doublebarrel

Hi mate, i replied to your other post about careel bay marina. You need to get yourself a 2nd hand rowboat. You can pick em for nicks if you look around.Store it on the beach above the high tide line like others do near the careel bay marina. Then you can row across to the eastern side and pump nippers for bait, you can explore all those breaming areas where the moored boats meet the edge of the shallows, jig for squid over the weed beds, drop a few witches hats for blue swimmers, catch quality flathead amongst the moorings closer to the entrance to the bay, fish for kings at stokes pt etc etc. No need to go too far or hire tinnies from palm beach - you could spend months just exploring the protected waters of careel bay. With its vast shallows, diverse features, enormous mangrove headwaters and the prohibition on commercial fishing its one of the most fertile areas in pittwater.

Hello mate, don't be put off if you haven't landed much, lots of good fish in careel bay at times. Stacks of good bream although theyre mainly on the other side (eastern side) where the moored boats give way to the shallows. But if you berley up on the last couple of hours of the rising tide with something fine that will carry up into the mangroves you might get them to come back out of there on the marina side looking for the source once the tide has turned. Ive caught some great bream at night just 40m or so from the marina in about 2m of water near the southern most moored boats. Hard to imagine the structures around the marina dont hold bream as well. Heard stories of big flatties straight off the marina. Squid too, always lots of ink stains on the pontoon section. I often use the public jetty there as a pick up / drop off spot for my guys when we're fishing in a comp (deep sea) and i often pick up a mooring and stay the night out amongst the moored boats if we're fishing again next day. Caught some great flathead there at night and a few jews as well. Another time i was tied up at the pontoon at 6am just after dawn, high tide, waiting for the guys, and i was throwing a squid jig around - next thing a metre long king looms up and mouths the jig. Stokes point north of the marina at the entrance to careel is a famous spot for kings. . Berley berley berley ..... you'll get fish in careel. Float a live yakka on a 6ft leader under a cork at night on a high tide. Pea size sinker hard up against the hook to slow him down and keep him down a bit. Unweighted ganged 4/0 longshank (just 2 hooks) into a whole pilchard for flatties, or cast around with soft plastics. Good luck.

Anywhere over weed in about 10ft of water between Green Patch and the Murray's beach boatramp if you're over that side (not in the marine reserve at Greenpatch)

Had my boat in the water all last weekend fishing with one of the northern beaches fishing clubs. I had to be somewhere else on Saturday so i left the boat in the capable hands of my accomplices. The weather was awful on Saturday, too rough to be outside for long and we had people coming and going so the boys mainly fished pittwater. Very quiet, one nice flathead and some frigate mackeral, that was about it. The kings, so prolific in recent months, appear to have gone from pittwater, more or less on cue since its that time of year. Saturday night we went looking for hairtail at portugese beach, a known haunt, but no luck there either. By sunday morning the weather had improved so we shot out wide to some of a favourite snapper grounds around 300ft where only last month we'd done very well including a 6kg monster.We thought we might also be a chance to spot some yellowfin or even bluefin which are due to show up off sydney some time soon. Nothing. Could find a red for love nor money, not even any mowies or pigfish etc. And we didn't see birds working at any stage much less catch any tuna. Disspirited we eventually picked up a few small reds at an inshore reef on the way back in but overall it was one of our worst weigh-ins of the last year. Worse, others had fished some of the closer and mid-depth areas like Bolton's and Ezzie's and had good bags of snapper and Trag (quite a few snapper around 60cm). Done like a dinner, we were miles of the pace. In hindsight the mistake we made was to go wide. After the big storms of the last month or so the snapper would have come in closer looking to feed on the run-off and collateral damage to shoreline crustaceans etc (a well known dynamic). Some of those fish are obviously hanging around the inshore reefs perhaps waiting for the next storm. More to the point there is probably an annual migration of snapper to the inshore areas after the first major storm near the beginning of winter since winter storms typically gouge out the beaches, unlocking all manner of food sources like pippies etc. Probably more chance of catching good snapper off the rocks than out wide at this time of year. Better luck next month i hope. cheers .

None weighed in at the monthly avalon rsl fishing club comp last weekend april 26-27

I remember you, the 'trawler' thing, you trolled around the outside for quite awhile before coming in close and drifting past like ourselves and the other boat (i'm assuming you weren't in that smaller black boat that went much wider). I was in the dark green cat with the white half-cab hard top. Looks like it's got some grunt that thing of yours! smashing through the waves! - although the guy at the front looked like he nearly left his feet a couple of times.(haha) Glad you got a few anyway, plenty there, we certainly did. Curiously the terrigal fad was surprisingly barren that day (we went there next). Maybe those strikes you got were yellowfin given what that guy on the "Fun at BB Fad" thread said ... We've been eating indonesian fish curry all week - lots of lime, chilli, coconut cream, fish sauce, palm sugar, soy sauce etc into a blended onion/tomato/garlic/sesame/macadamia base with a bit of tumeric turned in peanut oil at the start of the cooking to give the curry a yellow colour (slices of ginger and sticks of lemongrass too please). Simmered it for an hour or so then added diced boneless mahi mahi fillets about 25 mins before serving. - then a few greens about 5 mins before. Served with steamed rice and a shredded shallot/coriander/dutch chilli garnish. It was the MKR final night - pete would have given me a 10 i'm sure. cheers

Was that last Saturday, 26th? might have seen you there, do u remember a dark green cat with a white half-cab hard top? not many boats there that day, weather wasn't great but it eventually improved. yeah dollies aplenty and likewise our biggest were mid to high 80s. half your luck with the yellowfin, that's a good sign. we got a rainbow runner about the size of a rat king which was a bit novel. Looked like a good marlin bait to me but we weren't chasing them. Our deep water snapper spot yielded nothing and the terrigal fad was surprisingly barren of both boats and fish. So too the terrigal wide fish trap area inshore of the fad was a bit lean - a few pigfish being all we could muster among a throng of undersized nannies. Tried a known king spot at east reef on the way back in but no good there either. other than a swag of dollies we found fish a bit hard to catch that day.