking kids out fishing, and even better

when the liitle ones catch a few fish

cheers