Sydney Harbour Kingies 30/01/2011

[PRED-ATOR]

G'day FishRaiders,

landed my mates boat near gladesville and headed out to the harbour on sunday.

The plan was to fish in the morning for bream, snapper and flathead and in the day fish for Kingies throughtout the harbour and the headlands.

We headed towards tunks park where fished the channel between the boat ramp and the spit bridge for yakkas, bream and flathead.

We caught about 9 yakkas, 4 bream and a few snapper, no flathead but we did get to see some penguins which were pretty awesome.

From there we headed out to pig and sow reef (i think thats what its called) where we drifted and flicked out soft plastic stick baits for bream and squire.

My set up was a team daiwa zero 4-10lb matched to a daiwa exceller 2000DA spooled with 4lb braid and 4 lb suffix leader. i was using a berkley jerk shad in the white with glitter scales.

We drifted over the reef towards the wedding cakes when i got smashed my a kingie. after almost rubbing me off on the pylons, darting back for the reef and swimming around the boat engines i finally pulled it in. There such great fun on such light tackle nd very rewarding when you do bring them in.

When the sun came out a bit more and the tide began to drop, we began scouting the surface for action. we found 2 schools and stuck with them for most of the day throwing lures (mainly minnows) and (baits pillies, squid and yakkas) and managed to land 5 more.

We would of kept fishing but the wind picked up and out of the wook work came the sailors! the harbour is polluted with them its rediculous, 2 o different boats almost crashed into ferries (as oposed to the ferries usually running crashing into the boats)

I have noticed the harbour kingfish or what i have to call them the 'Harbour Hoodlem' is a smart creature. the schools are very hard to follow and very hard to fool, id say from all us fishermen harrassing them all the time, but some things that have always worked for me are:

- LOOK for surface action, kingfish on the surface is a hungry kingfish

- Use fresh bait and try some glowbait on them

- When working structure use baits on the bottom, and lures midway, if theres something at every water level the hookup rate is better

- In the harbour i dont bother anchoring up that much for kingies as they move around to much and to often i usually catch one or 2 on anchor and then it goes dead.

- Switch bait - i think thats what the term is called. Basically when you hook a kingie and bring it up, keep it swimming in the water until your buddy throws a line in. Kingies are really inquisitive and if they see a fellow comrad in some sort of excitement or distress they will always come over for a peek if you keep this up you can usually get a good rally goin on.

All the fish were under 70cm with the biggest being 69cm.

All fish were released including bream and snapper.

[james77]

Some good advice PRED-ATOR.

Sounds like a great day on the water!

[budzsta]

Pretty awesome!.

Always good to see big hauls for good fun and the release.

Will