Fishing Monthly - Latest Fishing Reports - Updated Weekly
COMPILED WEEKLY BY TONY ZANN IN EVANS HEAD:
e-mail: t.zann@fishingmonthly.com.au
Tweed Heads

Julie/Graeme, Anglers Warehouse Tweed Heads (07) 5536 3822
anglerswarehouse@shopsafe.com.au
Wayne, Kingscliff Bait and Tackle
Matthew/Charlie, Deep Sea Fishing Charters

Top
Byron Bay

Good whiting and dart on Tallow Beach, nice jew around Broken Head and the back beaches on soft lures and baits. A heap of cornflake weed on the town beaches is clearing up and a few whiting and dart have been caught there. Howling northerly and a swell have kept the offshore boats at home.

David Keevers, Coastal Fishing Tackle 02 66 857 133

Top
Ballina
Bruce from Dave’s Bait Shop says a few good flathead around, mainly along the Porpoise Wall and in North Creek. Quality whiting to 500g up as far as Rileys Hill and also at Pimlico. Dart to 500g on South Beach. Wardell for school jew and trevally. A few small Spanish mackerel from Riordans.
At Evans Head the swell is just dropping today (Mon) and a few boats have put to sea, though I don’t know how they went. With the good tides there should be snapper in close and the trag have also been biting OK before the sea came up. There are also jew, moses perch, bonito and the usual mixed reefies out there, but no indications yet of mackerel. You might get the odd straggler on the South Reef but the real Evans mackerel season won’t start for at least another two weeks.
The local beaches have had some big bream, with reports of fish to 1.6kg, and some nice bags of whiting. There could also be some interesting fishing around the Broadwater rocks for bream and school jew and, if the sea goes off just a little more, tailor.
Give the river a miss until the holidaymakers go home or unless you like catching tiddler whiting and spiker flathead with heaps of other boats around you.

Dave’s Bait Shop 02 6686 2481
&
Tony Zann

t.zann@fishingmonthly.com.au

Top
Yamba
Really nothing new to report this week. The mackerel still have not turned up in any great numbers, this happened last year and I think there is room for concern there in regards to the fishery. In the river there are whiting to be caught but not in great numbers and I'd seriously suggest that anyone wanting to get a good feed that they allocate some time at night and go and do it, this is your very best chance to get a good number. I took a couple of keen plastics blokes up river aboard Reel Time on Tuesday and they would have rolled about 20 odd lizards, some good keepers amongst them so they were more than happy with the outing, most though were undersize. Nonetheless, action ... and that's what counts.
Offshore I have no first hand reports but I'd be surprised if anglers weren't getting a reasonable feed. Happy new year to all, thanks for the emails of friendship and encouragement and I hope everyone has a first class year fishing through 2004.

Glen Porter, 6646 2017
The Bait Place 6646 2017
ports@reeltime.com.au

Top
Coffs Harbour
Lots of small whiting on the beach with the odd bream and some very large dart, just to keep the Queensland tourist happy.
Estuary fish well strung out dur to very dry conditions, best areas probably around the mouths. Flathead, whiting, bream. Big flathead seem to have vanished but a number of school fish on soft plastics.
Offshore: Spotted mackerel have turned up with some nice fish from 4-8kg. Snapper moving back into deeper water with the odd big one still turning up around the headlands.

Peter Russell, Fish Tackle Australia 6652 4611
motackle@midcoast.com.au

Top
South West Rocks
The fish have come on just at the right time with some good results reported this week.
In the river there has been some very nice flathead landed. Weighed in at the shop, one at 4.9kg and another at 3.6kg, live poddy mullet and fish baits seem to be the best. Jewfish are making their presence felt off the wall with a number of these fish pulled out. Danny Olive hooked a 20kg specimen using live herring. There has been some small cobia caught in the river. These fish do look like a shark, so have a good look before you release this great eating fish. Small bream and whiting all over the river with some larger specimens up in the quieter waters, fishing as light as you can.
Off the rocks this week, around the lighthouse there has been some tailor caught on pillies and garfish, also an 18kg cleaned jewfish weighed in at the shop. Reports from Hat Head have been good.
Whiting are on the bite on most beaches with good catches on Smokey Beach, along with some nice bream. Best bait for these would be live worms or pipis. There are a couple of good gutters on the Gap Beach at the moment, these should produce some quality fish.
All the action is offshore this week. Reports of billfish hooked everyday, most being released which is good to see. Fish Rock is going off with good kingfish around it. Craig Cohen, one of our locals picked up a nice17kg specimen. Dolphin fish can be picked up around the FAD with Bar Cod available out wide off the 60 fathom line. Out very wide, one crew had some fun with nine yellowfin tuna around 40kg each. These fish were travelling north at a rapid rate.

Mark and Denise Bird and Paul and Michelle Martin
Rocks Marine Bait and Tackle 6566 6726
birds@tsn.cc

Top
Port Macquarie

Jason and Virginia Isaac, Ned Kelly’s Bait and Tackle 6583 8318
cjisaac@ozemail.com.au

Top
Forster
Offshore: Water temperature and quality has been variable but all reef systems have fished well. Reefs wide of the Five Mile have produced quality snapper and pearl perch. Morwong are also in big numbers. Kingfish remain small. The first of the mahi mahi have been caught around traps wide of The Pinnacle. Conditions have not allowed small boats much time out wide in search of billfish, but past experience indicates the ‘beaks’ will be there. Grey nurse sharks remain neither rare nor endangered in our area. Maybe those who provide the science for NSW Fisheries should talk to someone other than those that run dive charters.
Beaches: All beaches are providing plenty of whiting and bream. Although the tides haven't been perfect, tailor have been available for those who try.
Rocks: No LBG action to speak of. Plenty of bream and tailor for the rest.
Estuary: Lots of quality mulloway have come from the breakwalls but conditions are crowded at this time of the year. The lake is full of whiting and flathead. Those chasing bream on lures are having plenty of success up the rivers, particularly on surface lures.

Lloyd Campbell, Great Lakes Tackle 02 6554 9541

Top
Port Stephens

Graham Duffy, Salamander Bait and Tackle 02 4982 0711

Top
Hunter Area

Whiting have been the targeted option for most fishers throughout this week if the sales of live blood, beach and tube worms are any indication. Supply has not kept up with the demand with reports of good numbers of sand whiting from Port Stephens through to Swansea with some large fish caught near the dropover area of Lake Macquarie and southern end of Stockton Beach.
Rock fishermen are reporting good numbers of yellowtail kingfish from the local rock platforms with most legal-sized fish falling to whole pilchard baits floated out in the wash. Kingies are also being caught from the North Reef area with bait also the preferred option but remember that a bag limit of 5 fish per person and the legal size is 60cm for this species with Fisheries officers patrolling the rock platforms during the week.
Lake Macquarie has resembled the Sydney to Newcastle Freeway on Boxing Day with a 300% increase in boating traffic but reports continue to indicate good fishing. Flathead have been caught throughout the lake with Belmont Bay producing for lure fishermen willing to slowly retrieve soft plastic lures. Tracy Johnson from Queensland managed to catch a 1kg bream on his Slider Grub soft plastic lures from the northern area of the lake and was impressed with our local fishing options.
Newcastle Harbour and Hunter River have not encountered the dramatic increase in boat traffic and continue to offer good fishing options. Bream and flathead have been caught throughout the lower reaches of the river with fresh prawns the best of the baits. Mulloway have been hit or miss in the Harbour with some exceptional catches mixed with zeros for some. Mick Moss of the Valentine Bowling Club Fishing Club knows how good the Harbour fishing can be – he landed his personal best mulloway through the week with the 21.4kg fish falling to a live bait on the bottom of the tide.
Bass fishing continues to be productive with the Paterson and Williams rivers firing. Some of the surface fishing after dark this week has been the best ever with cricket scores of hungry fish smashing the lures. River levels are low so allow time between the pools to drag canoes or you can be caught out, as we were this week.
Congratulations to our local mobile Fisheries officers who, working with information supplied by local fishers, apprehended an illegal net and its operator this week in Lake Macquarie. Help them stamp out illegal fishing by reporting any observations of illegal fishing activities by phoning 1800 043 536.

Jordan Armstrong,
Tackle Power Fishing Stores,
Jordan@tacklepower.com.au

Top
Newcastle
Copious numbers of blue swimmer crabs around Nords Wharf/Cams Wharf. I can't get over the amount of big whiting around the sand flats throughout the lake, plenty of huge bream under all the moored boats in Belmont Bay and Salts Bay in the shallows. Alligator-like flathead cover the lake bottom in many areas and 35-40cm snapper continue to grow in numbers. Also had a report of an 8’ bronze whaler shark cruising the surface in the middle of Belmont Bay.
Offshore: Schools of mahi mahi in and around the traps on the Farm Reefs, huge schools of slimy mackerel in the same vicinity and in a little closer (50m). Increasing numbers of striped marlin on the shelf. Kingfish along the rocks at Catherine Hill Bay, Moonee, Bird Island and Redhead.
Some large Jewfish (one at 26kg) along Blacksmiths Beach.
We are open all the holidays from 5am and close on the weekends at 5.30pm.

Peter Sanderson, Fisherman's Warehouse (02) 4945 8922
enquiries@fishermanswarehouse.com.au

Top
Central Coast

Gary Oxley Coastline Bait & Tackle, East Gosford ph/fax 4325 4255
kathgaz@bigpond.com
http://www.coastlinefishing.easysites.ws

Top
Sydney Northern

Peter/Kurt
Darren Thomas, Fish Outta Water 9949 9488
captainkurt100@hotmail.com

Top
Sydney Southern
Over the past fortnight we have had the wind making fishing on Botany Bay a little bit hard. But this wind is shouldn’t deter you from getting out on the water, as there are some very good reports of fish coming in.
Trevally and plenty of undersized kingfish are being caught off the point at Kurnell, Watts Reef, the hot water outlet, the container wall and at the end of the third runway. The bream have also started to show up in small numbers at these spots, but I wouldn’t get your hopes up for a bumper bream season just yet. The bream should increase in numbers by the end of January.
There are plenty of leatherjackets feeding around the edge of the drop off at Molineaux Point and the northeastern corner of Bare Island. I was out with Craig and Mark Rice last week and we managed to get 12 in 90 minutes on peeled Clarence River No 1 prawns. We also tried for an hour with soft plastics for flathead, but never raised a scale. Maybe the wind has put them off the bite. One thing that I did notice that there was all this slime all over the plastic.
Further upstream there have been a number of mulloway caught on the run-in tide at the Captain Cook Bridge, Kangaroo Point and the Como Bridge. Live yellowtail or squid, fresh fillets of slimy mackerel, yellowtail, trevally or pieces of squid will do the trick. Land-based anglers could try the stretch of water near the old Lugarno ferry for bream and the odd flathead. Whiting have also started to show up there as well.
Port Hacking has plenty of whiting. Get blood, beach or tube worms for bait, anchor up over or near the edge of a sand bank, start berleying and the whiting will come to you. Leatherjackets are in plague proportions and if you can’t feel your bait going you should change over to a paternoster rig – use a half of a peeled prawn and you should be in business.
If you can get out of the wind Shark Island is holding a few kingfish, trevally, bream and the odd drummer.
With the full moon coming up you should start thinking about mulloway and tailor off the beaches. Places to try are Stanwell Park, Wanda, Greenhill&Mac226;s, Boat Harbour, Maroubra, Coogee and Bondi. Go down an hour before dark when the tide is rising and fish from then until about an hour and a half after dark.
Many of the anglers I have spoken to lately have been complaining about getting no fish. All I can say if you are not berleying and using fresh bait, you will continue not catching any fish. Berleying is the key to your success.
FISHING CLASSES.
In conjunction with Roland Persson from All at Sea Fishing Charters I will hold fishing clinics on his Seatamer 34 in the confines of Port Hacking over Summer where I will teach kids the fundamentals of how to fish. The three-hour classes will run three times daily on selected days. Call Roland on 0414 525 968 or me on 0422 994 207 for details.
My regular fishing classes on how, where and when to fish the waterways of Sydney from the shore and boats will run for three consecutive Tuesday nights for $80. Email me at gbrown1@iprimus.com.au or phone 0422 994 207 or next time you are passing the shop come in and book.

Mako Tackle
Gary Brown / Greg Mercedes 9600 6999

Top
Wollongong

Garth, Deans Bait and Tackle, Windang 4295 1615

Top
Batemans Bay

Rodney Stockman,
Harry’s Bait and Tackle
ph 02 4472 4393, fax 02 4472 3405

Top
Narooma
Kicking on nicely with the water clearing and warming up well.
Big flatties in the estuary with around 10 up to a metre in the last day or so. Also nice whiting and plenty of tailor. Work the4 shallows and the leases for bream and estuary perch. Beaches going well for salmon.
Offshore reefs fishing very well. Kings getting better but still hit and miss. Plenty of black and striped marlin and some nice mahi mahi and a few yellowfin to 34kg.

Darryl, The Ocean Hut 4476 2278

Top
Bermagui
Offshore: A few marlin, striped and black, yellowfin 30-40kg but the weather has been patchy. Plenty of bait, makos and even a big white pointer shark spotted. Heaps of mowies and big tiger flathead, with those anchoring and berleying getting an odd snapper.
Estuaries: Better tides this week and plenty of bream, whiting, blackfish and trevally in around the weed beds on nippers and small plastics; lots of good flathead in the lakes and the river on plastics and baits.
Beaches: Plenty of salmon and tailor.

Darren Redman and Mark Rose,
Bermagui Ocean Hut and Charter Booking Service, 6493 4688

Top
Archived Weekly Reports

Year 2003 Weekly Reports
04/01/2002
11/01/2002
18/01/2002
25/01/2002
01/02/2002
08/02/2002
15/02/2002
22/02/2002
01/03/2002
08/03/2002
15/03/2002
22/03/2002
29/03/2002
05/04/2002
12/04/2002
19/04/2002
26/04/2002
03/05/2002
10/05/2002
17/05/2002
24/05/2002
01/06/2002
07/06/2002
14/06/2002

Year 2001 Weekly Reports
25/1/2001
01/02/2001
08/02/2001
15/02/2001
22/02/2001
02/03/2001
09/03/2001
16/03/2001
23/03/2001
31/03/2001
6/04/2001
12/04/2001
19/04/2001
26/04/2001
3/05/2001
10/05/2001
17/05/2001
24/05/2001
31/05/2001
7/06/2001
14/06/2001
21/06/2001
28/06/2001
5/07/2001
12/07/2001
19/07/2001
26/07/2001
3/08/2001
10/08/2001
17/08/2001
24/08/2001
31/08/2001
7/09/2001
14/09/2001
21/9/2001
28/9/2001
5/10/2001
12/10/2001
19/10/2001
26/10/2001
2/11/2001
9/11/2001
16/11/2001
23/11/2001
30/11/2001
7/12/2001
14/12/2001
21/12/2001
28/12/2001

New South Wales Tide Times

Bureau of Meteorology

Top