drc2076

I hadn't fished from a beach since Easter and I just had a hankering for it this weekend. The weather was benign and the tides were right so no excuses not to go. My goal was to see if the winter whiting were still around. Headed out pre-dawn and discovered the Narrabeen bait shop didn't have any live beach worms. Ah well, loaded up with the packaged and preserved ones and headed down to Dee Why. Mental note, learn how to catch live beach worms. First cast as the sun was rising and for the first half hour not a touch. Cursing the preserved worms I reached into my bag and found a small tub of sax scent in bloodworm. I smeared that over my worm and tossed it back out. And we were on! A pair of double hook ups on my two hook rig and then around 16 more over the course of the next couple of hours. The fish were holding near in to the beach and a slow retrieve through the close gutter was consistently getting their attention. So the good news was plenty of fish, the bad news was that they were all one or two centimetres shy of legal. No keepers on the day but plenty of action to keep me engaged. Not a bad way to spend a morning.

10cm Gulp Nemesis in the pearl colour has been my most consistent producer in Narrabeen. Also, I have found the back of the lake to be better than the front (perhaps less heavily fished?), but weed in the water makes things frustrating so suggest you use a weedless rig.

Sometimes you turn up in the right place with the wrong bait. I had this happen to me last night. Found myself with a couple of hours free on Saturday afternoon. Decided to throw the blackfish gear in the car, stop off at the beach to collect some weed along the way and hit my usual spot at Pittwater as the sun went down. When I arrived another fisho was already there, but rather than fishing for luderick he was tossing out unweighted pilchard cubes. For a couple of hours all I could manage was a couple of tentative downs. On the other hand the pillies were absolutely smashing it. A couple of the largest bream I've seen, along with good size trevally and salmon. I was quietly cursing myself knowing I had a couple of bags of salted pilchards in the freezer at home. So while it was a donut for me I at least furthered my education and now I know something about my spot that I didn't know previously. And I know to toss the pilchards in the bucket as I head out the door!

On the subject of catching luderick on fly, I came across this article from a while ago. Well worth a read. I really need to learn fly casting technique in order to give this a try. Looks like a lot of fun. https://lureandfly.com/2014/08/14/blackfish-on-fly-the-how-to-guide-so-far/

On the subject of blackfish on fly, came across this article a while back. Well worth a read. I really need to learn fly fishing technique as this looks like something that would be a lot of fun. https://lureandfly.com/2014/08/14/blackfish-on-fly-the-how-to-guide-so-far/

I'd be fascinated to learn more about your technique. It's interesting to me that they will come to the surface for a fly. Are there particular conditions, locations or environments where this works best? Do you still use burley? I have used flies as a substitute for weed in a traditional blackfish rig but never in this manner. Pretty intriguing.

On the subject of alternatives to weed, went back to fish last weekend's location again this morning. Turned out to be a fairly slow morning for luderick. Beautiful conditions but clear water, a run out tide and boat traffic didn't help. Tried a couple of locations and ended up switching between weed, cabbage, bread and weed flies to get a result. My weed supply was limited and the cabbage was especially soft and I struggled to keep it on the hook. It was this frustration led me to try using weed flies. It paid off for me though and caught my first ever luderick on a weed fly. In the end the tally was three landed for two keepers (33cm and 34cm). Not an epic day, but not a failure either.

While we are on the subject thought I'd post this. For land based fishos this is also a great YouTube channel with some valuable insights and many practical and applicable suggestions for targeting fish in shallow sand flat environments. Well worth your time.

I've seen them caught (on video) by anglers using fly fishing gear with weed flies in estuaries. Pretty impressive skills!

I should also add that if you get stuck finding weed you shouldn't discount the humble loaf of cheap white bread as both bait and burley. Luderick will happily take it along with drummer, bream, leather jackets and pretty much anything else in the area.

Yes. Just follow the walking path around towards Fairlight and you will see a few safe and easily accessible rock shelves. Not much in the way of weed there that I've observed but I haven't really looked. I'm time poor so I normally stock up on weed and cabbage from the beaches to the north a day or so in advance so that I can have my bait and burley pre-made and ready to use when I arrive.

If you're based around Manly you could do worse than walk around and fish the south facing North Harbour rock shelves near the aquarium and further around near Fairlight pool. Burger's suggestion about "Best Ever Tips" is spot on. Also, YouTube is your friend. Search on Luderick Sydney and you'll find hours of helpful instruction.

Interesting. I've heard of them taking nippers but have never tried it. I've also seen them taken on beach worms in the Moruya river down south. I've never had much success on the flats around Bayview and Careel. A few undersized whiting has been about it for me. I need to try Careel again, looks promising for bream around the mangroves but I've shelved Bayview. That dog park is just too busy and I can't imagine all that splashing is doing much to encourage the fish to bite.

A mate and I scored a decent bag of luderick out of Pittwater this morning. Collected the weed from the ocean rocks and finally got started around 7am. The wind made it tough going and took quite a while for the fish to find the bait but once they did it was great fun. Had to move around a bit to find them. First location gave me a down first cast and hooked on to a nice fish. Had him at the surface ready for the net and then he spat the hook. At that stage I thought it was going to be a good day and an early finish but didn't get another down in the 90 minutes that followed at that spot. Packed up the gear and moved around the bay and finally got amongst them. No whoppers but all at or about the low 30cm mark. Heaps of small baitfish around and a number of bust ups on the surface. Couldn't tell if kingfish or salmon but quite a bit of action. In the quiet moments tried jigging for a few squid (in the hopes of lobbing one back for a passing kingy) but no dice. Still, can't complain. Dinner tonight is sorted.

Do what I did. Check this site for knowledge about luderick fishing, watch a bunch of youtube videos, and enjoy!

It's amazing how many quality fishing spots also turn out to be nudist locations. Washaway, Cobblers, Obelisk, Reef etc. I guess we're all looking for the same thing. A chance to practice our personal obsessions away from the crowd.

Happy wife, happy life!

The weather over Easter in Sydney was nothing short of spectacular and went some way to making up for the atrocity that was March. With fine weather and spare time my wife announced that "we should do some walks". Now I've been browsing google earth for a little while now making a mental list of possible land based harbour fishing spots that might fit the bill for me when the weather turns cooler and when standing in the surf becomes less attractive than it was in Summer. None of these spots will be particularly secret to any of the Sydney regulars on this forum but I needed an opportunity to eyeball them for access, safety and parking. I am generally compelled to fish solo (none of my mates have the same passion for this as I do) so the ability to fish solo in safety is primary. I'm a northsider but not a Manly resident and the thought of the parking fees between the Spit and North Head mean that's only an occasional option for me. I'd previously spied a few spots around Balgowlah but to park for free there's a bit of a hike. So what I was looking for was a park and fish option that give me access to quality fish but not at the cost of having to scale cliffs or brave ocean swells. So when the opportunity do "do some walks" arose I had a surprisingly helpful list of suggestions ready to go. My main objective was to take a good look at Bradley's Head around to Chowder Bay and Middle Head. We parked in the streets above Clifton Gardens and walked down. Beautiful spot. Good facilities. Coffee. And about every amateur angler in Sydney cheek by jowl on the jetty. Keep walking. Fortunately Middle Head presented plenty of opportunities. Every so often I'd duck off into the bushes looking for tracks down and if I found them I'd scramble down to look at the platform and the swell. I accumulated a ton of positive husband brownie points and at the same time must have found easily 4-5 good accessible spots. In the process I also apparently encountered every nudist in Mosman! They do like to get their kit off in that neck of the woods. Anyway, long story short, this morning I got my first opportunity to get out to a couple of these spots and get some bait in the water. Arrived just after sunrise and berleyed up with a mix of prawn heads, prawn pellets and bread. Pretty much had the place to myself. Just one other fisho jigging unsuccessfully for squid and 2-3 other guys about 100 metres further down. Fishing with banana prawns for bait on a float rig I wasn't really sure what to expect. I thought my most likely catch was going to be bream and they were certainly there in numbers, but nothing legal. Hooked up 2-3 good size leather jackets (tossed them back) and even a wrasse (a first), but the prize I was really after was rock blackfish. I'd caught luderick before but never their darker, heftier cousin. It wasn't especially washy with the low tide but the early start to catch the low light time paid dividends and I managed to hook and land this 31cm beaut. Sent him back to grow and catch again another day. No monster but still stoked to get him. As the morning wore on it was more small bream and leather jackets. There was the occasionally heavy run and a couple of bust offs but no more drummer. Not to worry. Headed home happy. Another targeted species to check off the list.

Undoubtedly true. But sometimes you only have a certain window of time and my BIL has lived and boated on that river all his life so there was never any significant danger. Just an unexpected dunking!

Cheers. Good advice. In this case I wasn't too sad see the bait exhausted. We'd already been on the water for around 7 hours and we needed an intervention to make us head back!

This past week I travelled with the family for a short getaway to Moruya on the south coast of NSW. We travel there on a semi regular basis to visit family (both my side and my wife's) and I've recently gotten into the habit of taking a bit of gear with me to go chasing whatever's on offer from the beach, in the river or off the break wall. On a previous trip between Christmas and New Years I purchased an inexpensive beach rig at the local tackle shop (car is always too packed to fit in much fishing gear) which I store with my mother in law between visits. At that time it was ridiculously windy with a howling nor'easter most days, but after the winds eventually died down I had some reasonable success off the beach with good hauls of whiting, bream and flathead. The weather report this time was much more benign and having scoped out a few favourite locations at Xmas I was pretty confident of success. Out at dawn the first day produced a donut off the beach. The waves were absolutely teeming with fish not more than 10-15 metres off the beach. Schooling in the waves. I couldn't be sure what species. At first I thought whiting, but upon reflection I now think mullet. Either way, nothing would touch a bait. The only thing I could pull in all morning was sand crabs! Still, I didn't feel too bad. I still had a few days ahead of me and that morning I was greeted by a sunrise that was breathtaking. I took a photo that barely does it justice but it's too large to upload to the site. The next day I fished the breakwall but the nor'easter was back with a vengeance so that was no go. The following day, a cousin invited me out with him on his tinny to fish the river. Managed a 35cm whiting but released it from the keeper bag at the end of the session when we didn't manage to hook anything else worth keeping. On the Friday I ventured back to the river but again only undersize pink snapper and flathead. No keepers. I subsequently learned that the river is about the only one on the south coast still open to commercial fishing so I half wonder if that was at least partially responsible for the paucity of fish. That night I'm telling my tale of woe to my brother in law and he says why not come out with him on the Saturday to fish outside. He has a small boat he inherited from his late father some years ago. I'd been out with them once many years ago and succeeded only in losing my lunch in the rolling swells. Hmmm. Do I get back on that particular horse? You betcha. Couldn't face the prospect of a donut for the sum total of my efforts. Bright and early the following morning I gulped down a few seasick tablets with breakfast and we were off. We loaded the boat with more bait than I could possibly imagine we'd need. Chunks of tuna, squid, pilchards and even marinated chicken. The first obstacle was getting out of the river. The swell wasn't huge but in the narrow river channel it seemed to get magnified. Combined with a relatively small boat and it was quite the ride! Man, it was bumpy. And then the unexpected happened. Halfway out of the Moruya river channel the boat went into a big dip in the swell. As we went down the next wave had already formed ahead of us. No way to avoid it. The bow wave crashed over the boat and seawater rained down upon us. Totally soaked us head to toe. If I needed something to wake me up and get the senses focused that sure did the trick. The rest of the journey out was thankfully uneventful and we ploughed our way through the swells to dry out and drift a spot on the edge of a reef known as a good spot for snapper. The early signs were encouraging. My BIL landed a good sized morwong and I managed a flathead in the low 40s. But after that things went quiet apart from some periodic harassment by toadfish. We tried a few other locations but nothing was doing. The boat is a pretty basic outfit, no sonar or fish finders aboard. Just local knowledge. I was starting to think it just wasn't meant to be on this trip. Then the BIL says he knew a place with a sandy bottom that had a reputation as a good flathead location. Sure, why not. We settled into drift about a kilometre off shore, baited up and sent them down. Finally, pay dirt. More lizards than you could shake a stick at. Every bait we sent down was getting a hit and double hook ups were almost the norm. The fish weren't monsters. For every legal size we caught we hooked at least five under size that we threw back. The keepers were all in the high 30s or low 40s. The stream of flathead was virtually endless. Almost monotonous. The handling rag became so coated in flathead slime that it became slippery to hold. Only hooking a couple of shovel nosed sharks interrupted the flow. By 3pm we'd pretty much exhausted the bait supply (and ourselves) and had reached the bag limit to split between us. The trip back wasn't nearly as bumpy as the journey out. My stomach had behaved and we had fish on board. Mission accomplished. Off to feed the gigantic stingrays at the cleaning table.

A report worthy of Hemingway! Utterly enthralling. Felt like I was right there with you.

True enough! I'm thinking my next target will be drummer over Easter (provided the seas finally settle down). Just need to heavy up my gear a little and find a good spot to collect cabbage on the northern beaches.

Riding a bike was never this much fun!

Glad to finally be a contributor. It feels good to get back on the horse for sure. I really only took up the rod again late last year with my main action to date being estuary flathead and beach whiting along Sydney's northern beaches. The "trouble" with re-kindling the old passion is that it fires my ambition for all of the species I'd like to chase. Being land based limits my options somewhat but I'd love to get among the snapper, chase drummer from the rocks, and tangle with monster jewfish and kings. I expect investment in a fishing kayak will be next. My target list is considerable and spare time isn't exactly abundant. Still, it's an enjoyable problem to have!