Rock Blackfish (Drummer) Tips & Tricks

[AVR]

First time member and first time post (Hope this is the right process, right place to ask). I’m mainly land based on the eastern suburbs Sydney, lucky to have family & Friends who live and boat around Pittwater, and past year have focused on Luderick, now looking to focus on Big brother the Rock Blackfish, I feel I owe them one with the amount of tackle they have taken over the past year!

I have a question or 2 for those gun Drummer experts out there.

The 1st question is on bait and fishing when there are pickers around. Tips to reduce the impact of pickers, and what selection of baits do you rotate between to avoid pickers

2nd is around technique to rigging up cabbage for drummer, does it always have to be under float? Do you pack more on as compared to if you targeted Luderick, and if you “Pussyfoot” with cabbage do you use weight? 

3rd and final question is on cast direction and where you want to aim bait to be sitting in regards to the wash? 

thanks in advance and safe fishing 👍

AVR

[Rebel]

Welcome aboard.

[noelm]

Almost all of my Drummer have been caught on Cungi, peeled Royal Red Prawns or Bread, not professing to be an expert, but I fish for them reasonably regularly, I just use about a #1 hook, little or no sinker and fish any "wash" looking deeper holes.

[AVR]

2 hours ago, Rebel said:

Welcome aboard.

Thanks Rebel

[AVR]

1 hour ago, noelm said:

Almost all of my Drummer have been caught on Cungi, peeled Royal Red Prawns or Bread, not professing to be an expert, but I fish for them reasonably regularly, I just use about a #1 hook, little or no sinker and fish any "wash" looking deeper holes.

Thanks noelm, do you salt the prawns to toughen up?

[noelm]

No, Royal Reds are great bait, peeled they stay on the hook, remember you don't have to cast way out, most times the fish are right in close. When I see Reds for sale cheap, I buy a few KG and freeze them in single trip size bags, freeze them whole and use the shell and heads for burley, they even refreeze OK if not used.

[noelm]

Just to add, I "thread" the Prawn on the hook until it's straight with the shank (number 1 French hooks I use) and do a half hitch around the tail bit like you would a Pilchard.

[AVR]

21 minutes ago, noelm said:

Just to add, I "thread" the Prawn on the hook until it's straight with the shank (number 1 French hooks I use) and do a half hitch around the tail bit like you would a Pilchard.

Brilliant thanks noelm, will let you know how I fare over next couple of weeks 👍

[Jiggy]

Back in the day we used abalone gut for good results; sadly banned now and no longer available. Like Noelm said peeled prawns or bread. Cabbage weed works great for drummer but it has to be rigged properly. Light blackfish rod, centrepin with 8 pound mono and a properly weighted float. You'll hook plenty of drummer with that setup...won't land them but you will hook them.

[noelm]

Yeah, Abb gut was/is great bait for Drummer, don't see it for sale now.

[AVR]

On 7/7/2020 at 7:15 PM, Jiggy said:

Back in the day we used abalone gut for good results; sadly banned now and no longer available. Like Noelm said peeled prawns or bread. Cabbage weed works great for drummer but it has to be rigged properly. Light blackfish rod, centrepin with 8 pound mono and a properly weighted float. You'll hook plenty of drummer with that setup...won't land them but you will hook them.

Thanks Jiggy, yes make sense, great fun on the light stuff but pretty hard to slow them down. 

[wazatherfisherman]

Hi AVR and welcome. I used to fish the eastern suburbs rocks for Pigs and caught them up to 6.5 kg with average fish over 3 kg. As said above, Ab gut was excellent bait, but banned due to the Ganglioneuritis virus which is highly infectious and survives being frozen/processed, enabling transmission of the disease to healthy populations of Abalone. I don't think it affects humans, but is banned to preserve existing Abalone stocks from becoming contaminated. 

Next best bait for large fish is a whole unbroken cunje interior as large as you can get. To retrieve the interior so it stays intact, push your knife straight down on the side from the top of the pod and cut around the entire pod. Gently twist the top as you lift and once in hand, slip your thumb under the meat to prise it away from the "lid". You need to do this on each side as the anchor points under the lid are like two teats- once they have been released from the lid you should have an unbroken sack with the two teats (or nipples). By not breaking the sack you don't disturb the "guts" of the cunje- which is the delicate red part and the yellow- this helps in minimising pickers and whole pods attract the opportunist large fish who will "muscle" their way to the bait before the pests.

If there are heaps of pickers, small whole red crabs are next best, just remove a rear leg and insert hook through the socket and out through the crabs belly. Small red crabs can be obtained by attaching a pink plastic octopus skirt- the ones used for trolling- on a piece of strong wire about 4-5 ft long and twirling it through waterline crevices. Use a larger skirt -say 6 to 8 inch length and the crabs will run out of the cracks and can be grabbed by hand.

This is a better method than how I was shown originally, which was to plunge both arms down a crevice, with hands about 2 feet apart and slowly bring your hands together. The biting type crabs- "scuttley's, sowrie's and reef crabs" all run from your hands, while the red crabs stay put and hang on. When "feeling" for crabs, when you get both hands together you only have the non biter's. Both eels and octopus are not present in the cracks where there are numbers of crabs, just beware if you can't see any crabs as they might have exited due to threat of either of these, but safer and easy to use the plastic octopus "frightener"

When using cabbage, try to find some "streamer" cabbage, which usually grows out of the red-brown short growth on the lowest ledges, mainly where there is water run-off. It is long and thin, commonly about a half inch wide by 8-12 inches long.  A large bunch of these streamers is an attractive bait for bigger fish, but a single long streamer sent out as a Luderick bait is often taken. Personally, have done far better with this type of cabbage as opposed to the usual "flowering" broad leaf type or Black cabbage (which is olive green, has many perforations and grows individually, submerged in pools)

As for where to cast in the wash, look for run-off points of the ledge, which continually return water from the platform, as this is the natural place fish are looking for food. Most of our Pig fishing was actually straight down deep edges of over 25-30 ft, the big fish sit along these walls looking for stuff coming over. If using cabbage however, bobby cork your cabbage between 3-6 ft if fishing the wash in close, as it takes cabbage a while to sink naturally and fish searching wash areas for cabbage are used to taking it closer to the surface.

We had a spot called "Pig Rock" at the Mattens at Dover Heights, where both a really huge pool flowed off next to it and there was a massive cunje bed only yards away. Although around 30-35 ft deep, the big Pigs were usually only about 12-15 feet under the surface as that was the level the natural run-off food would have sunk to at the location. They would wolf the bait down as it sank down along the wall below where we stood.

The gun burley for big Black Drummer is chicken layer pellets. They need to be completely soaked until they break down, if not completely broken down, the fish will ignore your bait and gorge on the pellets.They are right to use when they have broken down into a mud-like consistency, they get the fish into a good feeding pattern and they beat the rubbish fish and Bream, Tarwhine etc to the bait 90% of the time. 

If bobby cork fishing the wash zones and you are having problems with Kelpfish etc , come up about 18 inches in depth and use large baits. Bread works well if pickers are around and Kelpies aren't that interested in it either.

We used to bobby cork for them at places like Burning Palms in the Royal National Park and do well on the smaller ones using cunje set about 10 ft under a cork and cast to the shore side of rock outcrops. There is a spot there known as the "Tablet" which produces a lot of smaller Pigs on dead flat sea days and it was easy to get them there on 12 lb line.

When collecting cunje via the "whole-pod" method, it's wise to only take one cunje from each cluster, so as the rest aren't disturbed and of course check regulations re bait collecting.

When pussy-footing use a small piece of lead just to keep you in contact with the bait unless fishing in under 3 ft of water, you'll kmow when ones taken it!

Hope this information is useful. Any other questions feel free to ask. They are my second favourite fish to fight (after Kingfish) and are great to eat.

As for line size for the eastern suburbs, we used 18 lb Tortue for them and lost 50% of the ones we hooked, go up to 23 lb and you get more than 50% less bites. If chasing the 2-4lb models you get a lot more bites on 12-14 lb , but you'll lose the odd one and most of any real big ones

Regards Waza

 

Edited July 8, 2020 by wazatherfisherman
more info

[Koalaboi]

Great advice Waza!

kb

[Green Hornet]

A wealth of knowledge there Waza.

Thanks for sharing.

[Jiggy]

12 hours ago, AVR said:

Thanks Jiggy, yes make sense, great fun on the light stuff but pretty hard to slow them down. 

Yes usually impossible. But sometimes you get lucky; landed a 7.5 pound drummer on 8 pound mono one time at Stanwell Park. Talk about a fluke!

[jenno64]

On 7/9/2020 at 1:10 AM, wazatherfisherman said:

Hi AVR and welcome. I used to fish the eastern suburbs rocks for Pigs and caught them up to 6.5 kg with average fish over 3 kg. As said above, Ab gut was excellent bait, but banned due to the Ganglioneuritis virus which is highly infectious and survives being frozen/processed, enabling transmission of the disease to healthy populations of Abalone. I don't think it affects humans, but is banned to preserve existing Abalone stocks from becoming contaminated. 

Next best bait for large fish is a whole unbroken cunje interior as large as you can get. To retrieve the interior so it stays intact, push your knife straight down on the side from the top of the pod and cut around the entire pod. Gently twist the top as you lift and once in hand, slip your thumb under the meat to prise it away from the "lid". You need to do this on each side as the anchor points under the lid are like two teats- once they have been released from the lid you should have an unbroken sack with the two teats (or nipples). By not breaking the sack you don't disturb the "guts" of the cunje- which is the delicate red part and the yellow- this helps in minimising pickers and whole pods attract the opportunist large fish who will "muscle" their way to the bait before the pests.

If there are heaps of pickers, small whole red crabs are next best, just remove a rear leg and insert hook through the socket and out through the crabs belly. Small red crabs can be obtained by attaching a pink plastic octopus skirt- the ones used for trolling- on a piece of strong wire about 4-5 ft long and twirling it through waterline crevices. Use a larger skirt -say 6 to 8 inch length and the crabs will run out of the cracks and can be grabbed by hand.

This is a better method than how I was shown originally, which was to plunge both arms down a crevice, with hands about 2 feet apart and slowly bring your hands together. The biting type crabs- "scuttley's, sowrie's and reef crabs" all run from your hands, while the red crabs stay put and hang on. When "feeling" for crabs, when you get both hands together you only have the non biter's. Both eels and octopus are not present in the cracks where there are numbers of crabs, just beware if you can't see any crabs as they might have exited due to threat of either of these, but safer and easy to use the plastic octopus "frightener"

When using cabbage, try to find some "streamer" cabbage, which usually grows out of the red-brown short growth on the lowest ledges, mainly where there is water run-off. It is long and thin, commonly about a half inch wide by 8-12 inches long.  A large bunch of these streamers is an attractive bait for bigger fish, but a single long streamer sent out as a Luderick bait is often taken. Personally, have done far better with this type of cabbage as opposed to the usual "flowering" broad leaf type or Black cabbage (which is olive green, has many perforations and grows individually, submerged in pools)

As for where to cast in the wash, look for run-off points of the ledge, which continually return water from the platform, as this is the natural place fish are looking for food. Most of our Pig fishing was actually straight down deep edges of over 25-30 ft, the big fish sit along these walls looking for stuff coming over. If using cabbage however, bobby cork your cabbage between 3-6 ft if fishing the wash in close, as it takes cabbage a while to sink naturally and fish searching wash areas for cabbage are used to taking it closer to the surface.

We had a spot called "Pig Rock" at the Mattens at Dover Heights, where both a really huge pool flowed off next to it and there was a massive cunje bed only yards away. Although around 30-35 ft deep, the big Pigs were usually only about 12-15 feet under the surface as that was the level the natural run-off food would have sunk to at the location. They would wolf the bait down as it sank down along the wall below where we stood.

The gun burley for big Black Drummer is chicken layer pellets. They need to be completely soaked until they break down, if not completely broken down, the fish will ignore your bait and gorge on the pellets.They are right to use when they have broken down into a mud-like consistency, they get the fish into a good feeding pattern and they beat the rubbish fish and Bream, Tarwhine etc to the bait 90% of the time. 

If bobby cork fishing the wash zones and you are having problems with Kelpfish etc , come up about 18 inches in depth and use large baits. Bread works well if pickers are around and Kelpies aren't that interested in it either.

We used to bobby cork for them at places like Burning Palms in the Royal National Park and do well on the smaller ones using cunje set about 10 ft under a cork and cast to the shore side of rock outcrops. There is a spot there known as the "Tablet" which produces a lot of smaller Pigs on dead flat sea days and it was easy to get them there on 12 lb line.

When collecting cunje via the "whole-pod" method, it's wise to only take one cunje from each cluster, so as the rest aren't disturbed and of course check regulations re bait collecting.

When pussy-footing use a small piece of lead just to keep you in contact with the bait unless fishing in under 3 ft of water, you'll kmow when ones taken it!

Hope this information is useful. Any other questions feel free to ask. They are my second favourite fish to fight (after Kingfish) and are great to eat.

As for line size for the eastern suburbs, we used 18 lb Tortue for them and lost 50% of the ones we hooked, go up to 23 lb and you get more than 50% less bites. If chasing the 2-4lb models you get a lot more bites on 12-14 lb , but you'll lose the odd one and most of any real big ones

Regards Waza

 

 

1 hour ago, Yowie said:

That is a good sized dory, and good eating too.

Waza

That is an amazing collection of tips you have provided..... probably the best advice a novice could run with,,,good on you for sharing, I haven't fished for pigs for years but you've got me interested again!

[wazatherfisherman]

Hi Rob good to hear! They are a great fish to chase through winter as they are one species that doesn't shut down. 

Best time for large fish in Sydney metro area is October, when they are in spawning aggregations and feed aggressively during this time. It's quite common to burley up a school of large ones during October, however, landing them is the challenge! Fish over 4 kg are probably the dirtiest fighters of all rock species and require luck as well as skill and good tackle to be a "land-able" proposition. Small fish (under 2 kg) from deep water locations are certainly realistic on lighter tackle though.

Some good locations around Sydney are South Whale Beach ledges, "Donkey's" around the front of Julianne at Little Bay and the "Tablet" a small rocky islet at the southern platform of Burning Palms Beach, but can be found around most ledges along the coast that have good cabbage growth and/or cunje beds. They are also present in the harbour and in years past have caught them as far up as Cremorne when chasing Luderick, although they are generally under a kg and have a "kelpy" smell and taste, even after bleeding. Dobroyd Head and Middle Head have some better sized ones, but I consider those two areas more as "ocean" fishing, due to being affected by swell and wave action.

The simple Sydney rock fisho's rig of a pea sized ball sinker running between a swivel and a 2/0 suicide (Octopus or Big Red pattern) is the best method for "dropping" a bait down walls, or the alternative for both snaggy areas, shallow water and avoiding pickers, is an egg sized running bobby cork with appropriate sized ball sinker to weight the cork/bait down, then a swivel and followed by 45-60 cm of leader, then hook. When fishing rough terrain make sure the leader is slightly less than main line, so in case of snags, only the hook is lost.

Bites on the cork rig are usually quite violent downs and on the dropping rig, the bite is pretty much the same as larger Bream. Personally, I only give the fish about a meter and a half of line on the bite before striking, as they get a head of steam up quickly and it is imperative they are stopped before reaching the bottom or they'll find either an obstacle to cut your line on or a crevice to wedge in.

In plenty of fishing advice books/columns authors have stated if you get wedged by a fish, to simply slacken off and wait- I don't agree with this advice as I have tried it plenty of times on light tackle and the fish don't come out, even after waiting about 10 minutes. A better approach in my view is to pull hard and on rare occasions the fish comes out, although mostly, your line will break. Better off re-rigging and trying again, your line is usually damaged anyway if you get crevice or cracked.

Eating quality is high if bled and filleted/skinned. Best of luck when you go.

[AVR]

On 7/9/2020 at 1:10 AM, wazatherfisherman said:

Hi AVR and welcome. I used to fish the eastern suburbs rocks for Pigs and caught them up to 6.5 kg with average fish over 3 kg. As said above, Ab gut was excellent bait, but banned due to the Ganglioneuritis virus which is highly infectious and survives being frozen/processed, enabling transmission of the disease to healthy populations of Abalone. I don't think it affects humans, but is banned to preserve existing Abalone stocks from becoming contaminated. 

Next best bait for large fish is a whole unbroken cunje interior as large as you can get. To retrieve the interior so it stays intact, push your knife straight down on the side from the top of the pod and cut around the entire pod. Gently twist the top as you lift and once in hand, slip your thumb under the meat to prise it away from the "lid". You need to do this on each side as the anchor points under the lid are like two teats- once they have been released from the lid you should have an unbroken sack with the two teats (or nipples). By not breaking the sack you don't disturb the "guts" of the cunje- which is the delicate red part and the yellow- this helps in minimising pickers and whole pods attract the opportunist large fish who will "muscle" their way to the bait before the pests.

If there are heaps of pickers, small whole red crabs are next best, just remove a rear leg and insert hook through the socket and out through the crabs belly. Small red crabs can be obtained by attaching a pink plastic octopus skirt- the ones used for trolling- on a piece of strong wire about 4-5 ft long and twirling it through waterline crevices. Use a larger skirt -say 6 to 8 inch length and the crabs will run out of the cracks and can be grabbed by hand.

This is a better method than how I was shown originally, which was to plunge both arms down a crevice, with hands about 2 feet apart and slowly bring your hands together. The biting type crabs- "scuttley's, sowrie's and reef crabs" all run from your hands, while the red crabs stay put and hang on. When "feeling" for crabs, when you get both hands together you only have the non biter's. Both eels and octopus are not present in the cracks where there are numbers of crabs, just beware if you can't see any crabs as they might have exited due to threat of either of these, but safer and easy to use the plastic octopus "frightener"

When using cabbage, try to find some "streamer" cabbage, which usually grows out of the red-brown short growth on the lowest ledges, mainly where there is water run-off. It is long and thin, commonly about a half inch wide by 8-12 inches long.  A large bunch of these streamers is an attractive bait for bigger fish, but a single long streamer sent out as a Luderick bait is often taken. Personally, have done far better with this type of cabbage as opposed to the usual "flowering" broad leaf type or Black cabbage (which is olive green, has many perforations and grows individually, submerged in pools)

As for where to cast in the wash, look for run-off points of the ledge, which continually return water from the platform, as this is the natural place fish are looking for food. Most of our Pig fishing was actually straight down deep edges of over 25-30 ft, the big fish sit along these walls looking for stuff coming over. If using cabbage however, bobby cork your cabbage between 3-6 ft if fishing the wash in close, as it takes cabbage a while to sink naturally and fish searching wash areas for cabbage are used to taking it closer to the surface.

We had a spot called "Pig Rock" at the Mattens at Dover Heights, where both a really huge pool flowed off next to it and there was a massive cunje bed only yards away. Although around 30-35 ft deep, the big Pigs were usually only about 12-15 feet under the surface as that was the level the natural run-off food would have sunk to at the location. They would wolf the bait down as it sank down along the wall below where we stood.

The gun burley for big Black Drummer is chicken layer pellets. They need to be completely soaked until they break down, if not completely broken down, the fish will ignore your bait and gorge on the pellets.They are right to use when they have broken down into a mud-like consistency, they get the fish into a good feeding pattern and they beat the rubbish fish and Bream, Tarwhine etc to the bait 90% of the time. 

If bobby cork fishing the wash zones and you are having problems with Kelpfish etc , come up about 18 inches in depth and use large baits. Bread works well if pickers are around and Kelpies aren't that interested in it either.

We used to bobby cork for them at places like Burning Palms in the Royal National Park and do well on the smaller ones using cunje set about 10 ft under a cork and cast to the shore side of rock outcrops. There is a spot there known as the "Tablet" which produces a lot of smaller Pigs on dead flat sea days and it was easy to get them there on 12 lb line.

When collecting cunje via the "whole-pod" method, it's wise to only take one cunje from each cluster, so as the rest aren't disturbed and of course check regulations re bait collecting.

When pussy-footing use a small piece of lead just to keep you in contact with the bait unless fishing in under 3 ft of water, you'll kmow when ones taken it!

Hope this information is useful. Any other questions feel free to ask. They are my second favourite fish to fight (after Kingfish) and are great to eat.

As for line size for the eastern suburbs, we used 18 lb Tortue for them and lost 50% of the ones we hooked, go up to 23 lb and you get more than 50% less bites. If chasing the 2-4lb models you get a lot more bites on 12-14 lb , but you'll lose the odd one and most of any real big ones

Regards Waza

 

Waza, thank you comprehensive so much to try out. Appreciate the effort 👍

[AVR]

25 minutes ago, wazatherfisherman said:

Hi Rob good to hear! They are a great fish to chase through winter as they are one species that doesn't shut down. 

Best time for large fish in Sydney metro area is October, when they are in spawning aggregations and feed aggressively during this time. It's quite common to burley up a school of large ones during October, however, landing them is the challenge! Fish over 4 kg are probably the dirtiest fighters of all rock species and require luck as well as skill and good tackle to be a "land-able" proposition. Small fish (under 2 kg) from deep water locations are certainly realistic on lighter tackle though.

Some good locations around Sydney are South Whale Beach ledges, "Donkey's" around the front of Julianne at Little Bay and the "Tablet" a small rocky islet at the southern platform of Burning Palms Beach, but can be found around most ledges along the coast that have good cabbage growth and/or cunje beds. They are also present in the harbour and in years past have caught them as far up as Cremorne when chasing Luderick, although they are generally under a kg and have a "kelpy" smell and taste, even after bleeding. Dobroyd Head and Middle Head have some better sized ones, but I consider those two areas more as "ocean" fishing, due to being affected by swell and wave action.

The simple Sydney rock fisho's rig of a pea sized ball sinker running between a swivel and a 2/0 suicide (Octopus or Big Red pattern) is the best method for "dropping" a bait down walls, or the alternative for both snaggy areas, shallow water and avoiding pickers, is an egg sized running bobby cork with appropriate sized ball sinker to weight the cork/bait down, then a swivel and followed by 45-60 cm of leader, then hook. When fishing rough terrain make sure the leader is slightly less than main line, so in case of snags, only the hook is lost.

Bites on the cork rig are usually quite violent downs and on the dropping rig, the bite is pretty much the same as larger Bream. Personally, I only give the fish about a meter and a half of line on the bite before striking, as they get a head of steam up quickly and it is imperative they are stopped before reaching the bottom or they'll find either an obstacle to cut your line on or a crevice to wedge in.

In plenty of fishing advice books/columns authors have stated if you get wedged by a fish, to simply slacken off and wait- I don't agree with this advice as I have tried it plenty of times on light tackle and the fish don't come out, even after waiting about 10 minutes. A better approach in my view is to pull hard and on rare occasions the fish comes out, although mostly, your line will break. Better off re-rigging and trying again, your line is usually damaged anyway if you get crevice or cracked.

Eating quality is high if bled and filleted/skinned. Best of luck when you go.

Again thank you Waza fantastic insight, have to agree with Jenno64 fantastic content and looking forward to deploying these tactics. I feel this could almost be classed as an article, really well written and so clear, thanks for sharing 👍

[61 crusher]

Hi Waza the two write ups you’ve just added to this thread of the various techniques In differing scenarios would be a great addition on how to target “ pigs” aka black drummer

You've got me intrigued to try & target them

Over the years I’ve lost a few & caught a couple as by catch one in particular about 5kg at night on pilchard & gangs under a float, have you heard of or experienced catching them on pilchard or fish bait particularly at night, from memory I think it was caught in autumn 

[wazatherfisherman]

7 minutes ago, 61 crusher said:

Hi Waza the two write ups you’ve just added to this thread of the various techniques In differing scenarios would be a great addition on how to target “ pigs” aka black drummer

You've got me intrigued to try & target them

Over the years I’ve lost a few & caught a couple as by catch one in particular about 5kg at night on pilchard & gangs under a float, have you heard of or experienced catching them on pilchard or fish bait particularly at night, from memory I think it was caught in autumn 

Hi Dieter have never heard of one caught on a fish bait before, only a couple of Silver Drummer who have small sharper teeth. Maybe some of the larger fish lost at night are them? Definitely omnivorous as like Bream, they eat almost anything that is an easy meal. Hence being called Pigs.

Have caught them on ab gut, cunje, crabs, cabbage, weed, prawns, bread, nippers, worms and fresh squid in differing locations. At Bondi Murk they were fishing for them with bullocks liver dipped in kero! Nearly all the big ones on either cunje or crabs (mainly red crabs) If fishing specifically for them, cunje is the bait of choice now ab gut is off limits. Salted cunje works well also.

At times of rough seas, when whole pods are dislodged intact, even as the pods that have been washed in,rot in the sun, there are usually numbers of fish in close proximity that will try getting to the cunje at higher tides- aka "potholing or pussyfooting"- two good examples of these locations are Long Reef platform and more so Curracurrang Bay, where plenty of cunje gets washed up in amongst the southern boulder side of the bay and is only reachable to the fish on the higher parts of the bigger high tides. After a few days of really big southerly swell, there are always fish tucked up in the southernmost corner of the bay, in amongst the boulders, waiting for a chance to get to the rotting cunje.

Years ago, while fishing at the "Gutters" between Little Bluefish and Bluefish Pt's another mate Steve (who is actually a Raider) and I sat watching heaps of big Luderick floating up onto the southern side of gutter number two to get at the really long streamer cabbage growing on it.

After watching for a while, we tried fishing the gutter, but with no success initially, so I went above the ledge and watched the fish for a while to see what the go was. While watching, I spotted 4 big Pigs all crammed in a small hole about 4 feet in diameter, directly under where I was sitting, they could have gorged on the cabbage like the Luderick were doing, but they were doing something else, still appeared to be feeding though. On going down on the ledge at low tide to have a look, I discovered that there were about 20 odd small cunje's growing in the hole and some were obviously torn open with no contents left inside. The hole was probably only a foot deeper than the rest of the ledge it sat on and it was the first time I'd ever seen such large fish in almost no water (the Luderick were left high and dry between swells some of the time) but it made me realise they know where the food is.

The same day, on the opposite north side of gutter two, we also watched a Groper about 25-30 lb continually float up and "slide" along the ledge with it's head up under a long crevice, using the water run-off to move itself along. It was obviously feeding on red crabs. So in one day I watched 3 different species get their food from off rocks that were only submerged at high tide. Each species were actually quite vulnerable (I thought) but seemed well versed in doing what they were doing. On returning the next day to the same spot, the sea was even flatter than the previous day and the masses of fish observed the first day, were nowhere to be seen.

With most of this type of evidence pointing towards fishing higher tidal stages, they are one species that definitely responds well to a constant burley stream and can actually be caught on all stages of the tide.

Spots like the "Tablet" which is a small cunje covered island on the northeast corner of Burning Palms southern rock platform (known as "Oyster") are actually only accessible to fishers on the lower stages of the tide, as there is a permanent wave break due east, which throws a curling wave towards the shore, even on dead flat seas. The gutter between the island and the platform holds heaps of small Pigs, and is a top spot for them as the tide goes out. There are also good Bream and quality Luderick in there, although the Luderick are best in there when the sun disappears in the afternoon. Bobby corking works really well in this location, with cunje for the Pigs and crabs for the Bream during daylight hours.

So if I was going to target them during daylight hours, cunje would be the standout choice, crabs second and probably prawns, bread or cabbage in that order

[noelm]

Cunje is probably my go to bait too, there's some right in front of my house, so I can gather some at low tide when I need it, but, Royal Red Prawns are my favourite bait, mainly because I have them in my freezer and can go fishing anytime without delay, plus you seem to get more variety with them.

[AVR]

Thought I would provide an update related to this stream, especially since everyone provided such great advice, especially @wazatherfisherman. My first few drummer today both on Cunje, both release safely as under size, slighly lighter tackle, straight 10lb mono, ball sinker to hook. Great fun thanks again, very much hooked on this style of fishing aim is to upsize for a feed next time. 👍 

[wazatherfisherman]

1 hour ago, AVR said:

Thought I would provide an update related to this stream, especially since everyone provided such great advice, especially @wazatherfisherman. My first few drummer today both on Cunje, both release safely as under size, slighly lighter tackle, straight 10lb mono, ball sinker to hook. Great fun thanks again, very much hooked on this style of fishing aim is to upsize for a feed next time. 👍 

Well done AVR!  Reckon they look mean and angry critters any size. They are certainly addictive, although the larger models know every dirty trick in the book. 10 lb mono is definitely sport-fishing for them. 

Look forward to seeing more success from your next go and you'll enjoy eating one too.

[AVR]

15 minutes ago, wazatherfisherman said:

Well done AVR!  Reckon they look mean and angry critters any size. They are certainly addictive, although the larger models know every dirty trick in the book. 10 lb mono is definitely sport-fishing for them. 

Look forward to seeing more success from your next go and you'll enjoy eating one too.

Thanks @wazatherfisherman yes the 10lb was great for the bite, but did get well bricked by what I’m sure was a larger model 👍 next time