Ivo

Landbased fisho here. In my opinion the landbased options are really starting to get up and going again after the winter. Anywhere where you can access a drop off or channels going up onto flats etc. is great, and you're likely to pick up some nice flathead around this time. Not sure about spots at your exact location, but whiting have started to pop up in the rivers and along channels etc in the harbour/Lane Cove River etc., so im sure you could find some in middle harbour, although they're mostly small at this time and not worth targeting if you want to take anything legal home for dinner. Also in these areas, the bream are starting to head back in from more open waters, and while they're not plentiful yet, im sure you can pick up a few if you find them. Overall, spring is pretty good fishing in the harbour and esturaries. It's not really the best time for any particular species, but you're well in with a shot on a great mixed bag, as the winter tailor, trevs and salmon start to be replaced by big flatties, bream and whiting.

Awesome to be able to get out and have fish, whatever the result. Good timing too, with the weather warming up and making those early mornings bearable

Not sure, but I've kayaked around their once or twice, at least to the edge of the harbour. I've also seen some fishing videos of them fishing their. I think the part south of the bridge might be closed. Then again, their is a marina, so you can take your boat through, not sure iff you can anchor up and fish however.

Harbour places can be a bit quiet over winter i find, unless you can get to the deeper water. Not sure about Darling Harbour per se, but I know the boardwalk along by pirama park and round to the anzac bridge can be good.

Cheers Henry, looks like i'll have to go and give it a crack! Will aim to get a detailed report on the place up in the next few weeks.

Yeah, the closure doesn't include stocked waterways, only rivers and streams to allow the wild trout to spawn

Hi guys, while looking around for spots to fish I was pleasantly suprised to find that Wentworth Falls Lake in the blue mountains is stocked with trout. Does anyone have any experience with fishing these waters or know anything I should know before heading out. Will probably be looking to fish bait and maybe a throw a few soft plastics around here and there. Have looked back through the site but haven't found too much info, although I know that most of us are saltwater fishos mainly.

Slow roll is severley underated in my opinion. Even better is to get a worm style plastic and just twitch it along the bottom. Sometimes simple really is best, and it has certainly saved me some sessions after fruitless hours of single hop, double hop, slow lift etc. etc.

Thanks for that. I just did a bit of looking into the horse mackerel, and it does look fairly similar to what we were catching. As for spotsaround Iron Cove, I'm landbased and usually just pick a point and start walking haha.Although, in general, fishing on the Drummoyne side will be focussed more on casting up against the obvious structure (rocks, mangroves, drains etc.), while on the Rozelle side is more flats fishing with a few submerged trees/rocks etc with fish congregating. Due to me coming from Victoria road when I fish, I don't know as much about the southern face along the UTS rowing club/timbrell park, although from around Le Montage through to the entrance of Hawthorne canal always produces at least a few fish.

Well... with finishing up the HSC and the ensuing chaos that was the week after I finished, it seems like I haven't been able to have a decent fish since late August/early September. And let me tell you, the fishing seems to have gotten alllootttt better since then! Anyway, onto the report. This is a combined report of a shrt camping trip I did with some mates earlier this week as well as an afternoon session the the day after i got back (caught the fishing bug again!). All fish were caught on my lox 1-3kg rod with a 1000 size reel, 6lb braid through to 6lb leader. Day One at the basin (5/12/16): After setting up our tents it was time to cool off in the water, followed by hurredly running back to grab the nipper pump and collect some nice live bait for the evening. Evening coincided with the low tide, so we walked out on a spit that had formed and cast literally a few metres in front of us into a nice deep hole. Fishing either with a tiny sinker or just a long shank hook, it wasn't long before we were into some fish. Conditions were perfect, although the evening was definately a story of quantity over quality, with only a few fish going legal. That being said, it was a fast and furious few hours followed up by BBQ'd whiting and bream for dinner Day two (6/12/16) would prove to be much more interesting, however for all the wrong? reasons it seems. The nippers were firing and we had what we needed in probably 10-15 minutes. Not long after it was out to the water. First fish for me was a nice 34cm bream which would become my dinner. However, it seemed as though a large stingray or two was lurking in our hole. 5 times over the session we would get the gentlest pull, almost like a tiny whiting. Upon reeling in to check our bait we would discover our hook in half! Quite odd. Whatever was eating our hooks seemed to also be keeping the fish away, as the day was much slower and yielded some old favourites the toadfish and weedfish Overall it was a fun few days that got the fishing bug back into my system as well as giving me some nice freshfish dinners (always a bonus to not fishing in the city). Before I move on, a quick question for the ID experts out there. Throughtout both days we caught a few fish that looked like yellowtail scad, except they were pushing 35cm in length. I've never seen them that large, do they grow that big? Sorry for no pictures, but hte fish had a bright yellow tail, a bucket mouth and oval stipes along the lateral line, perhaps 5 in total. I've only seen bait sized yellowtail before, but these things were monsters, and ran pretty well also. ^ The larger of the flathead caught at Iron Cove Anyway, after ariving back home i felt the urge for a fish, so i headed down to the local iron cove, rod in hand, ready to tackle the bream. Almighty winds were coming through for the first hour or so, so I did what any respectable fisho does and sheltered in the local tackle store. With the wind down and my wallet a fair bit lighter I set off. ind meant fishing from the points as i usully do wasnt possible, so instead i focussed on the small bays and mangeroves around Iron cove (Drummoyne side). This limited my chances of a bream, however i was soon into a small flathead that went roughly 35cm. A couple of suprise whiting also took my gulp sandworm, while a small bream seemed to take a fancy to the zman grub. I also managed a larger flathead of about 53cm before low light made me head home for dinner. Well, that's about it I suppose. Sorry for the long report, I guess im just excited to finally be back and able to fish on a regular basis (and who wouldn't be???). Now, to read all the reports I've missed, I'm sure there's some cracking fish being caught!

That's one of the major problems with redfin, they thrive so well in Australian waters that you get swarms of fish in the 10-20cm range, with none able to grow any bigger due to competition for food. That competition is also (apparently) one of the reasons why they love red lures/sp's, because it mimics the redfin fry that larger redfin often eat

Thanks mike Hopefully I can get some next time I'm out, although I don't see myself targetting them specifically. Flounder are an interesting fish, they always seem to pop up when im drifting or casting sp's for flatties and whiting

I recently got a 1000 sienna for the good old esturary work. Seems to be a great reel. It's obviously not the smoothest, but the drag is great and it seems good value for money.

Hi mike, nice catch there! what do you target the LJ's on? I see them alot when I'm fishing but they seem fairly hard to hook up, any tips?

nickb, the left of that first picture looks like the gladesville bridge to me, pretty impressive to get decent kings round there. Mmm, I love it when it starts to warm up and the fishraiders all head out again, these last couple of weeks have seen a surge in quality catches.

My opinion is that while the full and new moons produce stronger tides, the full moon is often better for both angler and angled? I find this is simply because of the light that the moon provides. If you go night fishing, especially for squid, you'll know that they hang around lights, jetties etc., not because they can't see, but because the bait they are chasing is drawn to the light. Under a full moon this is essentially a non-factor, so you could expect ot find fish in areas where out of the light, where otherwise they would not be actively hunting.

At a basic level a parabola is a curve which, from a set distance away from its axis will be equal. (in terms of angle etc.) So a parabolic action rod will have roughly the same amount of bend either side of its midpoint, as you can see in the photos above (photos of some very nice fish may I add!) Inpractical terms this should allow for the load to be spread evenly across the whole rod, making lifting etc. easier (as the video shows). As for what type of rod this woud apply to, in more whippy rods the parabolic action will be more apparent, however it is also what those super light graphite bream sticks use, as they bend all the way (although the bend is less apparent). This is also why you shouldn't hold those light rods too far above the grips, as doing so stops the weight being evenly distrubuted, often leaking to breakage. On the other hand, if you take a look at some fibreglass rods (especially 2 piece ones), you may notice that the tip section can bend almost 360 degrees, while the base has little to no movement. This is an example of non-parabolic action. I hope this clears some things up and explains what Jon and luderick angler have already posted. Tight lines and happy fishing!

Just stick with the line rating and you'll be fine. You can change it around abit for certain applications as listed above, however for just a general setup keeping everything the same should be fine. If you tell us what you want to target I'm sure people on here will be able to advise as to the ratings you'll want. Until then, tight lines and happy fishing!

They're some nice fish you got there! Sambo's on light gear are great fun, i always keep a few small metals on me whilst bream fishing just for that reason (also if i get sick of choppers destroying my plastics haha) Good to see Canada Bay producing, I haven't fished there in a while, this might change that though!

That's a good carp, i'll have to bring some bait next time I go to the dam. I've been a few times and flicked some plastics around for nothing, although I wasn't sure what was actually in there. Have heard they also have some redfin? Anyone with info on that?

What do I like about fishraider? Well for starters it has helped to improve my fishing. As someone whose immediate family don't fish (working on it haha! ) it's great to be able to get advice when my extended family isn't around. Also I enjoy the wide variety of fishing that goes on in this forum. Always nice to be able to read about the guy who blanked, the one with 400 5cm redfin and the raider who caught a record marlin all on the same day! But most of all, none of that would be possible without the people who run and regularly contribute to the site, so thanks to all of them!

Hey mate, if you look up how to compress photos, either on your computer (or there are heaps of sites that do it for free) you can make them a smaller file size. It means the ones you post will be slightly less high quality than the originals, but will take up like a quarter of the space. Not quite sure why its happening though, phone photos should be fine you'd think, most raiders simply upload pictures from their phones.

Went out this evening to pier two right under the harbour bridge. Had an hour or two to fish. Despite living so close I'm predominately a plastics/lure fisho so don't often fish the piers as I find the height messes with my retrieve. Started off by drop-shotting some 2" gulps, let the sinker hit the bottom the slowly twitch the rod a few times. After little success I switched up to one of those crab shaped plastics, hoping ot pick up a bream or small reddie. Had a few small bites but couldn't connect. As it got dark i went back to the bigger Gulps as I knew scent would become more important to my success. Wasn't able to get anything and left for home around 7. All in all it was a quiet little session, unfortunate not to get anything but no-one seemed to be catching anything bigger than about 15cm. Although one guy next to me was firing on the squid. Was a relaxing hour or so by the harbour, and trying drop-shotting was fun although I didn't have any luck.

Solid winter bream. Good to see they're still out and about haha. Am trying this arvo with the plastics, hope I can get something