Bronzies Northern Beaches SYD

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G'Day Raiders,

New member, first post. I spent a fair whack of time writing this and then lost the whole post when I went to submit! Here we go again...

I'm generally land based off the Northern Beaches and rock ledges....Friday eve last week went down to a local spot with the ongoing jewy quest on my mind. Gear was 30kg 12ft rod with 12000 bait runner spooled with 65lb braid and another lighter setup with 30lb braid. Bait was store bought whole bonito, yakkas and squid that had been sitting in the back of my ute for half a day in the hot sun.

Get to the spot, set up the heavy rod with 80lb mono leader, snelled 9/0's and a whole yakka.

Cast #1: Plunk it out the back around sundown as far as I could with a 110g sinker and whole yakka, drop the rod in the holder and head back up the beach to rig my other rod. My mate gives me a shout and the rod gets some good jolts. Grab it out of the holder, slack line, I reel it in, feel a good weight and bit of thrashing around, see a big splash beyond the breakers in the failing light then all is quiet. Called it for a big salmon with the acrobatics and let the bait sit for a few more minutes thinking maybe he will be back or something else will come along. All quiet so reel in slowly and bottom hook bitten off through the 80lb...... hmmm wasn't a dodgy knot so maybe a stonking tailor, maybe massive salmon or shark.

Cast #2: Re rig again with the 80lb mono leader, out goes another yakka, glow stick on the rod tip by now. 2 minutes passes and the rod buckles over with a screaming drag. Struggled to get it out of the pipe holder which was buried deep in the sand due to the tension on it. Finally get it out, put some weight on the thing and "pop" its gone...reel it in mono bit through above the top snelled hook. Only one candidate now must be the bronzies

Cast #3: Re rig again with 130lb mono leader, 150lb 7 strand nylon coated wire trace. Same process but yakka on a single hook this time. Plunk it out, drop it in the holder take up the slack and go try to have a chat to my mate about life in general, had hardly got a word in since we showed up with the action. Bang off goes the rod again as hard as cast #2, glow stick flexing toward the horizon and a screaming drag, such a great sight to see. Grab the thing, leave it to finish its first run and start to work it back in plenty of weight in this one. He goes for a second run and "pop" gone again. Start kicking myself and thinking must be a dodgy knot of my doing, bronzies don't usually pull hooks once they are set. Reel in and see the 150lb 7 strand coated trace has opened up at one of the factory loops at the end... not too impressed that it broke way before the 65lb brain and 130lb leader.... thing was brand new out of the pack and bought only a few weeks ago. Might try to make my own in future.

My mate is fishing a bit lighter than me with 20lb mono, leaves his rod in the holder, were having a chat 20m away near my rod, see his buckle over, falls flat on the sand and starts flying across the sand towards the water, all we could see of it was the glow stick zipping across the sand! Fastest I have ever seen my mate run he got it in knee deep water and bitten off soon after when he put pressure on. Had a good laugh about that, he almost lost his whole combo never to be seen again.

Cast #4 and Cast #5: Same rig as cast #3, get the strikes within 5 mins of casting and a quick run but no hookup, 2 hooks are better than one I think but harder to do with trace than mono

Cast #6: Same rig again, strike and drag goes off pretty much as soon as the bait hits the water, didn't even have time to drop it in the holder. Decent first run but less weight than previous hook ups. 5-10 mins worth of to and fro and beached a 4ft bronzie. Was keen for some flake but didn't have the right kit to fillet and transport it properly so back she went, carried in to knee deep water and swam away slowly but surely

Cast #7: All is quiet for around 25 mins which is a rarity for the evening, bait comes back in untouched

Cast #8: Throw out again this time without the wire, back to 80lb mono. 10 mins passes and get a few good hard thumps that move the rod a decent bit. Not that frenzied thrashing of a bronzie and definitely something with some size to it. Thinking jew but that might just be optimism on my part.

Cast #9: Repeat cast 8

 

All out of bait and time to go. A good fun session, not very relaxing at all but good to get plenty of hook ups. Only one cast out of 9 that didn't get a good strike. Beaches have been pretty quiet for me since July/August last year. Hopefully the warm water is bringing them to life again.

What I might have learned out of it;

- Went to a beach Ive never fished before, quiet spot with no-one else fishing, not that easy to access and hardly any artificial light visible from the water

- Bait absolutely reeked, this might have had something to do with it

- As soon as I released the bronzie, the rest of them went off the bite

Will get some photos next time.

Cheers and good luck!

Sam

[savit]

Welcome to the forum Sam and thanks for the interesting report. It actually inspired me to put away my usual bream gear for some time and get the heavy gear out of closet to try later this week. Just wondering what 30kg 12' rod do you use?

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1 hour ago, savit said:

Welcome to the forum Sam and thanks for the interesting report. It actually inspired me to put away my usual bream gear for some time and get the heavy gear out of closet to try later this week. Just wondering what 30kg 12' rod do you use?

Sorry mate was a typo it's a 20kg....had to redo the whole thing in a bit of a rush. Its a shimano 1202 coastal currently with a 12000 bait runner but changing to a fin nor lethal 100 this week. Been eyeing off an assassin beachmaster rod but that will have to wait a bit! They are quite dear.

[savit]

NP, with such a small waiting period , fin noir double drag rating would be probably more useful for sharks than shimano baitrunner feature.

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Yeah the baitrunner feature can be handy but the main drag isn't that smooth on the reel I have. Tends to feed off in fits and bursts on anything but a low setting. 6 month old reel and I have treated it pretty well. 20kg maximum drag on the fin nor 100, highly unlikely I will ever use it close to that setting but I assume it will be nice and smooth around 10-15kg drag with no issues. 400m capacity of 80lb braid doesn't hurt either. Hopefully will come in handy for jews and sharks off the beach and kings off the stones - if I can latch on to one that is!

[big Neil]

Welcome to Fishraider Sam and congratulations on the report...a great blow by blow account of a memorable adventure. I have suffered from losing my reports /replies too, so now do them in Word and paste them in. Have never tasted Bronzies but if they are as good as Gummy Shark they would be a great feed. Keep up the good work, looking forward to your next report. Cheers, BN

[Mike89]

Good stuff Sam, plenty of action had on the beaches. Well done on the whaler, seems there must have been a lot around!

Awesome report!

[mitchie18092]

A slightly disconcerting, yet highly entertaining report. 

Nice one mate, and i too am interested in how it tastes? 

M.

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Thanks for the comments fellas. Small bronzies are great to eat, no bones and clean white flesh that is firm and comes apart in big chunks. Apparently no good over 6ft or so due to the ammonia, I've never tried eating  that size. I'll keep most legal size fish that are half decent for the table but release most sharks I catch, I'm more reluctant to kill them for some reason rather than scaly fish.

 

Assume the disconcerting comment is about the number of sharks right on the northern beaches.... Yeah there are plenty about, inside the nets and I don't berley them up at all. If they really wanted to chew on people they would do it regularly!

Cheers,

Sam

[kingie chaser]

Welcome to the forum.

sounds like you needed.some wire trace!

 

Also just a tip, im on about 5 different forums so do a lot of posting.

If I am working on anything that is long or even something short that a fair bit of thought is going into then I compose the post in Microsoft word & copy & past it i to the thread.

I think we have all lost something before but that works for me.

Hope that helps 

[Adsy91]

Gotta love the Bronzies!

 

Welcome mate!

 

This time last year we were feeding three 6ft bronzies and a grey nurse with the bonnies we were catching in 2ft of water...they aren't shy and there was blood everywhere with about 25 swimmers doing a thrashing freestyle behind us that they gave no interest too.

Im talking about terrigal haven near the boat ramp to put it into perspective