The Fishing Clinic Notes Winter 1989 at St George Leagues Club.
Hosted by Bruce Schumacher and others.
Bait and Bait Gathering
It is always best to use the native bait of the area you are fishing and to present it to the fish you’re trying to catch as naturally as possible.
Prawns
There are five major types of prawns you will catch in the estuaries and on the sand flats around Sydney. These are:
· School prawns
· King prawns
· Tiger prawns
· Banana prawns
· Greasy back prawns (these don’t keep too well)
Baiting the hook with prawns varies depending on whether the prawn is dead/frozen or alive:
· For dead/frozen prawns, pass the hook from just under the base of the tail through the body and out among the legs just behind the head. Don’t curl the prawn on the hook – this is not the way prawns naturally swim. Instead, straighten the prawn so that it’s body lays along the shank of the hook. You can also tie a loop (half hitch) around the base of the tail with your line to stop the prawn sliding down the hook. See the diagram below.
· If the prawn is still alive, pass the hook from the under side of the tail out the top of the shell about two segments in front of where the tail starts. This will ensure that the prawn stays alive a lot longer than if you were to rig it up as for the dead/frozen prawn. See the diagram below.
Dead/Frozen Prawn Live Prawn
When freezing prawns, put them in a container and cover them with water before freezing them. You may need to use something to keep the prawns under the water surface if they are floating. This stops the air getting to the prawn while it is freezing, thereby stopping deterioration due to freezer burn. When you thaw the prawns for your next trip, they will be as good as prior to being frozen.
When using the prawns for bait, use a hook to suit the size of the prawns you will be using. Generally, a hook number 540 in the range 4 to 3/0 will be required.
Pilchards
Pilchards are used as bait mainly for tailor, but can be used for a variety of fish if prepared differently. You can fillet one side of the pilchard and use the side with the backbone. This is a top flathead bait.
When ganging a pilchard, keep the hooks above the backbone, and make sure the barbs of the hooks are exposed. This ensures that the bait will stay longer on the hook and also that the rate of hook-ups will be higher.
When buying pilchards, get the IQF (individual quick frozen) type as opposed to the slab variety as they are of a better quality.
If you don’t have access to a refrigerator, salt the pilchards down with butcher’s salt and keep them in a cool place. Handled this way, they will last for up to a week.
Squid
When you buy squid, they should be white in colour (their natural colour), not pink, as they are when you buy them in the packets. If the squid are pink, it means that they are not as fresh as possible.
When baiting up a squid, pull the hook right through the body the first time. Then pass the hook back through the body and finally through the head. This makes great bait for snapper and jewfish.
Whitebait
These are normally small fish sold either fresh or frozen in packets. 1 or 2 loaded onto the hook (through the eyes) makes a great flathead bait.
With the larger whitebait, use a small gang to rig the bait up properly.
Slimy Mackerel Fillet the fish and load onto a gang, or cut it up into cubes and load onto a normal hook. Leave the shin on so the bait will be tougher and stay on the hook better.
Pink Nippers
These yabby-like creatures are found in small holes on the mud or sand flays. The fresh holes where you will most likely find the nippers are the ones that have lighter coloured sand around the opening.
Nippers are great bait for any kind of fish, particularly if they are alive. Bait them up in the same way you would a live prawn.
To keep them alive, put them in a bucket with fresh salt water and an aerator. Any dead nippers should be removed from the water as they foul it and will kill the other yabbies in the tank. They can also be kept in a damp sugar bag with ribbon weed.
Pipis
These bivalve molluscs are found on the beaches in the wash zone under 1 to 2 feet of sand. They make a great bait for any of the smaller varieties of fish caught from the beach – whiting, bream flathead, dart, etc.
Beach Worms
These are also found in the wash areas of the beach. Use an old piece of meat or fish frame to find them as the wave is washing back towards the ocean. You can spot them by the ‘V’ shape in the retreating wave.
To catch the worms, place the meat (or fish) up water from the worm and place your finger or pliers under its body as it crawls to get the meat. When the worm arches to strike at the meat, close your thumb over the worm’s neck and pull gently but firmly. Pliers can also be used in place of your fingers, but the worm’s do not live as long as when caught wit the fingers.
Keep the worms in cool dry sand after catching them, as this will toughen them up so they stay on the hook better.
To bait them up, thread a piece of worm onto the hook, leaving a little bit over the end so it moves in the water.
Blood Worms
These are caught in the mud flats near mangroves. Dig them out carefully with a pitchfork, breaking them out of the mud as you go.
To get a lot together, bury a piece of fish in the mud and mark it with a stake on the shore. This will attract the works from a reasonable area, making them easier to collect.
Bloodworms can be kept alive in a bucket of fresh salt water. Bait them up as for a beach worm.
Guts
Mullet Gut – can be bought commercially or you can go to the fish markets to get it. Before using it or freezing it down, get rid of the ‘onions’, as these are of little use in the bait.
When baiting up mullet gut, push the hook through a piece, wind it around the hook, and then repeat until the hook is full.
Chicken Gut – sold commercially as ‘Fisho’, but this is not very fresh. It’s best to go straight to the chook farm or processing plant and get it while it’s still warm.
Baiting up is the same as for mullet gut. This is particularly good bait when the water is cloudy or dirty.
Where and When To Catch Fish
Bream
The best time to catch these fish is in winter on a very dark night around the top of the tide. The fish will come in close to the rocky shores to feed, and this is where you will catch them.
Moor you boat three to four boat lengths out from the shore and throw your unweighted baits back towards the rocks. Keep very quiet as the larger bream are easily spooked, or scared away. Fish very light, using no sinker if possible. If you must use a sinker, use only a split-shot right on the hook. Use six to 8 pound line and a size 1 or 1/0 9263 hook.
Best baits to use are mullet gut, peeled prawns, chicken gut, or pudding (a mixture of camp pie, flour, and parmesan cheese is very good).
The best places to fish for bream are the Hawkesbury River, Cowan Creek, Sydney Harbour, or Georges River. Schooling bream can be found at Bar Point, The vines, Juno, or the bridges. In these places, use 15 pound line with a running sinker (just enough o hold bottom), a long trace, and a size 1 to 3/0 hook.
When fishing for bream, it is always a good idea to berley. Use a mixture of boiled wheat and laying pellets.
Snapper
These fish are found mainly offshore, north of Newcastle and south of Wollongong. The best times to fish are very early or after dusk with a bright moon.
Use a 4/0 92554 hook with 1 or 2 ball sinkers running, but right on the hook. Best baits are striped tuna (fillets or cubes), yellowtail, and frigate or slimy mackerel. Try to keep the baits off the bottom.
Berley the fish with old fish frames, etc, and keep a track of the depth at which you have your bait when you get bites.
Flathead
There are basically three types of flathead – Dusky and Sand, both found in estuaries and tend to be lone fish, and Tiger which are found outside in water of about 30 fathoms and usually in patches.
Flathead prefer moving water, so try to use moving baits. Spinning with either live bait or a lure is often the best method to catch them.
Estuarine Flathead will position themselves so that their food is washed to them on the runout tide. This is usually on the edge of sandbanks, in eddies, etc,
Use a 3 to 6kg line with a 1/0 to 4/0 hook and drift with your line on the bottom on the end of a 2 to 3 foot trace.
Flathead season peaks from early December to late April, with the larger fish moving to deeper water at the end of the season.
Whiting
These fish can be caught at all hours, both in the rivers and off the beach, and can be found on the sand banks in these areas. They are mainly a summer fish, although winter whiting are also caught.
Use a Mustad 540 hook, size 4, with no more than 3kg line. The best baits are beach worms, bloodworms, pink nippers and pipis.
The rig used to catch whiting is shown below:
Tailor
Tailor can be caught off the beach, in the estuaries, or off the rocks by either spinning or trolling with lures. If spinning, use ganged hooks (size 4/0 upwards) and whole pilchards of garfish as bait. They can also be caught using a bobby cork with the bait suspended below it.
Use a 12 foot rod with 12 to 20 pound line and no sinker. It is best to fish for tailor in the early morning or the late afternoon, and they can be caught all year round.
Hairtail
Hairtail a primarily a winter fish with their season starting around Anzac day. The best places to fish for hairtail are the little bays and coves in Cowan Waters, but they have also been caught in good numbers off Box Head and Clifton Gardens.
Fish in water 20 to 50 feet deep, and use only live baits of yellowtail, etc on 20 pound line. Berley using bread and minced fish – this is not to attract the hairtail, but to attract the fish that the hairtail feed on.
Be careful when you get them in the boat as they have very big, very sharp teeth, which have been known to take a finger off. Despite this, they are delicious eating.
Luderick
Also known as blackfish, they can be caught off the rocks or in the estuaries on the run in or run out tides all year round. The run out tide is usually the best however, and the bigger fish are caught during the winter.
Using the rig in the picture below, try a variety of depths (by varying the position of the stopper knot) until the bait is just above the bottom.
The bait used to fish for blackfish is green weed in the estuaries and cabbage off the rocks. Green weed can be collected in drains, etc, near the spot you are fishing. Get the longest strands you can, as this will make it easier to put on the hook. Cabbage is picked off the rocks where the fish are caught.
It is almost always necessary to berley for blackfish. In the estuaries, mince some weed and mix it in a bucket with sand. Let handfuls of this mixture float on the current down to the fish. On the other hand, when fishing off the rocks, pick a few pieces of cabbage and let them wash off the rocks into the water with the receding waves.
The gear used to fish for blackfish is as follows:
Line 0.5 to 1.5kg
Rods 3m for estuaries and 4.2m for the rocks
Reels side-cast, centre pin, or egg-beater (not as popular)
Hooks estuary – French or viking size 6 to 10
rocks - French or viking size 4 to 8
Mulloway
Also known as jewfish, these can be caught in the estuaries or off the beach, mainly in summer (September through to March/April) at the top of the tide and the first of the run out in the week up to the full moon. Pick the tide with the smallest difference between high and low water.
Use yellowtail or slimy mackerel, either live or frozen, and suspend the bait 2 to 3m off the bottom on an 8/0 to 10/0 hook on 40 to 60lb line.
When putting the hook in the bait, make sure that the set of the hook is up so as to better your chances of a hook-up.
Squid or cuttlefish can also be used as bait on a size 8/0 hook.
The best place to fish is in the Hawkesbury River in areas with deeper water and baitfish. Also look for eddies. Berley with pieces of fish left over from previous trips.
Mulloway are best fished from a boat, but can be fished from the shore. Generally, when targeting mulloway, the bigger the bait, the bigger the fish you will catch.
Rigs used to catch mulloway include:
Prawning and Crabbing
Prawning - is best done on a dark night 3 to 4 days after the full moon from September to April. The best places to prawn are sand flats, particularly those at The Entrance, although Lake Narrabeen is also worth a try.
To catch the prawns, use a prawning net and a powerful waterproof torch. Walk in the water, scooping up the prawns in the net after you see them in the light. All you will see of the prawn are its eyes as they reflect the light.
Once caught, keep the prawns alive in shallow water in a fish box. Clean them by putting them in fresh water – this makes them disgorge all the rubbish from their systems, and then cook them in boiling fresh water for 3 to 4 minutes in 1 pound lots. Salt them to taste after cooking.
Crabbing - in Sydney will primarily land you with mud crabs or blue swimmer crabs. Catch them by using either a ‘witches hat’ or crab box. Crabs can be caught at about the same time as prawns, but are just as active during the day as they are at night.
Use a piece of meat or a fish frame as bait in either the net of the box. They can also be caught on the sand flats using a spotlight.
Clean the mud crabs before cooking them. Putting them to sleep in the freezer for about half an hour and then cracking the shell open and removing the rubbish inside is the best way to achieve this.
Legal sixes for the crabs mentioned here are:
· Mud crab – 8.5 cm from the front of the shell to the back
· Blue swimmer – 6.5 cm from the front of the shell to the back.
Should you catch any female crabs with eggs, consider returning them to the water to continue breeding.
Different Fishing Environments
The Western Rivers
The best time to fish any of the western rivers is when they are rising. This is usually after rain upstream or if a dam has been opened. The heights of the rivers at certain points along their courses are listed in the papers and these should be checked before deciding on a location to fish.
Always fish within 3 to 5 m of the bank, using a 5/0 hook and fairly heavy line. This is especially the case when going after Murray Cod and Golden Perch. Limit the lead you use to maybe a split-shot, but ideally you should use no lead at all. The best times to fish are in the early morning or late afternoon/night.
Most of the banks of the rivers are on private property, so you can’t fish there unless you get permission from the property owner first. On the other hand, find the Travelling Stock Routes (TSR’s). These are public land, and although most times this is a very narrow strip of land, when it gets to a river, it will be anything from 3 to 4 miles along it’s banks. The locations of the TSR’s can be gained from the Environmental Resources commission in the area you want to fish.
Species most likely to be caught in the western rivers are the Murray Cod, European Carp, Golden Perch, freshwater catfish, and the silver perch.
Murray Cod - a very territorial fish, the Murray cod will most likely be found where there is a tree, a stump, or some other structure in the river. If using live baits, the fish will strike immediately, but with dead baits, the fish will often play with them for a while.
Golden Perch – will normally be found in the sandy, reedy areas of the river.
Silver Perch – will be found in more or less the same places and conditions as the golden perch.
Freshwater Catfish – can be caught anywhere in the rivers
The most common baits used to catch these varieties of fish are:
Garden Worms – dig them out of the ground and put the whole worm on the hook by pushing the body of the worm along the hook. Leave a bit hanging over the end of the hook to get some movement.
Small Native Fish – can be caught at the location where you plan to fish.
Bogong Moth Larvae – are found in holes in the ground near trees. Use the inside of a speedo or brake cable to get them out.
Witchetty Grubs – found in the lower trunk and root systems of particular trees.
Fresh Water Shrimps – caught by putting a bucket or drum with small holes punched in the bottom in the water. Put a cake of sunlight soap into the bucket or drum, along with a rock (to stop the bucket floating away) and leave overnight.
Yabbies – are found in the dams, billabongs, and rivers. Use a piece of cotton to which has been tied a piece of meat or bread. When you bring them to the shore, use a landing net to get them out of the water.
Frogs – most commonly found in the bark of the ironbark tree.
Beach Fishing
The best times to fish the beach, regardless of the seasons, is from the top of the tide down at dusk or dawn, in the gutters found along the beach.
There are two type of beach – the summer beach and the winter beach. They are quite different from one another and these differences are explained next.
Summer beaches have what are called ‘constructive waves’, meaning that the sand is being pushed back onto the beach from the ocean. This makes it a shallow beach in that the depth of the water increases slowly in the wash zone.
The best areas to fish the summer beach are along the edges of the parallel and perpendicular gutters appearing on the beach. Typically, pelagic fish are found in the deeper water of the perpendicular gutters, while the other varieties of fish are found in the shallower parallel gutters.
Winter beaches have what are known as ‘destructive waves’, meaning that sand is being pulled from the beach and deposited out to sea. This is typically at the line of the first breakers from the shore, making the gradient of the beach at the wash zone quite steep.
Again, the best areas to fish are in the gutters of the beach, with the same species appearing in the same locations within the gutters as for the summer beach.
The next diagram shows the general layout and water direction of gutters on the beaches:
The rigs to use when beach fishing are shown in the next diagram. The rig with the star sinker is best used in the parallel gutters to hold the line at a particular point, while still letting the bait be presented quite naturally.
Rock Fishing
The best spots to fish off the rocks are where there is deep water close in with breakers over an offshore reef. Use the smallest lead that will allow you to get your bait out the required distance. Depending on the type of fish you are after will determine the breaking strain of the line you will use. This varies from 2kg for bream, etc, up to 20kg for the bigger, more powerful fish, like king fish and drummer.
Species likely to be encountered from the rocks are bream, trevally, luderick, drummer, jewfish and snapper.
The best baits to use are cunjevoi, garfish, pilchards, fresh prawns, cabbage, abalone gut, crabs, octopus and squid.
Essential gear when rock fishing is sand shoes with rock cleats or plates, a heavy rod and reel, a light rod and reel, spare line, sharp knife, bait bucket, keeper bag, small tackle box, and a torch. The most convenient way to carry all these items is in a rucksack.
Freshwater Fishing
This type of fishing can be done in any of the water catchment areas or lakes around the country, except those that are used as domestic water catchment areas. Some of these are Blowering Dam at Tumut, Pejar Dam at Goulburn, and Glenbourne Dam at Muswellbrook. The best dam in terms of the amount of fish put in there by the Department Of Fisheries is Wyangala Dam.
There are essentially four ways to catch the fish in these impoundments: trolling with flatfish lures, spinning with lures, bait fishing, or fly-fishing. When spinning with lures, the bigger lures are not always as effective as the smaller ones, except perhaps when fishing for Australian Bass.
If you are using baits, float them at the edge of the muddy water near the shore – this is where the fish cruise past looking for food, which has been washed out of the bank. In particular, look for any point jutting out into the lake, or near a rocky shoreline.
The best baits in these conditions are dragonfly larvae and mud eyes. Dragonfly larvae are found floating in the water or attached to pieces of wood in the water, while mud eyes are found in the mud of the lake bottom.
Lure Fishing
Technically, there is no fish that cannot be caught on a lure, although blackfish are possibly an exception. The art of lure fishing is mainly an exercise in trial and error. If a particular type of lure does not work, try a different style, colour, or size.
Lures are used by casting and retrieving. Use a light rod about 6 feet in length with 5 pound line and a spinning reel, bait caster, or overhead reel.
There are basically two types of lure – trolling and actioned lures.
Trolling Lures have no action and are dragged through the water behind the boat. When trolling offshore, move along the current lines, as this will increase your chances of a strike.
Actioned Lures move in a random way through the water when reeled in. These can either be deep diving or shallow diving.
When a fish strikes a lure, don’t tug suddenly on the line. Rather, work the fish back to the boat slowly.
Most lures available today will have between one and three treble hooks attached to the. Those with brown coloured hooks are generally for fresh water, while those with silver hooks are for salt water.