Fishing Australia

GOOGONG SIGHT FISHING

One of my favorite freshwater lakes is producing some quality sight fishing for golden perch when conditions are right.

If you get a calm day or look for a sheltered bank when the sun is high you can see a long way into the water. Walking slowly along the bank with lots of pauses will usually reveal at least a couple of golden perch if your patient, and that’s when the fun really begins.  It often appears that the goldens are lazing around sunning them selves, but there is more to it than first meets the eye.

For a start lure anglers report that these fish have been very hard to tempt, but it is not because they aren’t feeding!  What happens is the warming weather gets all sorts of tiny aquatic creatures on the move and the golden perch are in there casually mooching over and picking them off. Why chase a big lure down when there is smaller and easier to grab and digest food all around? A perch following a large lure can be simply a curiosity thing-they can easily catch your lure if they want to eat it!

Presenting smaller lures in front of the fish like tiny little soft plastics fished on nice thin 6 pound fluro carbon leader is a much better and cheaper option, but it is fly fishos who will have the most fun.

I remember one golden perch near the main car park bay that took over a minute from first seeing my fly sinking past to picking it up off the bottom!

Any small heavily weighted fly fished on a nice light long leader will work. If in doubt a nymph, smelt or mudeye pattern will do the job fine. It is more about getting the fly close enough to the perch that they can see it.

There are perch taking more standard bait, trolled and cast lures in other spots around the dam, but it is those along the grassy gently sloping banks that are a sight fishers delight.

This quality of fishing is almost unique to Googong because there are so few places in the Murray Darling basin that have such clear pristine water left. 

SOUTH COAST

The pace of fishing continues to pick up as summer draws nearer.

Steve Fields fished St Georges basin and caught 9 bream in a 3 hour session, including three honkers that measured 42 cm to the fork! He also caught a few flathead and other species along the way.

Steve used small vibe lures in 12 to 20 feet of water, and got most of his strikes on the lift as he worked the lure just a few feet above the bottom.

Interestingly the lures without scent out fished those with scent; food for thought that.

Surf fishing has also been great, with salmon, tailor and bream on the cards. There is loads of fantastic surf fishing along the NSW south coast and if you don’t know where to start I will have an instructional DVD ready by mid December that will get you sorted; you can pre-order one at BCF or any good tackle store in the region.

FUNDING BOOST FOR FISHERIES PROJECTS

Three scientific projects involving scientists from Industry & Investment NSW to protect pine plantations from exotic pests, track large predatory fish, and collect important forest data have received significant research funding.  The projects have received funding from the Australian Research Council Linkage Grants as well as funding from the NSW Government and industry.

Executive Director, Science, Innovation & Performance at Industry & Investment NSW, Renata Brooks, congratulated the scientists involved.

“These are three very important projects, which will all help improve our environment, enhance our natural resources and benefit industry,” Ms Brooks said.

The most interesting one for us anglers is the Tracking large of predatory fish by Professor Charles Gray. Funding was also provided from Recreational Fishing Trust.  This project will monitor the movements of large predatory fish in estuaries and the coastal ocean including mulloway, flathead and bream.

These fish are important to recreational anglers, not only for their trophy status but also for their productiveness and contribution to future fishing.  Remarkably, the distribution and movements of large fish in estuaries and the coastal ocean are relatively unknown. Scientists will determine ‘hot-spots’ for the fish, where they live and breed, and their migratory patterns.

See you on the water.

Rob Paxevanos