Harbour Blackfish

[little fisho]

Since the start of autumn, ive started to notice schools of large blackfish around the pylons of wharves in sydney. they ignore most baits with the exception of the occasional hookup on bread. ive tried weed flies to no avail, would berley make them more active? or would i need to collect green weed and use it over bread or anything else? do they become more aggressive as we get into winter? lot of questions as i am quite new to blackfishing and havent found much help in the articles section

[wazatherfisherman]

Good quality weed in conjunction with burley of chopped weed and sand usually gets them interested. Other baits they take inside are shrimps, peeled green prawns, live nippers, live worms, bread to name a few. After dark they often bite on the non-vegetative baits, but during the day weed followed by cabbage is the most reliable thing to use.

Keep your leader no heavier than .20mm diameter regardless of strength- the finer the better and weight your float to sit no more than about 1cm above the surface when fishing wharves in the harbour for best results

[mrsswordfisherman]

13 hours ago, little fisho said:

Since the start of autumn, ive started to notice schools of large blackfish around the pylons of wharves in sydney. they ignore most baits with the exception of the occasional hookup on bread. ive tried weed flies to no avail, would berley make them more active? or would i need to collect green weed and use it over bread or anything else? do they become more aggressive as we get into winter? lot of questions as i am quite new to blackfishing and havent found much help in the articles section

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[Burger]

Those two articles will tell you everything you need to know about blackfishing and the advice from Waza is spot on!

Balance you float right, mine has only 1.5cm of stem showing.

Get yourself some green weed and/or cabbage, you'll get more blackfish on weed than on other baits.

Mix up berley with the same weed as your bait with a couple of handfuls chopped fine per 10L sand.

My leader is 6lb FC Rock at .205mm.

Then vary your depth till you start getting bites!

There is also a theory that if you can see the fish, you won't get a bite . . .

Good luck in your blackfishing journey!

stu.

Edited May 17, 2021 by Burger

[Kracka]

Wazas spot on.

I'll chip in too. The hardest part of blackfish fishing I've found is finding the weed. You'll want to get a variety of weed if it's available. The long stringy weed, cabbage and brown weed (similar to the stringy green weed) if it's there. Most days they're not fussed but certain days they'll only take one type and you'll wish you had the right weed. Burley is a must... Only weed and damp sand...always handy to have some of the weed fly's too when weed is too short everywhere.

Then you have right depth, drift speed, location, tide phase, float ballasting.. So many variables.

It's best to keep a diary so each trip you can note the downs, bait used, weather, tide phase etc...a very handy tool as there's literally hundreds of spots within the harbour and each spot will have some form of difference that will determine your success. 

For example, My last outing was a donut but i flicked back through my diary and the only variable that's changed is that there's no kelp lining the rocks. Close to the kelp is where I'd get 95% of my downs. So with that info, i now know that the kelp was one of the key features to the blackfishs structure in that location.

I have caught them on prawns over the weed flats up at the entrance but think that was a one-off fluke. As waza said, night time is probably the best bet if you want to fish non-vegan for these weed addict fish... But you will spend most of your time hooking bream instead I'm sure....speaking from experience lol. 

 

Hope that helps.