Happy New Year to you all. I have nearly finished another family holiday in beautiful Yamba. What a place for a family holiday! The weather has been kind delivering family friendly surf and a few good fishing days. Fish have been hard to find, with only a few really good feeds of fish in a couple of weeks. Species have been varied and I have really had to try hard to find fish and have used different methods than I may normally use.
I love the bass catch. A great chance to fish and then talk rubbish about fishing over dinner. This year I was a bit strapped for time and not able to camp, so we decided to fish on Saturday afternoon and then go to the barbecue before the drive home. Daniel was with me, so we decided to fish from the tinny above Windsor.
We recently had our club fishing day. We did some planting of trees on the river bank, had a barbecue and then spent a few hours fishing in the afternoon. I say a few hours but in reality it was about 6 hours of solid fishing. My total at the end was 2 fish, another one dropped and another good hit. I fished with Rico and he ended up with 4 with another one dropped. Two of his came from the one spot in the 5 minutes before it got dark. Short story is that the fish were well and truly shut down.
Before last weekend I'd never caught a bass on a surface lure of any kind. Then I finally took one on a soft shell cicada and my boy Daniel got one on a hard Dreamfish cicada. Yesterday (21/10/16) I caught another 3 and had a 3 surface strikes that didn't hook up.
We have just had a beautiful weekend in Sydney to coincide with the annual Bass Sydney October bass catch. You can find out more about the bass catch here. The short version is that Bass Sydney runs a fishing event twice a year in the Hawkesbury/Nepean where all fish caught are recorded for lengths and place of capture and then the data is fed back to fisheries.
My first two trips resulted in donuts and today looked like being the same. I hit the water in the bass kayak at around 3:30pm and decided my best chance was to flog the water with a jig spin. I used the ever reliable slider grub in blue and chartreuse, only for it to be anything but reliable! I did at least hook up after fishing about 500m of bank, but what felt like a decent fish threw the hook before I got a chance to see it. My first hookup of the season at least.
I've never had much success fishing with soft plastics for bream. Mostly because I've never really devoted any real effort to it. Flathead have been a slightly different matter but even then I've never had outstanding results. At the end of this recent bass season I decided that with all of the water available to me locally, it's something I should get better at. The bass kayak is the perfect tool for exploring skinny saltwater creeks.
Another successful trip to Yamba in mid winter, this time for my 50th birthday! As far as fishing goes, the star of the show was again the humble luderick. They were in full flight this trip with fish being caught over much of the lower river, particularly from "the peninsula" and "the middle wall". They were biting very freely on green weed and black, but plenty of others were catching them on cabbage as well. During our week there we mainly fished the middle wall from the boat. Its tricky to anchor and you must spend quality time doing this properly at the start of the session with a two anchor setup, a sand anchor out the back and a pick out the front on the wall itself. The run out from full seemed to present the best fishing. On two days the wind was blowing hard down the river from the west, so we tucked in behind Freeburn Island (at the end of the middle wall) and still caught plenty of fish on the rock wall there.
With my attention focused on Bass fishing over the last two summers, I have had limited trips out in the tinny chasing pelagic species. This type of fishing can be outstanding in February and March and I've missed the excitement and the delicious sashimi.
Heading up to the Nepean tonight with Daniel to camp and fish for the Bass Catch. The storms have made the river rise a little, but it still looks fishable and decent weather forecast, although not the high barometer, high temperature that we might like. Spent last night getting the fishing gear and the kayaks ready. An array of lures in boxes ready to go, including my new Tiemco Soft Cicadas. I bought these from Fish Head in Queensland, rang on wednesday, got them on thursday morning express post. Fish Head didn't charge me for postage as the order was close to $150. They also threw in a Fish Head branded sun balaclava. Excellent service!
A sensational spring day but not great conditions for Luderick fishing. Low tide just as I arrived at 10:00 and crystal clear water typical of spring.
Haven't been fishing since June. Went to Italy for a family holiday and have been itching to get out. I have also been meaning to get the boat out and run the motor, so I decided that today was a nice enough forecast to kill too birds with one stone.
Tonight I had the great pleasure of speaking in front of a group of Anglers at the Burwood RSL Club.
What a cracking weekend it's been. Winter apparently. I woke to a beautiful day, and resolved to get out for a fish. Tide wasn't high until the late afternoon, so I rang a mate and teed up a 2pm session at Middle Head. As soon as we'd organised it, the weather turned, with messy showers and southerly winds. Thankfully we went anyway, the conditions weren't great and the wind was a bit in our faces, but there were a few fish around to make up for the conditions.
Recently I was fortunate to gain access to a 3D printer. At first I couldn't get my head around the concept. It was just too foreign an idea for me to comprehend. Once you see the process for the first time, the penny drops and the possibilities immediately become apparent.
I initially made some simple parts for my bicycle, to replace some washers I lost on the road one day. Then some parts for my fishing kayak. Naturally I started to get ideas for solutions to some fishing problems I had been trying to solve.
A belated report. I have been working on the new website and missed uploading some reports.
I was lucky enough to visit beautiful Yamba for Easter. Unusually I didn't take the boat or many rods, just the blackfish gear. We managed to get some green weed and there were a few fish around, but typically for this time of year the fishing was slow going. Part of the problem was that the water was incredibly clear and clean at the mouth of the river, this did change when a huge swell on Good Friday pushed into the mouth of the river and stirred things up considerably.
