The rain shortened the fishing opportunities this past week. After a period of good rainfall, fishing seems to improve.
An old saying goes “drought on land and draught in the water”. I believe this to be true, and the prawns will be flushed out of the rivers and creeks. The prawns stimulate the food chain, and our anglers enjoy a bounty of fish.
I had an unusual experience last week when I was mistaken for a predator. I was drift fishing from my kayak and drifted into a school of fish that looked like mullet of over 30cm.
They must have thought the kayak was a shark because they panicked and started frantically jumping in all directions. They were less than three meters away, and I had to laugh at their splashing about.
The bay is fishing well for small snapper and quality mulloway. The best fish landed at night. Winter bream are appearing along the foreshores and fish of 30cm are common. These bream are old fish and are not easily caught, so a light line fished with little or no lead will be key to landing these fish.
The mackerel seemed to have tapered off, with few sizeable fish landing. The grinners are making a nuisance of themselves and taking the lures. The squid should be starting to appear now that the water has cooled. I have noticed a few prawns around the local jetty and it is worth looking out for now that we have had the rain.
Ray Kennedy fished the North Pine Dam with Rick and Joy Hughes and found it challenging. The schools of fish were moving around quite quickly, and after locating a school and boating 20-30 fish, the school moved off.
They fished three schools for 98 bass, two yellowbellies, two tandanus and eight fork-tailed catfish. All were caught on live shrimp captured in the dam, and all fish released except for the smaller yellowbelly, which Rick and Joy enjoyed for tea that night.
There are a lot of bait fish in the area, which would account for the recent increased catch rate. The photo of Joy Hughes with a 50cm yellow belly was released for someone else to catch. Ray says that he is enjoying the new local paper.
If you have any fishing questions or photographs of your catch or if you would like a coaching session, please get in touch with Michael at [email protected]
