Fishing Australia

NSW SOUTH COAST: SO MANY FISH, SO LITTLE TIME…

I have been busy trying to get the best possible footage of the New South Wales South Coast for an up coming TV show on the area, and a whirlwind trip from the mountains to sea has revealed some awesome fishing.

First up, I hit the rocks around Batemans Bay and met a local guru by the name of Ray Smith. Ray is not only an experienced fishing campaigner; he’s also a local Padi Dive instructor and has swum much of the coast during his lifetime along the Bay. Between hard core fishing sojourns and diving he has gained a lot of knowledge of the coast and he talked about a variety of very interesting fishing techniques that will be detailed in this blog over the coming months.

BONITO BONAZA

But in the meantime, catching the tasty and hard fighting Bonito doesn’t require Ray's level of expertise.  All you need is to go with someone who understands Rock Safety and take a 3-6kg spin outfit and a handful of 20 to 60 gram metal lures.

Cast out as far as you can, count to about 10, give the lure a couple of savage jerks to let the bonito know where it is, and then wind as fast as you can. It can be tiring work in between fish, but we hit a purple patch and when you are catching a fish every cast there's hardly time to complain…

We fishing several rocky headlands south of Batemans Bay on this occasion but reports indicate that just about any of the deeper headlands are likely to produce good numbers of Bonito at the moment. It is great to see the Bonito back in good numbers after 4 slow years along this part of the coastline.

The best bite by far is dawn until about 8 am, maybe a bit longer if it is overcast. Tide is certainly not as important as fishing early. Along for the journey was Anthony Stockman who also managed to rustle up some solid tailor to 45 cm. Anthony was nice enough to ice down a few Bonito Fillets for me while I had my hands full with the film crew.  Thanks champ!

Ray and Anthony also put out a couple of bigger baits under a balloon and caught and released two bronze whalers around the 4 foot long mark.
They then tangled with a couple of kings around the 80 cm mark which got the better of them. No doubt the lads will even the score over coming weeks, hardly a day goes by where they aren’t making the most of the action. 

Yep the bite is hot, but this is often when people put safety aside, so please don’t make this mistake or you will get washed in and break some bones and probably drown-that’ the harsh reality.  Never turn your back on the sea, never fish alone, never take risks and most of all if you haven’t got any experience, fish with someone who does until you have at least a few years under your belt.

BOATING BONITO

An easier way to tangle with the huge numbers of bonito is to troll a spread of Xraps and small skirts around any of the headlands along the south coast. On any given day one or the other will work best, and expect kings on the raps and other species as well.

Anywhere from Green Cape to Sydney will produce the moment, so long as you keep the Xraps working as fast as they can handle, and try around half a dozen headlands early in the morning. This is some of the easiest fishing you will encounter along the south coast.

ESTUARIES ALIVE

While playing with some new long casting hardbody lures, I was lucky enough to hook a metre long jewfish. This is not easy at the best of times, but to happen within a few minutes of spinning the bank in front of my Cabin at Easts in Batemans Bay, well that’s just a God send. I still had my ‘bed head on’ when the bite came and the freak occurrence is yet to sink in. My film crew were not as excited as me when I called them up to film it at around 4 am.

What you will get without luck or crazily early start is a chance at an 80cm plus flathead on baits or lures, some good sized tailor on metal lures, and possibly bonito or frigate mackerel.  Around mid day at the bottom of the tide, one school of predators erupted mid-river about 500 metres up stream of the bridge and clever fishos in boats were using the wind and current to quietly drift within 50 metres of the feeding fish after which, catching them on 10gram to 20gram lures was straight forward.

Please don’t drive right up to the schools with your outboard as this will put them down and they can take a long time to form in the first place.  This particular school moved before I could grab my Hobie and get out to them, but they were still a few around down deep.  I trolled up a few whopper tailor to 55cm while fishing within 50 metres of the Princess Highway Bridge. Any good quality deep diver did the trick.  Troll around 2-3 knots and give the lure plenty of whacks to excite the tailor.

I also filmed some bass fishing with Rodney Stockman and while it was a little quiet, we got a few tiddlers plus one 30cm specimen and had a ball exploring and filming the upper Clyde.  The river is something special, way beyond what most locals and visitors can ever imagine and I have left a few surprises for the TV show which goes to air later this year.

See you on the water.
Rob Paxevanos