Nepean River: Nepean Gorge: Sunday 30/03/2014

[DaNRL]

Took the boat for a run up the gorge on Sunday morning

Picked a random spot on the bank armed with nothing but two loaves of bread - my home made dough / cotton mixture and my light gear spinning road

Has been ten years plus since I've been down there, had forgotten how beautiful it is

Managed to catch 5 thumping big mullet (up to 2kg) 3 Freshwater and 2 Salt water

Also a bunch of smaller ones I didn't both keeping and a few huge freshwater herring

Also saw a massive eel (2m plus) eating the bread floating on the surface which was pretty cool and my four year old daughter caught her first mullet

On the plus side I have enough mullet for crab and strip bait for the next month or so, plus they fight like hell on the light gear - it was great fun

You use a pencil float - rigged less than a foot from the surface - when the big fish hit they often jump - it's like catching little barra

[Ryder]

Nice catch mate, maybe another future raider on your hands.

Dough and cotton? How do you do that?

[Witha]

Mate what a day scenery looks awesome and the look on the young'uns face is priceless

Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk

[scarab36319]

Awesome.

Sent from my GT-I9505 using Tapatalk

[DaNRL]

The dough is easy - it's just flour and you add water until you get the right consistency (you want it so it's just past not being sticky) you add the cotton by tearing up cotton balls and adding it to the mixture - makes the dough a lot tougher so it doesn't just fall off the hook when it gets wet.

The mullet are there all year - the freshwater mullet live there full time and the sea mullet come and go but they don't really have a season so there's always plenty around

I lost two monsters as well as catching these fives - it can happen as they go nuts when hooked and sometimes they spin around and wrap themselves in the leader and ping - had to go and chase the float a few times

Any float will work - my favourite is the type that's about 20cm long - a cork around a metal shaft with the top painted bright orange - I tend to weight it just enough to have it float properly - that way it will only get taken under with a good bite (actually there's a good shot of it in the photo of my daughter) - you will need to use a float stop with this type of float - basically it's float stopper - float - small ball sinker - swivel - 15 cms of line - small hook

It can take a while to get the feel for when to strike, but once you get into the groove you don't miss too many

Use the bread as burley to get them to the spot and then stop until they stop biting - when they slow down / become hard to hook through some more bread out to stir them up

I use braided main line (because it floats and is easy the see / make sure you don't have any slack in the line) with a fluro carbon leader (so the fish can't see it)

Thinking I'll head back down sometime this weekend

Edited March 31, 2014 by DaNRL

[Ryder]

Thanks for the reply. I know a lot of guys have trouble catching mullet , I'm one of them.

I see big ones cruising around spots but never had a serious go at them.

I have caught them using mullet as bait when going for bream . Is that odd? Mullet on mullet.

Dough and cotton wool Saturday Arvo I could break my new rod, these guys are big..

I will post results

Thanks again

Ryder

[leonardgid]

hi there, did you by any chance gut the fish? sea mullet are spawning right now and i just wanted to know if the river mullet do the same , thanks .

[DaNRL]

No I didn't gut them - using them as crab bait it's better to keep the gut in because it puts out a great stink that attracts the crabs

[funnierthanu]

Is this the one and only D-MAC , good to see you still know how to catch them and its great to see you getting the girl out there with you .Don't go giving out too many of my secrets or I will call that brother of yours and have a talk with him .