JahmonW

Little further into the harbour

Hey Guys, I caught this fish a while ago and just found it going through pics. Caught it on a 3inch zman grubtail in motoil oil sort of foul hooked behind the gill rakers. Caught in Sydney Harbour. If anyone could give me an ID that would be awesome. Thanks, Jahmon

I sure hope so!

Awesome article. Sounds like an epic day on the water! I'm yet to land a bonnie but can't wait for the day I do!

thats a nice setup! At the moment im in a new flat so I have to resort to the air condition unit on the side of the house. hopefully Ill get an old table or something soon.

I can back this up. A bit of diving in New Zealand has taught me that Dory always sit near or on the bottom blending in with weed and waiting for prey to swim by

I can definitely back this up. I just bought some sunglasses with an orangey/brown tint and they are really nice. polarised sunnies make so much difference when seeing fish as well. lots of the time it can be the difference between seeing fish in the water and not seeing the fish. Another important thing is too look after your sunnies. when storing them cases or at least a pouch for them is essential otherwise they get scratched really easily and it sucks to look through them great article!

Might just have to take you up on that offer sometime haha

thanks for that mate. I think I will definitely shy away from lip gripping aye.

Recently I have tried out some topwater bass fishing and it has been absolutely insanely fun. This is like nothing I have really tried before but something I will definitely be doing more of in the future. First of all I would love to give a shoutout to the fishraider user called Ragnar (Todd) who has gone out of his way to show me how to catch bass on the topwater and also for showing me some spots he has been exploring lately. I am also sworn to secrecy so sorry but I am not able to disclose locations. Also Ragnar has a great report about his topwater bassing as well which I would highly recommend. So far I have had two sessions and have already enjoyed some success. Also a great discovery I may have made towards the end of the post! Session 1: Saturday 21st March 2020. We hit the water around 730pm, right as the light was fading. It was nice as there was very little breeze and it was a perfect night for fishing. I had no topwater bass lures at this stage, just a couple of white zman finesse frogs I had bought earlier in the day. The retrieve I was using was a slow wind just enough to get the frog on the plane with the paddletail legs working then stopping after about a meter of winding. The pauses are never the same. Maybe around 5-15 seconds with a few small twitches in between and repeat. I had little luck after an hour or so just a small hit which didn't stick. Meanwhile Todd (Ragnar) had caught 3 bass ranging from 15-30ish centimetres all on cicada lures and I think maybe a taylor made mini surface breaker which is a lure he has had lots of success on with the bass. After that my mate Josiah got a small bass on one of Todd's cicada. Then it was the fishraider user DerekD's time to shine as he landed another small one on another cicada after just a couple of casts and a couple of hits as well. The frogz just weren't working that night. However my luck finally turned as DerekD generously lent me his cicada and I was hooked into a nice humble bass after about 5 casts. I ended up finishing the day with 3 hits and the bass which provided a nice finish to my first topwater bass session. Session 2: Sunday 22nd. This time I was prepared. Armed with a couple of new cicadas and the zman frogz from the night before I was ready to slay the bass. We hit the water around 7pm this time as I wanted to get a quick look at the weed and lily pads that I would be casting through for the rest of the night. The lure I would throw for most of the night would be my new River2Sea Buggipop 35 in the white Bp-01 colourway. I picked this up from my local a shop and at $13 I thought it was very affordable. This night would be a little more challenging than the night before as it was getting pretty windy which never helps when you are throwing little 4 gram lures. The night started slow as we tried to find some more sheltered spots to fish. After maybe 30mins I had my first hit which didn't produce any fruit. Unlucky I thought for a lure with 2 sticky trebles underneath it. Alas we continued to try and after a while I finally landed the first little bass of the night. After this however the fishing was hard and slow with hits being few and far between; pretty much no action. Now comes my mighty breakthrough! A mighty fishing discovery if you will. Until now I had been just reeling the lure in until it made its designed buzzing movement then pausing every metre or so for 5-15 seconds-ish and then rinse and repeat. After an hour or this with little action you can resort to some somewhat unconventional fishing retrievals, something I'm sure a lot of you fishos can relate to. Lately I have been doing some topwater bass fishing with DerekD. This is done by using the Bassday Sugapen lures which are designed to be retrieved using the walk the dog action. Anyway I have been doing a lot of practice to try and master the walk the dog retrieve and I have started to get proficient at it. So I decided to try it with the cicada. I decided that I didn't want a fast retrieve as I have never heard of any cicadas zooming across the top of the water at a great speed of knots so my retrieve was the walk the dog with a slow wind maybe one full handle rotation every 3-5 seconds roughly. Anyway enough of the technical talk here are the facts. (Note that this had been after two hours of fishing and catching one fish). On my first retrieve using this method I hooked and landed a nice 29cm bass. I was absolutely buzzing. Perhaps I had found the secret to using this style of cicada lure! I immediately turned my torch on and tested what the action looked like. Honestly the lure may or may not have been designed for a walk the dog retrieve but this lure looked great as it slowly made its way on top of the water twitching left and right. This is the nice 29cm bass I landed. Put up a great fight as bass do and so far is my pb. Anyway after this my mate wanted to go so after a couple more cast I reluctantly made my way back home. On the way we passed one of the spots that we normally fish on a good windless day and since the wind had died down I half forced half convinced my friend to let me try a couple of casts there. And oh boy was I glad that I did! On the third cast at the new spot trying this retrieve hooked into a nice bass! Then literally the next cast later hooked another! At this point I was absolutely frothing. Two in a row and 3 in less than 10 casts really gets your blood pumping! I cant wait to get back onto the water to try this again and hopefully keep slaying the bass. The topwater bite is so good. It doesn't get much better than see those aggressive little Australian Bass coming up and smacking those lures. I was especially excited as I may have accidentally discovered a small trick which will hopefully help me catch more in the future! One more thing I was wondering was, is lip gripping fish a good way of handling a fish? I love the way it looks for a photo but I am thinking I may lean more away from lip gripping in the future because surely it cant be good for the fishes telescopic jaws and all the joints and bones in there. Especially for the bigger ones with a bit of weight. I would be very interested to hear peoples opinions on this. That's all for today! Thanks if you stuck with me through this article. I dunno how much fishing I will be doing in next couple of weeks but until then stay safe guys! - Jahmon

Can't thank you enough Derek!

Bit of everywhere mate. Middle harbour, Mosman, Pittwater. All sorts

Hey Mate, Thanks for the reply. Not where I'm from unfortunately and most are caught in hundreds of meters of water

Hey Guys, I'm new here so figured it would be best to introduce myself to the forum and write a little story at the same time. I grew up in Kalgoorlie WA, with Esperance being my childhood holiday destination. I have been fishing since before I could walk and never had much trouble getting the odd fish in Esperance. I moved to Nelson, New Zealand when I as 8 and from there was when I really got into my fishing. In Nelson the main fish species include snapper, kingfish, kahawai (salmon), mullet, trout, gurnard, butterfish, moki (morwong) and more. I have enjoyed a lot of success fishing round the south island. My personal bests include 90cm kingfish, 14lb snapper, 62cm blue moki (blue morwong), 65cm butterfish (greenbone), 70cm kahawai (salmon) and some big trout all measured from the V of the tail mind you. Mainly in NZ we use baits, trolling or vertical jigging for kingfish is popular and anything below 50lb braid is considered lightweight. For snapper straylining is the most popular and softplastics are rarely used by fishos. We don't have flathead, tailor or squid in NZ so I have been enjoying getting into those here in Sydney, I moved to Sydney a month ago and I am working here and adventuring around on a gap year between high school and uni. So far I have been getting out doing a lot of fishing with the users DerekD and Mike89. DerekD has been particularly helpful getting me onto a variety of different species using all sorts of methods of fishing that are so new to me as a kiwi fisho. I have caught 34cm blackfish, 50cm salmon, 50cm tailor, 46cm flathead, 32cm bream, whiting, squid, trevally, bass and more already no thanks to the expertise of DerekD. I have particularly been enjoying catching flathead on softplastics with the zman grubz in motor oil being my plastic of choice. The next fish that are on my bucketlist are bonito and jewfish. I have been thoroughly enjoying the Sydney landbased fishing which is exceedingly better than the landbased fishing where I am from in NZ. Today was probably the best day so far I have had in Sydney. We had massive tailor, salmon and bonito busting up everywhere inside the harbour. I managed to land some nice salmon and tailor on some halco twisties on 20lb and 5lb setups. Mike89 got onto some nice bonnies and a tailor and an impressive 40cm blackfish. Another guy we were fishing with managed to catch a 63cm flathead and a purple-spotted bigeye which was an awesome fish. Derek89 also got onto a variety of fish including squid as well. In total in one day we managed to catch blackfish, salmon, tailor, bonito, snapper, leatherjacket, purple-spotted bigeye, flathead, squid and we saw some kingis too! I look forward to enjoying more success in 2020 with my fishing endeavours. I would also love to give a huge shoutout to DerekD for mentoring me and teaching me the ways of the Sydney fishing. Please feel free to ask questions, Thanks, Jahmon