Prepare for a land-based assault

This has to be my favourite time of the year for a landbased assault. Whether you’re fishing the local beaches, the cut or inside the marina, our famous Australian salmon can pop up out of nowhere and in huge schools.

I’ve spent many mornings and afternoons chasing the salmon up and down jetties, rock walls and beaches around Bunbury just to feel that screaming run on light gear that we don’t always have the opportunity to experience fishing land based locally. If you’re fishing the jetties and rock walls, I’d suggest a well-balanced soft plastic around 6” length, as those areas have sharp drop offs or ledges that benefit from having your lure get close to the bottom, something a diving lure can’t always accomplish it.

Whilst fishing the beaches, I’ll take the heaviest metal slug or minnow profile hardbody lure that my rod will allow. Having that bit of extra weight with a well matched line can be the difference of 20m on your neighbour’s cast and ultimately first punt at the school of bruisers.

With winter rapidly approaching, thoughts turn to the inshore pink snapper fishery with these pink slabs coming in close to shore in great numbers. The rough weather presents a good opportunity for the pink snapper to forage for food that gets bashed around and dislodged during (and following) the numerous cold fronts that will be coming through over the next few months. Since they move around a lot looking for their next meal, the best results usually come in the form of setting the pick and getting a solid trail of berley snapper cubes going, bringing the fish to you. Some days it will only take minutes for them to appear and once they come up in the berley trail the fishing is generally hot with fish coming one after the other. A berley that consists of fish frames, old bait and scraps works a treat but can be a messy job to do at home. Nowadays though there are quality frozen/premixed producing plenty of garfish, and there’s still the occasional bonito coming through.

Anglers fishing in the bay are picking up plenty of squid, with guys getting their boat limits and big sizes, with some tubes going 35cm+.

The bay is also still producing some snook, and the Bomber Long A in the brown/orange belly colour is always a good go-to.

Out wide there are plenty of nannygai up to 60cm, and mixed in with those are good numbers of breaksea and harlequin. There are also big Samsonfish around, with samples going 30kg+, and some small yellowtail kingfish mixed in. There have also been plenty of sea sweep around.

Back in town, local bream lakes are yielding some good fish over 40cm, although because the lakes are full, you have to search a little bit harder to find them. The Daiwa Infeet Sazanami is the gun lure at the moment, and has very realistic colours. It’s effective when slow trolled with the occasional twitch.

JUNE berley options available in good tackle shops that are perfect for the job. Once the berley trail is established all you need to do is present an unweighted or lightly weighted mulie/scalie on a gang or snelled hooks with hook size determined by the bait used, 4/0 to 6/0 sizes are the most common.

In the coming weeks, as the water temperatures continue to drop, squid numbers will get better and better. Bigger skippy will continue to stay around, and we should still see plenty of salmon hanging around too, with bronze whalers chasing them.

We will still see plenty of herring being caught this month, because they don’t mind the colder water. And also more yellowtail kingfish will start to turn up. The best place to target kingies is around the bommies and white water close to the islands, as they like hiding in messy water.

I have found occasionally they will go off the bite (usually when you drop a fish!) and then it is a good idea to change it up to get them switched on again. By that I mean put the baits away and try a couple of lures. Good results have come on soft plastics, especially vibes, as they can change the mood of fussy pink snapper. Some of my favourites are the Nomad Vertrex Vibes in a 150mm size, or the McCarthy paddle-tails in a 5”. With lures they will hit it out of aggression and can get them feeding freely again.

Another technique to get them biting again is to drop down a micro jig in the 5-20g range. This smaller offering flicking and darting off the bottom will replicate a small baitfish. You could also get a bonus by-catch of any skippy that are milling around the berley trail.

Black bream are a popular target over winter with the Collie and Brunswick River always holding a few. While they can be tough to find sometimes the quality makes up for it. With the cooler freshwater flow leading into the river, the winter bream get sluggish and that means time to get out the soft plastics and vibes.

Slow your retrieves down using long pauses, and small movements are the key to targeting winter bream. There are certain plastics on the market that have a large amount of scent built into them to provide the bream a smelly scent-filled target in the dirty water. In this situation some of the most successful plastics would be the Berkley Gulp Crabbies. Generally, you will need a little bit more weight on the jighead to counteract the harder flowing water, so look at using between 1/16 and 1/8 jigheads with a hook size to suit your plastic choice.