Sydney South

SYDNEY SOUTH Gary Brown

gbrown1@iprimus.com.au

Hopefully by this month we will have seen the last of the big rain events we have been experiencing along the east coast of NSW. Sure, we need rain, but not so much.

During late February and throughout March, those anglers who have been getting out there to brave the weather conditions know that there have been plenty of fish on the chew.

Throughout May you should see this type of fishing continue well into the year. There have been bonito and Watsons Leaping bonito caught off the baths in Gunnamatta Bay. I was there early on a Sunday morning to witness four kingfish from 70-84cm get caught.

Other anglers fishing off the baths have caught bream, trevally, bonito and whiting on baits that varied from prawns, pilly tails, pieces of chicken, skirt steal and mussels.

What does need to happen is that the NSW Fisheries need to pay

There used to be lots of hairtail caught in Botany Bay a number of years ago. This one was caught recently while fishing the Fisheries reefs in Yarra Bay.

• $150 entry per team. • Grand Final $200 per team. • Minimum $100 of entries back as prize money. • Grand Final 100% of entries. BREAM SERIES 2022 Team Bream series consisting 5 rounds plus Grand Final ROUND 1: 28th August • Sydney Harbour ROUND 3: 15th May • St Georges Basin ROUND 4: 5th June • Hawkesbury River ROUND 5: 18th September • Botany Bay GRAND FINAL: 9th October • Sydney Harbour

During the cooler months of the year, you can get results beach fishing with either live beach worms or ones that have been preserved in metho.

a number of visits to the baths as there were plenty of undersized fish being caught, kept and hidden away. In saying that, many of the anglers were doing the right thing.

Just because there was one report (photo) of a hairtail being caught in the bay doesn’t mean that they are coming back.

Squid have been very hard to locate and catch in the bay of late due to the chocolate colour of the water. Don’t let this deter you from putting out a few live baits in the form of small yellowtail.

Hairtail, john dory, dusky flathead, salmon, kingfish and snapper can’t seem to resist a wellpresented live bait. Places that are worth a shot are Sutherland Point, The Drums, Yarra Bay Fisheries marks, Trevally Alley, the end of the third runway, The Sticks, the oil wharf and even wide of the patches.

Just recently there was a Berkley Super Series bream comp run in the bay, and there were 55 teams who all weighed in fish. The top six teams had a bag of five bream for over 4kg. Despite the recent torrid conditions BSS anglers presented near 250 bream at the weigh station, with at least a dozen over a kilo. There was also a by-catch of flathead, whiting, flounder, kingfish salmon and snapper.

The Port Hacking has also been pretty dirty, but by now if we haven’t had as much rain, it should have started to clear up. The beaches in Bate Bay have been a bit of a hit-andmiss affair due to the everchanging weather pattern. It would be very rough for three to four days, then calm. The major problem has been finding a stretch of beach that doesn’t have any weed or kelp.

The rocks off Kurnell and down to Stanwell Park have been producing drummer, bream, trevally, snapper and luderick on the rising tide. The best baits by far have been peeled prawns, cunje and half pillies.

The Georges and Woronora rivers have started to clear up slightly, but once again this will depend on how much rain we get over the next month. Try trolling hardbodied lures for bream, flathead and mulloway along the many drop-offs found in these two rivers. I have found it best to troll with the tide and have lures that have a good sway from side to side and a few rattles.

Don’t forget to keep those reports coming in to gbrown1@iprimus.com.au.