ACJ

Cheers mate appreciated. Do you mean box type traps?

G'day all, The Mrs and I just had our first baby, and my home duties mean that for the next little while i won't be able to take the whole day-long king sessions like I'd normally like too! I was thinking of getting my quota of witches hats and trying to pick up a few blue swimmers as a time-and-effort-economical way to get out on the water just for a few hours and still jag a feed. Getting out of summer now obviously, but I've heard reports form the 'Gong and further afield of guys still targeting them with some success, just wondering if anyone knew if they were still around in Middle Harbour/Pittwater? I'm a total novice at crabbing, i was just gonna get some old king frames or fresh yakkas and put the hats in 5ish meters of water on sandy banks with a little bit of weed/structure in upper middle harbour or the western foreshore of pittwater...easier on myself (and the family) than me getting beaten up offshore all day running to the peak and back I figure. Cheers in advance for any help. Andy

Great work getting the braid off mate...thats a pretty cool day out

1.Cammeray Wreck: S33 48.750E 15114.093 Little bit of burley should have plenty of yakkas around. Hope this helps!

Awesome feed there mate, trees have to be one of the most under-rated eating fish for sure. I reckon they're up there with the best.

I should probably begin by apologising for my habit of posting a report every few weeks rather than after every session, but I thought for the benefit of the readers summing up a few weeks action would be more interesting than "went fishing...caught a fish...the end." Anyway, throughout Late Feb, March and early April I've been in Sydney a lot and fished the harbour super hard. I've probably has at least a dozen sessions, prob more, over that period, and only come home without a king the last 3 times. (I blame the late season...) Squid were easy, albeit tiny, earlier in the summer, after the huge rains we had a month or so ago they almost disappeared with the dirty, chocolaty, fresh water in the harbour, but I found that weighting my jigs (some stores sell 5g "egi" weights that clip onto the eyelet of the jig) upping to size 2 or 2.5 working them super deep started to bring big, frequent calamari. Standard spots around Middle Head and Middle/North harbour have worked fine, but often taken some persistence. Ive seen very competent charter operators leave with no squid from a few locations so its certainly not been super easy. Highlight was boating a 31cm hood calamari at middle head a week or so ago, as big as I've ever caught in tassie. Needed my king/salmon net to get it in the boat. Much ink. Anyway with fish..throughout March fish were pretty easy...on the main, 'well known' lower harbour marks like the wedding cakes, drums, old mans hat, etc, if one could see kings on the sounder, and get some Squid past the pickers one could generally catch a decent kingy, or two/three. Over March and early April I caught 15 kings between high 40s and 99. The problem has been hoards and hoards of jackets, particularly some big and aggressive fan-bellied ones, at all the main marks. Nothing is more depressing than waking up at 3am and spending hours upon hours catching ten green-eye calamari, only to loose them all to leatherjackets in half an hour or so. I never normally use yakkas for liveies, but to avoid the pickers Ive been forces to use them the last few weeks and they've been around the normal middle harbour locations pretty readily. The jackets and pinky snapper tend not to be interested din them thus they've stayed down long enough for the kings to find them Highlght for the month was a harbour PB of 99cm over in the eastern suburbs, taken in only 7m of water. Fish was gut hooked, and whilst it should have absolutely bricked me on the reef i felt it was an easier fight then it could have been...? I'm starting to see a pattern where gut-hooked fish come too the boat a lot easier than properly jaw-hooked fish...Im assuming just because pulling on their insides hurts them a ****load whereas in the jaw/mouth its all force and the fight like bastards. Anyway was still a challenging ten minutes to get it boated. About 2 weeks ago things were really hot for a few days, had double hookup and broke a rod solo at the drums at Chowder Bay/Clifton on what I's guess were very, very solid hoods. caught a few calamari in the high 20s (mantle) and their guts/inksacs make insane baits when nothing else would work, as soon as that inc hits the water things seem to just fire. The navy have moved their exclusion zone buoys back being the big drum off the wharf there which has been fantastic for fishing, as its a sick mark but normally inaccessible. Interestingly, the last two days I've been getting yakkas at the cammeray wreck (its no secret, I saw all 3 harbour charter companies rafted up there baiting up a few weeks ago) and found the place swarming with kings. Kings smashing my burley, kings eating yakkas off my yakka handline, even (believe this on not I'm telling you its true) kings smashing bread on my size 12 sabiki rig on my 6lb 1-3kg 1000 squid/yakka outfit. That sounds made up, but I'm telling you it happened. Sometimes i think the kings were actually hitting the yakkas the second they became hooked and started to struggle, but on some occasions they were just smashing bread and pilli off the sabiki flies. Obviously was pretty short argument on a $2 sabiki rig. stripped all six hooks of three of four rigs. Interestingly the fish weren't that interested in lives or real baits, we caught 2 on yakkas and one on live squid over several sessions but given the volume of fish felt disappointed we didn't boat dozens. I;m sure there'll be better fisherman that I out there doing it properly soon. Watching those sessions I began to realise just how smart those fish are...i stripped a whole live squid for burley, and stuck an unweight hook in one of 30 chunks. Tossed the lot in and saw a bunch of solid kings clean up the entire lot except the one hooked bait...watched it drift down then swam off. Not dumb. Might be time to downsize leader, as Krispy often suggests. I've been solidly bricked on 50lb and 80b a lot this year, but this last week kings would smash the baits on my yakka rigs of 6lb, 8lb etc and not even look at the bait on my actual kingfish tackle. food for thought. Anyway winter is coming I reckon, fish have been on the sounder the last few days but the bite has definitely slowed since, say, last weekend. Harbour temps are a lot lower than a month ago. Hope everyone else is having a good time. AJ

Between Christmas and mid-feb Ive been working in Tasmania and not fishing the harbour, and have been reading the harbour and FAD reports from other raiders with glee (and not a tad of disappointment, as it appears a rather slow season.) It really sucked to be out of town throughout was should have been the prime season, so since coming home mid Feb I've tried to hit it as hard as possible to make up. I've managed three sessions since getting home (17, 22 and 24 feb) and have managed one king each session, in what I could only describe as seriously seriously hard work. On 17 feb I fished all morning with a mate, and after 0500-1030 of not a whif of a fish at any marker despite having over a dozen live squid, astonishingly hooked up and landed my harbour record of 90cm on the last cast with a well dead previously-live squid right before "heading home for beers." Having drifted well-presented live baits past the harbour's best known king marker for several hours for either no touch to being pillaged by jackets, I said to my mate "Right, stuff this lets go home, let me just have an actually cast at the structure on the way back" Flicked a dead live squid right onto the marker itself and let it sink in the lee of the strong incoming.....wham. Just goes to show...drift or troll a mark for ages with nothing but cast right onto the structure..fish was there but current was such that it didn't want to go more that a meter or two from the wood... I'd love to say it was a hard fight picking it up so close to the structure, but the old adage of 'go easy on the king and it will go easy on you' is just so so true. Just sort of drifted up the harbour, mate driving and just keeping us out of the way of the ferry, gave him few runs (no reef there to dust me) and after a few mins it was cruising beside the boat. Took some insane runs of drag but out there in the middle of the channel with no reef I just sat and let it go. The first twenty seconds it could have so easily done my on the marker, but i just flipped the bail arm and it cruised away from structure. Anyway next two sessions (22/24) got a king off the same mark, but again not after hours of pain and effort. I had a call one day (Fri 24) from a charter friend to say a certain harbour mark ("Old yeller" too long ago to be a secret) was firing, drive out after work and saw the most lit-up christmas tree of a sounder I've ever seen, like insane numbers of big arches, but hours of dangling live squid, strips heads, jigs brought nada. Word was obviously our by then because there were half-a-dozen crews after work doing exactly the same thing for exactly the same result. Anyway I haven't gone king-less so they're there, but not exactly leaping into the boat. Also during my FIFO shift in TAS i took my box of squid jigs, and after work one arvo jagged a 33cm hood right out the front or work. Never had squid pull drag...interesting arvo. Shot of him here just to remind us that Sydney Calamari are...on the small side

Its real reassuring to see others had as hard a time as me in the harbour on that Friday (24). There were heaps of fish on the sounder at the standard harbour marks, but wouldn't take a live squid in the 2 hours that I harassed them. I finally pulled a tiny rat in the 40s out to sort of salage the afternoon but the doesn't really count. I spoke to a few other crews working plastics and down rigging livies who also reported the same outcome.

Great haul guys, so good to be able to just go for an evening session land based with your mates and bag out like that. Great work!

I heard from a mate who reckons he was 'hassled' recently by a white shark (3m he claimed...take with a grain of salt to three) out off the Coogee Cakes several days ago in his yak chasing kings. Not necessarily something I'd believe in isolation but are hearing all the above...

Nice little mixed bag, just out of curiosity did you cook up the pike? I've never bene game but like most "bait" species we don't eat here in Aus i know lots of cultures love them.

Mate that is an absolute stonker of a Cobia for anywhere, let alone Sydney Harbour. I'd be pretty pleased with myself.

Some yamashita jigs (ones with "GLOW" written on them in big letters) are fluorescent. You need to "charge" them up with a torch or something for 10 secs between each cast, and I've found the to be super effective in low (albeit not pitch dark) light conditions. I've never had luck with artificial lighting but then again I've never tried too hard, hope that helps mate.

G'Day Ladies and Gents, I've been pillaging these forums for hints and info for so long that I've felt it only right to start sharing back a bit of detail, be it useless or otherwise. I haven't been on the water much this year, but finished work and study around 2 weeks ago and have hit the harbour hard over the past two weeks. All in all, there were certainly kings around, but in general and compared to say last season they were hard work to both find and make bite. On the positive side all the standard locations were forthcoming with live squid (I don't really take bait, or lures, out fishing) and in basically ten days straight I didn't not get a decent quorum of willing (later very unwilling) team-mates in a short time. (This season most shops stock yamashita 1.5s and they're the bomb, throw your 2.5s away) I hit the water for the first time on about the 11th of Dec, and for three or four sessions straight couldn't find a king to save my life inside the heads despite lots of big action on the sounder. All charter mates reported good action on the inshore reefs but almost nothing inside (save one or two secret big successes which i daren't repeat in public). Temps inside were over 23c but just outside the heads were only 19c... Anyway i must have dragged thirty live squid and cuttles around for nada. depressing. A few days of big surface action between the wedding cakes, clearly kingfish, but live squid and strips were obviously not on the menu. Late dec got better, from the 15th to the 25th i didn't fish the harbour without boating a king (55-78cm no hoodlums) except the 23rd which after a long kingless day i was dragging the last dead remnants of my last livey over the bottom of some deep holes (sweep and pinkies have been angry in the lower harbour, killing and chewing all little live squid to bits in seconds and just leaving you dragging a mantle around) I had the strangest hit I've ever experienced, combination of real violence and total dead weight (thinking monster lizard? ray?) ended up being a Jew which went 95, very happy. (at like 11am go figure) Ive never caught, or targeted, Mulloway in my life but iIsuppose of you drag that many live squid around our estuaries one will show up eventually. Certainly can claim any Jew skill. Also had a small live squid ambushed at the south wedding cake by the biggest calamari I've seen in NSW. Have caught bigger in TAS but never here, this unit prob went 30cm mantle, a relic of last spawning. He came home for dinner. Anyway, there were fish around last few weeks but the kings were very hard to tempt, and live baits very very hard to get past the pickers. (Perhaps I should give more time to finding slimies and yakkas, at least the sweep and pinkys won't eat them.) Also, heaps of tailor to a very good (High 40s plus) size in middle harbour eating anything moving. Thanks for all your tremendous help over the years, I've taken so much info off you all i decided it was time to start feeding back. Have a good summer ladies and gents. On an interesting note after a week straight of good fish in the harbour, i went up to Pittwater to visit some family and fished every day for a week for nothing except a few choppers (again with good live squid baits every day.) Hard going up there with all the pros still at it i think.

Nice report mate. Those bustups have been between Bradley's Head and the Bridge for a good week or so now, and each time I've gone under the Bridge I've noticed the biggest ones have always been in that no drift zone! On Monday there was a massive one right in front of the Opera House Steps, more birds than I've seen in the Harbour in ages. Wondered what they were, some looked bigger than little Tailor though, bot no-where that was fish-able.