So when I open up the Instagram page, pics pour in. Blokes sitting on the front seat of hundred thousand dollar centre consoles, with a 40 kilo giant trevally balanced on their knees. Chaps fishing in bream or bass competitions, with every inch of their boat and clothes covered in tackle company logos. Nothing wrong with that! But what about the average bloke who just wants to enjoy a fun fishing session, close to home?
Let me tell you about a trip one day last week. Cold windy weather but I was getting good reports about action inside the Harbour – and, posting those reports to the Facebook page, for our 15000 readers there:
Firstly, the crew:
Oscar Blaxland. Super keen. He works at night, meaning he's often able to fish on mid week mornings - which is when we usually go.
James Kitsos (standing, behind the bimini top.) James got in touch online, asking how he should go about catching his first kingfish. I invited him to come for a run but mentioned that before we could go, I had to clean up the boat. He immediately volunteered to give me a hand.
Joel Clement. Joel has been a top commenter on the Facebook page and I knew we had a lot in common. He lives on the central coast, meaning quite a distance to travel if he wanted to join us. But he’s so keen that was of no concern at all.
The plan? Nothing big, because the forecast was bad. Not this bad, but bad:
Two metre seas and 20 knots of wind from the south. The good news was that multiple readers on our Facebook page had been posting pics and videos of the kingfish, tailor, and other light pelagics inside Sydney Harbour:
So they were our primary target. We kicked off with a run down Middle Harbour and up to the naval base at Garden Island. The fish were there – but inside the restricted zone:
There was nothing we could do but to wait for them to move outside the security buoys. If you push it too hard the Navy will send out a boat to intercept you, as I saw one time last year. But all okay. Eventually the school moved to where we could reach them, with a long cast:
The bust ups weren’t big or enthusiastic. But between the birds working, the occasional splashes, and most importantly the sounder images, we knew they were there – tailing the bait schools:
Two of the crew were using our 802 blue combo with 3 kilo line and 10 gram whitebait style jigs. That set up was deadly. Kings were undersized but we were having a lot of fun:
I was using our 702 combo because with matched jigs you can cast a long way. I was casting 65 metres using our 40 gram jigs:
Mixed in amongst the undersize kings were plenty of keeper tailor. Meaning we had some quality fillets to take home for dinner:
After a couple of hours casting and arm stretching we decided to go find something larger. Down the harbor to the inside tip of South Head, which can be very good squid spot on a run out tide. Red line is the squid spot, blue line is the kingfish spot:
This time we hooked three squid, but only boated one small arrow. Still enough to go down rigging! Around South head and down along the cliffs to a place we call The Cut. This spot has produced literally thousands of kingfish for us over the years, although the vast majority of them fairly small. It was also the place where most of the kingfish traps were installed, back in those horrible days. The squid went on a slider rig with a stinger treble, and was then set 10 metres down, off the downrigger. It didn’t take long:
I had a plan to chomp some pilchards through the pot after the first hook up. That often results in a kingfish carpet at this spot – at this time of year. But the swell was just too bad to bear. So we decided to give ourselves an early mark, and get home before peak hour. Enjoyed the day and the company enormously! And I should mention it was our first run of 2019. Hoping to get out next week and do it all again. Thanks to the crew for your enthusiasm and positivity and hoping you can make it next time. Thanks for reading
Andrew Hestelow