2kgline

And I thought I was a keen fisherman. Good catch and your much braver than I in these conditions. I love hairtail but havent caucht any for many years. May have to give Cowan Creek a go. I havent seen them in Sydney Harbour for a long time.

35 years local knowledge, being in the right place at the right time, move if the fish don’t bite within 30 minutes and not afraid to try new things. For example we have caught Salmon on sergeant baker strips when everyone else is flicking fly’s and plastics. I have caught 80cm+ kings on bread and sweep strips. Also we don’t fall for all the marketing hype about soft plastics and complex rigs and special braid lines with mono leaders etc. All our fish are caught on a simple rig running sinker and circle hooks no leaders no swivels . Even some of the bait we use is very old refrozen many times so don’t believe all you read. Many times we have boats sitting next to us who catch nothing. I cant stress enough Burley! Burley! Burley! and Always Light line. When we do user lures trolling we use light line 20 lb Max.

That why we like them. They are one of the best Sushimi fish I know just bleed them and cut the blood lines out perfert white flesh yum. Also go well battered or crumbed for the kids.

The bream, snapper and flathead were in Middle Harbour (Back of the spit) in really dirty water in 15m. All the other fish were caught within 200M of North head in the brown dirty water various depth from 10 -20M. Yes we were surprised to see the fish so active in these dirty conditions . The Tailor were working the line between the dirty and clean water just off the headland. Various baits including, pilchards, squid (for the salmon) bonito (Freshly caught). Circle hooks require a different strike technique hence the light drag. Basically you need to let he fish hook itself I have observed how these hooks work from being in the water with the fish. They suck the bait in and as they spit the hook out it catches the lip. You can strike but you must make sure its when they are trying to spit the hook out (you learn how to judge this with time). In other words not to aggressive or enthusiastic on the strike like normal hooks or you will often pull the bait and hook back out. As I mentioned in my report last week when some one questioning the number of fish we catch I suggested if you spend time in the water with them observing them you will understand how to catch more of them. We could hook up more with hard strike techniques with normal hooks but this damages the fish to much, to many gut and gill hook ups. Having said this we would have no chance with the flathead on 4lb line with out a leader on normal hooks. And for the record the thicker the leader the less fish you will hook up. Despite what people think they can see the line I have observed bream pulling on the line to see if the bait moves. If it does they swim away. With the circles you get a 90% lip hook up rate but a lower hook up rate in general. We seem to catch enough with out techniques and its easier on the fish. We have never had problems with circle hooks on bream and snapper we often bag out.

We went out last Saturday 4th June off North Head Sydney the swell was 2+M but very lazy. The Water was brown and full of crap from the rain. It looked like there should be no fish. Trolled (20 lb line which is huge for us) for about 1 minute hooked our first Salmon moments later a bonito . Then deadly quiet. Decided to do some bait fishing for our favourite Travalley . As you will see from the picture they were plentiful. During the madness we hooked several more salmon and bonito this time on 4 and 6lb good fun and many minutes to land, dropped more than we landed. Yes we kept them as some of our friends eat them (god knows why or how) as does the bronze whaler that took one at the boat. Conditions were very rough and we bust off our anchor so decides to call it a day outside. We must be mad as we didn’t see another boat all day. Headed back to middle harbour on the way back hooked a surprise tailor, it was now dead low tide dirty water but still managed a few more Trevally (they are everywhere in the Harbour) also manager a few just keeper snapper and a thumping bream + a bonus couple of flatties. We decided to keep on of the big flattie (we normally let them go) because it was gill hooked and bleeding profusely . For the record we let go many more Trevally than were kept we only ever use circle hooks to minimise fish damage. We also only use MAX 6lb mainly 4lb line and light drag to reduce stress on the fish bringing them up from the deep. PS The BBQ was running hot on Sunday.

I understand your concern. You will be happy to know we release many more fish than we take. We normally release the bigger ones (to much for one meal) You don't see the large flatheads that were all released that day (female breaders of course). Also the days we fish for Kings we only ever take 2 all the rest go back as I said the trevally are not in danger like other species. Also Trevally are very safe to eat if you eat a lot of fish as they have low mercury levels much like snapper and bream.

No offence taken. Yep know that I been involved in many research projects and have been fishing this spot for over 30 years and scuba dived there many times believe me there are many thousands of trevally at this location and I have never know a bad year for them. They may grow slow but the bread like rabbits. On the other hand many spots we fish/dive that used to produce snapper, bream, jews and flathead have dramatically depleted. From my personal experiences Trevally’s are one of the great survivors. The reason for this is they are not commercially target (like snapper and others species) and most people don’t know how to catch them in numbers they are an accidental catch. We often sit next to boats that don’t catch a single fish while we a flat out for hours. One hint I can give people if you want to catch fish in numbers you need to spend time in the water with observing them . Closing note we also like to eat them.

Big family they wont last long, bonito will be converted to bream and snapper, as for the salmon have to give that one away I have some friends that love to eat them !!!! I dont know how they do it I have tried many ways to cook them and they always taste like #$@%

I didn’t tell you how many we lost. Believe me with salmon this big and rat kings in 15m of water over reef you go through a lot of hooks. Basically when you not winding you tying knots. Some time we had no gear in the water at all. Such is the nature of light line fishing. The Bonito and Macs were taken on 20lb braid using rapala CD9 red nose.

18 in close to the heads 1km out 17 in the harbour. If you look at the sea surface temprature on the bom.gov.au web site under marine and ocean you will see the cold water is moving in rapidly. This is actualy a better site than MHL for surface tempratures.

All along the front face you can spot trevally on the sounder but the bonito were only small in number and not schooled up. The trevally were also in middle harbor as they have been for a few weeks now. The large number of king fish also surprised us normally only expect to see a few big guys this time of year as the water is now 17 Even used old snapper frames so much for theory it scares away the snapper

Went out to north head (Sydney) Sunday great day the rain held off and no one else around. We went mainly to catch bait as the bonito are thinning out so we wanted to get some more for bream baits for winter. Dropped the lures in 30 seconds latter hooked a good Mac tuna, soon followed by a smaller one, only manager 4 bonito one of which was sacrificed to the bream, trevally and snapper . There was also a plague of king fish (45-55cm) good fun but no keepers. Gave up on the bonito and decided to bottom bounce changed down to our usual 4lb outfits we found the trevally in their usual spot along with a good supply of snapper. We had many hard runs and bust offs from the plentiful king fish and large salmon yes the one in the photo was taken on 4lb line. As was the larger red. Headed back into one of our bream spots at the back of the spit, as you can see seemed to work ok. Once again the back of the spit was full of king fish hanging around the boat. They were not taking anything but eating the bread from the burley bag. Wish we had live squid to tempt them. These fish were much bigger than outside 80cm to 1m+ and in large numbers . One of the 1m+ guys decides to eat one of the snapper whole (25 cm) right at the boat. No chance on 4lb line got smoked. It was about time to re-spool anyway. There seems to be a lot of kings around for this time of year. All in all not a bad day out. And as I said in the beginning the best part no one else around.

I guess the Taylor was 60+ didn't measure it. We only use circle hooks so he was hooked in the lip. However we did get a few quick bust offs around the same time so I assume we got "choppered."

Not land based but within casting distance of the rocks (30-50 meters off) north end of north head facing east in the wash.