The offshore fishing for Billfish was not really exciting last week with few fish being encountered. However I did hear of a Lake Macquarie boat losing a good sized Blue Marlin around the Norah Canyons.
Off Sydney the water looked good and there was plenty of bait, especially inside the shelf. I did find however that beyond about 300 fathoms and moving South the water went green and cooled a little. All this indicating how fickle the currents still are and also very typical of November. Usually by mid-December the currents have stabalised and that’s also when the Blacks should start to turn up. In the mean time it is a day to day proposition. You put in the time you’ll find the fish.
Of great interest, to me at least, was when on Sunday Pat Shaw and his father Mark found a dead Whale floating South of Browns. Pat, my regular deck hand, constantly told me how much he’d like to find one. He also told me about the number and size of sharks and oddly Kingfish hanging around the Whale. Strangely he couldn’t get them to take his baits because of the amount of burley in the water. I only hope he got photo’s of the action.
The harbour at present is alive with pelagics mostly Tailor but Salmon and Bonito also, and there are good Kingfish amongst them too. Kingfish are also active inshore around the Heads and you can catch them trolling live baits on down riggers or lead lines. I don’t know about the offshore reefs but they could be worth a look.
So that’s it for this week…
Tight lines,
Ivan
Last Friday and Saturday there was still a good bite around Sydney though the fish were still hard to find a few boats found the Bluefin and Albacore wide of Browns out around Heatons and down to the Southern canyons strangely there were even some Mahi Mahi caught with more than one boat encountering Marlin.
Saturday was much the same but with more boats out and again captures of Marlin, Mahi Mahi, small Yellowfin and some larger ones. I think some Bluefin were taken but they were further South. I decided to go out wide and wide of Heatons I found a nice break which I followed for a while and ultimately was rewarded with a triple strike. One was definitely a tuna which we lost, another was a Spearfish which we caught and the other an unknown which dropped the hook on its first run which was a screamer.
I went out again on Monday but the water had changed out wide with the break having been pushed in by the colder water – we caught nothing and to add to the frustration we had a school of Yellowfin come down our trail, leaping out of the water like torpedoes, and virtually under the boat without touching anything – you have to wonder how two days can be so different. Even the inshore reef fishing was quieter but that was mostly because a couple of pro’s were drop lining.