Lancelin

LANCELIN Peter Fullarton

Through September, lobster move shoreward and by the end of the month there will be good with a light outfit to suit the size of the fish. Tuna feed better early morning or on overcast days, as they come off the bite, they are likely to be put down by boats trolling around the schools. Once the fish start

It’s prime time to pop for tailor.

numbers inside the white bank. Professional boats follow the crays in, lumps in 20-35m will be marked up with pots at the beginning of the month, and by month’s end a lot of boats usually work inside the white bank.

A bounty of food, crays combined with the berley effect from cray bait can make the inshore fishing pretty good. Pink snapper, dhufish and breaksea cod can be caught from the reefs under 15m depths. Shark numbers vary from year to year but usually there are plenty of small whaler sharks that can be caught by boats and landbased anglers.

I also look forward to the tuna returning this month. The initial run usually sees plenty of small bluefin schools, often found out from the 30m contour. Last year there were masses of bonito and some larger yellowfin tuna in the first wave. The Halco Max 130 in red and white has proven dynamite for trolling up the tuna. It can be trolled at 12+ knots so makes it easy to head off any fast moving schools and doesn’t have a huge drag through the water so you can troll at these speeds retrieve at high speed.

Skippy have been aggregating on the inshore reefs, samsonfish and pink snapper usually show up during the session when berley has been used. The samsonfish have been fronting up some mornings at the jetty where they feed on the bait schools that have gathered under the lights overnight.

Small boats fishing the bay have been catching snook, squid, herring, skippy and tarwhine.

While on the subject of herring, DPIRD recently announced an increase in the bag limit for Australian herring from 12-20 based on the Recfishwest survey result. The survey results and public comments from The crew from Swan Yacht Club Angling recently spent a weekend fishing Lancelin, and joined in on a Lancelin Angling Club comp on the Saturday. This solid dhufish was one of many fish they caught over the weekend.

to get flighty, position the boat upwind and cut the motor casting small metal slugs to the schools and Lancelin’s bay is ideal to fish or squid from a kayak.

fishers were largely that fishers wanted to keep a quality fishery, rather than maximum harvest.

“27% of respondents favoured the bag limit staying at 12; The majority – 32% – called for an increase to 20; and, 11% called for a return to the former bag limit of 30. I was certainly all for a lower catch for a better-quality fishery. A 2013 stock assessment concluded.

“Herring stocks had suffered from a combination of environmental factors and fishing, that the WA herring stock was under pressure and needed to be protected.”

At the time a 50% reduction in catch rates was muted for both the commercial and recreational sectors. Sound familiar? Just like we face with demersal stocks now! What is astounding though, is that DPIRD is failing to read the room. DPIRD returned the commercial quota adding an initial 70t to the Gnet fishery, with that to be reviewed at a later date. So what were