Sydney Harbour livebaiting - PBs and firsts

ireallylovefishies22 · November 15

With our school exams over, @44jeff, @eaglesilk5 and I (as well as a couple friends from school) decided to hit the harbour on Wednesday for a long day of fishing. Armed with a handful of live prawns, we started off at Pyrmont, where we had seen a few videos of people online getting good fish there. Excitement levels were running high, as we had been looking forwards to using live prawns for a while now but didn't really want to spend the money during winter.

First cast with a prawn resulted in a few little bites within just a couple minutes. Eventually, the rod bent hard and I ran over to strike. Initially, the fish fought well, but after a little while the lack of any substantial weight had us disappointed. Alas, a pinky surfaced, definitely not what we were targeting on the live prawns. Over the next couple hours, our live prawns were getting picked apart by what I presume were small snapper. Despite this, Jeff managed a pretty big leatherjacket on the live prawn, which we kept. To prevent all the prawns being wasted on pickers, we saved 3, hoping to use them during the twilight hours. Any tips to catch larger fish on them would be greatly appreciated. Maybe a float or an unweighted rig would be better?

After grabbing some food from the nearby Coles, we headed to a spot where we had been busted off by kingfish before to try our luck. Eagle wasted no time sending out a few pilly cubes off the side of the wharf, while I sent a few off the main side, into deeper water. A couple minutes later, Eagle was onto a nice fish, and after a decent fight a 34cm bream was landed. As always, we tried fishing for yakkas, but they were playing very hard to get on the day. Still, I persisted on trying to catch them, but managed nothing but tarwhine and butter bream. As I continued my pursuit of yakkas, Eagle's rod went off again, and he managed to catch a good 44cm flathead. On pilly cubes, just like the bream. Eagle's rod went off again even after this, but whatever it was snapped his hook off due to a bad knot.

Some older blokes arrived soon after this with their handlines. They began pulling up the yakkas I was unable to catch pretty quickly, and kindly gave them to us to use as livies. In return we gave them the flathead that we caught. Pretty soon, both Eagle and I had livies out, hoping for anything to brighten up this mediocre day.

At around 6:30pm, while I was wandering around on the wharf, Eagle's livie went off. The small 5 foot kiddie rod bent to a 90 degree angle in the holder, drag screaming. Eagle sprinted over, and the fight was on. The fish went for a screaming first run, almost spooling the small 2000 size reel. The fight continued for around 5 minutes with both fish and eagle gaining an inch, and losing an inch. After what seemed like forever, Eagle managed to get it close to the wharf, where the fish used the last of its energy and went on a final run towards the pylons. Luckily the 30 pound leader was able to hold, and our very first kingfish was now at the surface. Jeff went for a grab, but missed. Eagle dragged the fish towards me, and I was able to grab the tail but the fish kicked strongly from my grip. I went for a second attempt, grabbing the fish by both its belly and its tail. I flung it onto the wharf, and probably became the most noisy and rowdy group of fishermen on Sydney Harbour. In retrospect, we probably cheered a bit too loudly, especially in a public space. People getting off the ferry even stopped to take pictures with it. Looking forward to some sashimi, we measured the king, but it turned out to be 64cm, a mere centimeter off legal. So we swam it for a bit and let it go.

After the kingy, the action seemed to die off a bit. No bites on the pilly cubes or whitebait which we had out. As dusk approached, I decided to send out the last of the live prawns, which unsurprisingly got picked off by the annoying pinkes. For some reason, Eagle decided to cast out a rig without any bait while he filleted a yakka. Somehow, I don't know how this is possible, but a large blue swimmer crab tangled itself in his line. It didn't really seem well tangled though, so I decided to reach down and try grabbing the crab instead of lifting it. I took advantage of its damaged claw, which seemed to be growing back after it had lost it a while ago. After a while of halfheartedly fiddling with the crab in the water (mainly scared of getting pinched) i grabbed its claws and lifted it out of the water. The crab was 10cm from the top to the bottom of the carapace, which quite large for the harbour I believe. Decided to give this catch to one of our 'non-fishing' friends from school.

As night fell, I heard the telltale sound of drag. Eagle's livie rod had been taken again! He kindly let me fight the fish, which almost immediately swam to the surface and began to perform aerial leaps. We couldn't make out the shape of it since it was so dark, but called it for a salmon or flathead, as I thought the shape was sort of long and skinny, and it seemed to 'slither' through the water. This couldn't be further from the truth, as when the fish surfaced, we realised it was a nice tailor! Instead of trying to grab the fish like we had before with the others, I didn't want to risk the sharp teeth sawing through the line, so I quickly lifted it from the water. It was big, our PB for sure. Going 44cm, this probably isn't too impressive for the more experienced fishos out there, but for us, who had only started fishing seriously this year, we couldn't be happier with this catch.

After this tailor, we decided to pack up and go home as it was getting late. Overall, it was an incredible day fishing the harbour, certainly one of our best sessions. In total, we caught 1 leathery, a 34cm bream, a 44cm flatty, 44cm tailor, our very first kingfish, and a bunch of baby snapper and tarwhine not worth mentioning, Eagle's rod definitely providing the goods. Again, more tips on how to use live prawns would be very much appreciated.