Hawkesbury river 12/8/23

[XD351]

G'day Raiders ,

I decided to try upriver after the last two trips down at Broken Bay and Pittwater provided little in the way of fish, I launched just on daylight and right on high tide then motored up to the Milson Island steps with a plan to drift fish pillies and chuck a few lures.

After rigging up two rods with the Spikes  half pillie rig I have now become fond of I tied on a TT big eye jig head and a 3inch Gobblers lures paddle tail in lime slammer colour and started to fan casts out around the drifting boat , second cast it got slammed on the drop and after a quick tussle up came a 58cm flathead - a good fish on the second cast on a lure brand I had never used before made me one happy boy i can tell you ! I continued this drift for a few hundred meters with one missed fish on the lure and not a touch on the baits.

I moved around to the bar point side of Milson Island and didn't get a touch on anything so i moved a little further upriver to the Delta of the Hawkesbury and Berowra to drift over the Drop over into the channel but this also proved fruitless. Another move was on the cards but to where? Out came the phone and a bit of a look on Navionics showed another hole not far from where i was - Melvy's wharf on fisherman's point, there is a hole here that just screamed flathead to me! It took a while to get the drift right as the current tends to push the boat into the shore where it is shallow but a few attempts had me drifting along the edge of the drop off and it was pretty much one fish after another until the tide turned and the action died off. ended up with my bag limit , released the big flathead along with three others, one was on the Gobblers (hit on the drop again) so now super impressed with that lure! one downer was my supposedly waterproof /resistant Samsung phone dropped into the bilge and got wet , i retrieved it and it was still working put it died soon after - screen froze then went black 🤬 looks like the old trusty LG is the new camera phone as my new phone won't be coming out of my bag! Water temps were mid 14 deg and almost hit 15 deg at low tide, the flathead were still pretty lethargic and didn't put up much of a fight.

Pics show view from milson island back to the road bridge and the other upriver from melvy's , the fish are all that were kept except the 58cm one which lived to breed and make more flatties! I couldn't take photos of the last few fish as the phone had died by then but they were released anyway.

 

[Bryant fish]

Well done i tried pittwater on Saturday for 5 squid 2 that were good size 1 bango shark i flounder kept and 1 flathead dropped at boat .the boat has been having mechanical issues on 1 motor (twin setup) so no going outside mechanic taking a look this week fingers crossed otherwise will be off the water for a fair while glad somethings happening up river

[XD351]

Thanks mate ! 
I hope the motor issue gets sorted ! I thought up river the water wouldn’t be as clear and the temp up a bit from broken bay.

[Yowie]

Nice bag of flatties, well worth the effort.

[Isaac Ct]

Great stuff, good going for winter still.

Good to see the flattie action heating up.

[Larkin]

Some nice lizards XD!

sucks about the phone - most can handle a bit of spray, but a dunking they don’t tend to like.

[Bait_drifta]

 Glad you caught a nice feed! Good report, can’t wait for them water temp to heat up!  

[kantong]

great work there. It's so good when you find the flatty hole, sweet success!