bobthelob2341

Prospect creek is a decent spot for bream and bass, you can use top water cicadas or lightly weighted soft plastics, just fish the tide changes as the current can rage through there.

With the fishing offshore being quiet, I’ve decided to finally give bass fishing a go. After scouting around on google maps I found a couple of likely spots where I could have a flick for my first bass. I pull up to a local creek in Chipping Norton and flicked a cicada lure along a weed line, with a couple of steady winds a bass boofs the lure at my feet and out comes my first ever bass. It was a healthy fish considering in came from the dingy feeder creeks to Chipping Norton lake. Fast forwards a couple days and I have become addicted to topwater bass, purchased 3 new cicada lures and every creek or pond I drive by I think about what could be under the surface. This time I fished further up stream from Chipping Norton in some more dodgy looking water, with a few bottles and shopping trolleys in the water but nevertheless still held bass willing to hit my cicada. Unfortunately I didn’t get to measure this fish but I’m sure I won’t be catching another bass the same size for a while.

Some nice squid there. I’ve noticed that the Hacking generally holds bigger squid in the shallows than Botany Bay or Jervis Bay.

Yeah there’s been a few around recently, last month I got a samson fish off merries reef on a jig. I’d feel bad using big squid for bait just for it to be picked apart by rats, so I vacuumed sealed and froze the smaller ones ready for kingies.

100% is mate in the last 2 years all the fishing I’ve done has been offshore for kingfish and deep dropping, and I don’t remember the last time I went for a fish up the river. Certainly feels rewarding after spending many days bobbing around waiting for marlin. Thanks mate!

I believe you are correct @Blackfish it was a juvinile amberjack, when it first came to the boat it had its signature stripe across the eye and the golden stripe as you say. Its the second one I've caught from the Hacking, have also caught samsons on the edges of shallow reefs here too.

Over the last 2 fishing sessions me and the old man have been chasing bonito from Port Hacking. The first trip was not successful on the bonito front however we found some success on the squid just in front of Cronulla, after trolling the headlands a few passes we headed into the river to chase bust ups. It was quiet at first and on the bay back to the ramp I spotted birds working right at the back of a small bay, we raced in and saw the most insane surface action i’ve ever witnessed, There were hundreds of large tailor, salmon, trevally, and kingfish working up white bait in 70cm of water smashing them right up at people’s backyards. Flicking some small metals resulted in some tasty fish captures. Second trip started off the same with some squid being caught of Cronulla, so we chucked the lures in and trolled around Jibbon and picked up some smaller bonito. The seas were not too pleasant so trolling did get a bit lumpy, we spotlocked on a shallow reef and feed down strips of bonito on light sinkers. It results in multiple double hookups on rat kingfish as well as large bonito and the amberjack which gave a good account of itself. A pretty successful few trips going back to basics after multiple donut days chasing marlin.

Red head and full white in rattle are cracker colours for Jervis Bay in the clear water

Interesting to read, here I was thinking I was getting some pretty good readings. Cheers for the advice I will tinker some more with the settings and see if I can get any better readings.

Awesome fish mate, you're living the dream.

I’ve got the airmar tm275lhw and it suits my needs perfectly doing similar things to what you’re wanting to do, I chose the tm275 because it has a wider cone making it easier to mark bait when trolling and travelling between spots etc. I’ve marked kings in 120m travelling 20kts not sure if I’d be able to do that with another transducer. I’m also running a Simrad nss evo16s.

Haha I'm not that keen to head out on the conditions that we had on monday, this was a belated report from last Wednesday, where the winds were a predicted 8knts and swell was 1.0m, however the weatherman was wrong and it started blowing a 15knt north west on the way in.

Cheers, mate the blue eye was definately better eating than the gemfish, lightly fried the cutlets of the blue eye were delicious. It has been on my mind for a while and finally saw a good day to venture out, it is well worth the trip not sure about the fuel bill however. Cheers mate, I have an Extreme 605 Gameking Thanks mate, I'm hoping to get some more in the coming months.

First day of the school holidays we decided to push out wide to Browns Mountain for the first time in search of blue eye cod and gemfish. Started off a 5:30am collecting yellowtail and slimey mackerel at the artificial in Botany Bay and made the 40km journey out wide. The conditions were decent so we cruised at 17knts and reached the marks within an hour or so. After some fiddling around with the electric reel and finding our drift, I sounded over a nice patch of fish/bait and dropped the rig down 370m to meet the fish. The rod tip quickly began to bounce and eventually loaded up nicely, flicked the switch and the fish came up to the surface within a few minutes. Up came and nice sized gemfish and smaller blue eye cod. We stuck around for another 30min but couldn’t find anymore fish, raced back to some inshore reefs to find a kingfish and managed to get a few legals before the wind picked up. Overall it was a good day learning how to use the electric reel and build confidence in heading out wide, next up is to find a tuna in the deep blue.

Theres are few out there just need to weed through all the rats first.

Cheers mate I was fishing in 70-80m deep

I checked my tip and it all seemed fine, the braid only snapped once at the tip and the rest were around 20m from the rod tip.

I’m not to sure what caused the braid to snap to be honest when I was fishing I didn’t notice any nicks in the braid and my guides were fine and the braid was breaking well above my fg knot. I’ve caught metre fish on the exact setup with the same line, leader and drag settings and haven’t had any problems. My best guess is that leatherjackets are biting my line on the way up.

Cheers it went well for its size. They are starting to fatten up now and will really get well conditioned in the coming weeks. Cheers Thanks mate Cheers

After all the windy weather and big swells which copped the east coast, I decided to take the boat out to the reefs off Sydney in search of some winter kingfish. First stop was to gather bait at the artifical and after 20 minutes the live bait tank was full with yellowtail and a few slimey mackerel, it was then a quick run to some of the closer reefs off Sydney to find a few kingfish. At the marks the were only a couple of boats so I decided to spotlock on top of fish I was marking, after sometime I hooked up a small rat king on the jig which quickly went back in the water, after a quick circle around I starting to mark fish again so I deployed spotlock. On the first drop I hooked up on what seemed like a good kingfish until my braid snapped at the tip of my rod, shortly after the livie rod goes off and a 73cm kingfish is boated. Some more rat kingfish ensued, until there was a good bite on the paternoster meant for a snapper, up came a 96cm kingfish on a 3/0 circle hook and 30lb leader, I was surprised at how well my 3500 certate handled it. After some more lost fish on the jigs due to braid snapping, I decided to call it a day and head back in.

Thanks mate, I used a running sinker to my snap swivel and connected the squid jig on to it makes it easier to change jigs to try different colours.

Cracking fish there, hoping to get up to Port Stephens and chase them on plastics too some time!

No squid today, the rain from this week mucked up the water, and the currents were ripping so fast I couldn’t keep a squid jig down even with a large sinker in 15m.

Thanks mate, didn’t go around lilli pilli but towards Gunnamatta Bay it was all pretty greenish brown. Good luck tomorrow if you’re heading out. Cheers mate Thanks Cheers mate, it put up a good fight I’m surprised how many good fish I’ve landed on my bream setup.

Headed out early this morning to Port Hacking in search of some more squid and a kingfish or two. Tried some shallow spots in the Port but the water quality was too dirty and decided to push out deeper for some squid. Flicked out some hardbodies and trolled towards Jibbon Bommie, and picked up 2 bonnie’s for bait. Came out to the marks and the current was pushing fast, but marked some nice fish on the sounder so decided to fish it with fresh bonito slabs. Drifted down on a 4/0 hook and light sinker with 14lb leader, eventually found its way into the mouth of a 63cm snapper. New pb for me and went well on bream gear, after that we got a couple rat kings and the sweep showed up so we went home.