Sydney South

Longer and warmer days out on the water

SYDNEY SOUTH Gary Brown

gbrown1@iprimus.com.au

Hopefully October will see the return of much fairer and warmer weather than we have been experiencing over the past few months. With the increase in warmer and longer days, you will see a big upsurge in people getting out on the water, which will in turn increase the numbers of reports that come in from those catching fish.

The water temperature will also start to rise, with the currents coming from the north linking up with the southern currents, bring the likes of dolphinfish, pearl perch and so on.

With all this starting to happen it’s a great time to get out there and try for a feed of fish.

Offshore you could try for sand and tiger flathead in the 30-50m depth off the northern entrance of Botany Bay to out off the Wedding Cake Island at Coogee. The best baits are half pilchards, strips of fresh squid, slimy mackerel and mullet.

Snapper, morwong, trevally, tarwhine and leatherjackets can be encountered while drifting off the close reefs in the same area. Drifting with bait and soft plastics should do the trick. If you’re at anchor, I would suggest that you lay out a berley trail and float down a few half and whole pilchards and strips of squid.

The beaches north of the entrance to Botany Bay would be worth a shot for whiting, bream and dart. Live beach worms, whitebait, half pilchards and pipis would be my choice of baits.

This month, the

Pick a bay in the Port Hacking and start working those lures in and around the pontoons and poles for bream and trevally. one of the bridges in the coming weeks.

The Port Hacking has had a huge school of salmon take up residence there for the last couple of months. Hopefully there will be a few of the salmon still there this month, because they make great fun and eating. Small metal lures and plastics worked slowly across the surface should get you hooked up to a few of these hard-pulling sportfish.

If you are after a few bream and trevally, I would recommend working the rocky edges, pontoons, poles and drop-offs. There are many places in the Port Hacking that you can do this, so I will leave it up to you to find which one bays, keep an eye out for any surface action as kingfish, salmon and tailor will also be following the baitfish schools.

Bream, drummer, trevally, salmon and tailor should be feeding along the coastal rocks from Jibbon Point and down to Stanwell Park Beach. To find them you are going to have to do a bit of exploring. I am not sure when Garie and Wattamolla beaches are going to be open. It would be great to be able to get down there and fish them again, as it has been months that they have been closed. I am going to contact the National Parks and try to find out when they will be opened up again, and I will

If you don’t like coming home smelling of bait, try using soft plastics for flathead.

northern end of Bondi Beach would be worth a shot for bream, trevally and drummer using peeled prawns. You can use a small ball sinker run down onto the bait, or alternatively a bobby cork rig to keep the bait off the bottom.

Botany Bay will start to see an increase in the kingfish numbers at Bare Island, Trevally Alley, the end of the third runway, The Drums, the Oil Wharf and wide off Towra Pont. Try either live baiting for them or trolling a few lures around these areas as long as it’s not too crowded.

Bream, trevally and whiting will be feeding over the flats from Towra to Silver Beach. If you are bait fishing, I would suggest that you anchor up, berley and use either half pilchard, fillets of pilchard, peeled prawns or beach and tube worms.

For those of you who prefer to use lures – either hardbodied lures, soft plastics or blades – try drifting the same area and once you have located the fish, just keep working that same spot.

Further upstream you could try for mulloway, bream and flathead at any works the best for you. Don’t forget that the fish do move about a fair bit. Find the bait schools and you will find the predators. While working these report back when I find out.

That’s it for this month. Don’t forget to keep those reports and photos coming into gbrown1@ iprimus.com.au.