Aussie Salmon from the shore

[juicy233]

Hi Everyone, this afternoon I caught my first ever Australian salmon in a very unlikely spot casting out for flathead onto a sand flat. I was hopping a squidtrex along the bottom until my brothers soft plastic was getting followed and snipped by some tailor. After getting no flathead for an hour I switched to a metal to try and snag a tailor and after 10 minutes I ended up hooking a nice 50 or so cm salmon. I'm just wondering if this catch was a complete fluke as I was fishing over the castle Rock sand flat which is a large area where it only gets 2-3m deep or if salmon like to come into this shallow water? If anyone's got any info on whether salmon like the shallow water and where to catch them from the shore please share i'd love to hear it.

Cheers 

[Aussie_fisher]

Salmon do come into very shallow water chasing bait from what I’ve observed. I have caught them in water barely a metre deep around the parra. When they bust up sometimes they come all the way to the edge like they were a few months ago to chase the schools of jelly prawn.

[Aussie_fisher]

Don’t know how to specifically target them though. All my encounters were random while I was just fishing for flathead on plastics

[Steve0]

I hunted them with keen dedication down the far South coast (averaged three days per week; 1000+ released every year). I had nice clean water to work with. From a high vantage point, schools were visible as large brown masses in the water, often circular (Tailor showed up as grey masses; sometimes Tailor mixed in with Salmon).

In gutters, more like this

As you might see a massive school outside a gutter from the sand

Always look into the waves as they form to break:

 

Being Pelagic, to find Salmon during office hours, I would walk empty beaches looking for signs. Up to 10km. It was rare to go home with a doughnut. On the walks, the idea is to keep working the lure across sandbars into gutters. Three cast in different directions. If any stragglers are there and hungry, they'd find the lure. Around solid structure (rocks), would work more intensely, casting as close as possible to rock. Even over rocks if you think you can skip your lure on top and not into cunje on the retrieve. Expect to lose some anyway (in my case about 50 lures lost  would be a good year). 

Lure weight will depend on what you are tossing them with. Something to bear in mind is you don't need to cast to New Zealand every cast, but it is handy to be able to cast 70m or more if you see fish that far out.

At low tide Salmon may be out where the rip heads seaward. If circumstances are OK, you may be able to wade onto a sandbar and explore that area.

At dusk (more than dawn) Salmon come in close to work the shoreline. On a full moon, I've taken them on lure out to about 9:30PM, casting along narrow gutters very close to shore (i.e. close enough that casting across would give a very short retrieve).

You could always find a good gutter during the day, toss a bait around dusk and wait for them to come to you (something I rarely did).

To me, clear water is important for Salmon/Tailor chasing on beaches. I expect to find that at Central Coast but have not yet investigated. You could be fairly sure you'd find some on Stockton beach at the right time of year, but I haven't made it there either.       

 

 

 

Edited Monday at 12:05 PM by Steve0
Photo removal

[Yowie]

Salmon will feed wherever there are baitfish, and if that is less than 1 metre of water, they will be there. Because of the shallow depth of water, there will be plenty of splashing while chasing the baitfish.

Salmon also grub in the sand looking for nippers, worms and other food. I have seen them doing this, also have caught a few in shallow water while fishing nippers for whiting, and on light gear they will power away for some time.

[JonD]

We've got so many big schools of them don here on the south coast and plenty of large sharks following the bigger schools. 27 large sharks were drone filmed on one patch of fish last week which is awesome to see.

[Steve0]

10 hours ago, JonD said:

We've got so many big schools of them don here on the south coast and plenty of large sharks following the bigger schools. 27 large sharks were drone filmed on one patch of fish last week which is awesome to see.

Do you have the drone footage posted somewhere?

[juicy233]

thanks everyone for all the helpful info, hopefully i can put it to use and catch a few more before they run away for the summer!

[JonD]

On 9/17/2024 at 5:59 PM, Steve0 said:

Do you have the drone footage posted somewhere?

There was some on the Narooma noticeboard Facebook page.