Page 38 - BNB Fishing mag

Winter weather
making it challen-
ging to fish
* from P36
deep holes behind the CBD have been the pick of good spots but finding live bait has been a little tough at times.
the weather decid- ed to finally settle down, the wider grounds have been producing kingfish and amberjack.
So, make sure you have some backup bait such as mullet and squid in case the live bait do not want to play the game for you.
Live baits such as slimy mackerel and yellowtail with small knife jigs have been tempting the majority of these.
Large hard-body lures have worked fairly well of late on the rocks, so grab yourself some Leavey Lures, Croak- er Lures, RMG Scor- pion Lures, Killalure Jewie 150 and Halco Laser Pro 190 before you next head out.
If you’re after an easy feed and a bit of a gym workout in the process, get ready because at any tick of the clock we should see leather- jacket turn up.
The Leavey Lures and Croaker Lures in particular are heavy – around 70g – and as such will cast better and hold their action firmer in rough conditions.
The water tem- perature has stayed warmer than it nor- mally does, and with the rough con- ditions over winter they may not want to come out and play with us at all.
Offshore has been a little difficult, with large swells and strong wind making it really dangerous to get across the bar.
So, it’s certainly a good time to prepare for the leatherjacket that do show up by making a few rigs up.
When we have been able to get out, we have had good quality snapper, ter- aglin, mulloway and tuna coming from the close reefs.
If nothing else, make sure you have a good supply of spare terminal tack- le such as hooks, swivels, sinkers and leader line as leath- erjacket can make short work of most pieces of hardware put in front of them.
Live baits, lightly weighted pilchards and soft plastics have all converted to success.
Well that’s all from me.
The 32-fathom line has been hold- ing snapper and trag, and on days when
‘Til next time – tight lines!
I am however tip- ping that we may not see quite as many as we have in past years.
Yamba-based angler Guy Hemmers proudly displayed this nice mulloway taken offshore on a live slimy mackerel.
Jewfish steer clear Iof Clarence River
’M not sure what may have happened in your local river
Just Jew
by TYE PORTER
Page 38 – Bush ’n Beach Fishing, August 2020
Oh, the joys of getting old.
* continued P39 www.bnb shing.com.au
jewfish-wise during the bright moon in July, but here at Iluka the fishing was abysmal to say the least.
and trying for a jew but could only manage stinking big stingrays and bream.
Before the east coast low formed down south, sending huge swells and gale force wind up our way, ex- cellent catches of jew- fish and snapper were being taken offshore and believe it or not even the odd little spotted mackerel.
However, good catch- es of these smelly crit- ters were still to be had offshore and around the headlands.
I was happy to write the bright moon off and looked forward to the next dark moon but bugger me if we weren’t belted with wind in ex- cess of 35 knots for the first half of it.
Lismore jewaholic Guy Stewart made the pilgrimage on the first two nights and man- aged to snare a cou- ple of fish early in the moon.
Recently, I was sitting on the lounge watching TV and listening to the wind blowing outside, and my partner made a comment along the lines of: “I remember a time when you would wait for bad weather like this before you went fishing.”
My son Travis and his mate Guy Hem- mers made several trips offshore and were re- warded with quite a few jew over a period of a couple of weeks, with their best fish tipping the scales at over 14kg and Trav snared a 60cm spotted mackerel.
From then on though the river was deader than a doornail, which was really odd because fishing traditionally gets better later in the moon, not worse.
The lads used a vari- ety of live baits includ- ing slimy mackerel and yellowtail.
Ashby angler Ted McLean fished the Il- uka breakwall in day- light at low tide with his son Ben, who was visit- ing from down south
I replied, “Yeah, but I wasn’t 60 with shot lungs and ticker back then.”
I would love to have