SOME fish really get inside your head and create a passion for the chase. There’s something iconic about big silver fish with big scales, and in Australia the mulloway, better known by most as a jewfish or jewie, is the type of species many anglers dedicate a lot of time to hunting. In most places jewies are common enough to target, but they are generally not that easy to catch. I’ve been chasing jewies for about 40 years now, although as a 10-year-old it was a lot more dreaming than reality.
When I was a kid I spent a lot of time fishing the Hawkesbury and Cowan Creek with my Dad, and during school holidays I was one of the most dedicated jetty rats around. Kids’ stories grow, and bigger kids always told bigger stories. When the handline took off and we busted up on a rampaging stingray, we always reckoned it was a jewie.
At the time my mates and I read all the old Anglers Digests and Outdoor magazines and knew all the theory about catching jewfish. My mate Ken Strong, now an established and well known landscape artist, moved from where we lived to St Huberts Island in Brisbane Waters, and I regularly visited him for the holidays that were fish-fests of monumental proportions. To a kid, that place was the Cato Island of the modern day. Ken’s Dad, David Strong, was a very meticulous angler and taught us a lot. He sowed the seeds for a career in jewie fishing when he caught some nice schoolies near Paddys Channel. As we got a little older, we started to take the old wooden dinghy out by ourselves, and we started fishing really quite cleverly. We’d be up till all hours catching live prawns for bait with a dip net and a light, and we fished light line, usually Damyl six pound Super Mimicry, and live prawns off rods and handlines. This produced plenty of big bream, flathead and a lot of small jewies, with a few monster eight pounders being the peak. When such a fish takes off on a cork handline it takes a fair degree of finesse and skill to control it, but we learnt our art well under the stewardship of Ken’s Dad, who taught us the lesson that the lighter the line the more bites you get.
We also fished for hairtail in Cowan Creek, and we caught plenty of small jewies as a bycatch. Around this time I was in high school and had joined Kur-ring-gai Hornsby Angling and Casting Club, which was like going to a fishing university for a keen young angler. Here I met plenty of other young guns, and the weekly weigh-in and competition saw plenty of big jewies hit the scales. It was a different place and time to the modern era and life was pretty simple. Catch & release of jewies only ever occurred by accident (I think I have definitely maintained that theme), and blokes like David Lindfield, Keith Arlidge, Michael Trimboli, Eddy Huttary, Terry Haack and a host of others took the time to help us learn the jewie trade. It was a fantastic club for junior anglers to join, but, looking back on it now, it was most definitely a different era. We’d catch the train to Berowra station, walk down the track to Waratah Bay, camp in caves and catch plenty of jewfish from small soapies up to reasonable schoolies fishing off the bank with live yakkas.
In the early to mid 1970s there were quite a few floods in the Hawkesbury system and during one of these flood run-offs we went to Box Head. In water almost thick enough to plough we watched locals catch some big jewies on feather lures. A lot of these fish were around 20 kilos and the walk out was steep and tough. We helped a few of the older blokes carry fish out. One of these anglers was Gene Dundon, who wrote for Fishing World. He was my auntie’s milkman, I think. It was the first time I saw jewies caught on lures, although I had read about the Garvens at Yamba catching big ones on chair leg plugs. By the time I was about 19 I was ready for the next flood and I caught my first jewie on a lure after a flood event from the rocks near Kilcare beach. It ate a red and white feather with a two-ounce head and was 20 pound on the dot.
As soon as I got my car license the scope of our fishing changed greatly. We fished off the rocks a lot for tuna, groper, tailor, salmon and bonito, but we soon found that when we’d end our day shift a lot of more secretive types were beginning night shift on the rocks and beaches chasing a different target. These were the blokes that left piles of big scales on the rocks after their sessions, and I started working night shift more often. I pretty soon had a pattern for the beach jewies well sussed out. Using a six-inch rosewood Alvey on a Butterworth 7144 I looked for a high tide around 8-10pm and would fish for tailor until dark with pillies. Once I had a few the rig would be changed and I’d send a big strip of fresh tailor on back to back hooks out into one of my favourite gutters. The week of the full moon between November and March was usually the best, and when conditions were right we’d get a jewie roughly two nights out of three, and we started to nail some better fish up to around 14 kilos. Most were six to nine kilos on my favourite piece of beach. There are few things better in fishing than standing on a beach at night and feeling the rattly bite of a decent jewie, then striking hard to come up solid on a big fish that belts your knuckles as the Alvey starts going backwards fast.
When school finished and I started uni my life changed enormously, but in the uni breaks I caught more jewies than I probably ever will again. I spent a lot of time fishing offshore on the central and mid north coast of NSW and jewies were the main target. The rig was rough as guts. A 10-ounce bean sinker was hammered to the line only about 20cm above a 9/0 jewie hook, and was fished with a live yakka or slimy from a cane springer on a hundred pound handline. We used rods as well, but the jewie springers were the main game. You’d sit in the middle of the boat, the springer would shake a bit, then slam down and you’d grab the line and start jewie wrestling. Gloves were not permitted, and if you got a couple of good grabs you could keep the jewie coming. I remember at the time in Fishing World, before I started writing, an article by Steve Starling and a picture of Steve posing next to six big jewies on a boat ramp somewhere near Gerringong, on the NSW South Coast. Steve got a few letters about this being overkill and being way too many fish. But in my world at the time that catch was bugger all. I remember a mate who filled the entire back tray of a Holden ute with big jewies caught during the day at West Reef in the mouth of Broken Bay. But like I said, it was a different time and place to where we are now.
I finished my medical training and did my internship at Gosford Hospital in 1982. Most interns choose the hospital they go to based on training opportunities, but my choice was based more on the fishing ones. I was sick of living in inner Sydney, and while working at Gosford bought a panel van and a 16 foot Clark Abalone. I moved into a beach side house which I shared with my mates and girlfriend. It was the perfect situation: there were jewies in the back yard now! I adopted the trick of converting tailor into jewies and the best gutter at the time was right behind our house on Copacabana Beach. It was a pretty cool place, in fact, Newk (tennis star John Newcombe) lived next door during the holidays. In summer I’d come home from work when the tides were right, catch a couple of chopper tailor, walk back up to the house, have tea and then go down for the high tide and catch a jewie. The next night we’d hold these bloody big fish barbecues and cook whole jewies wrapped in foil while the surf rolled in just behind the back fence. I used to swap all my on call and night duty shifts to coincide with the crappy tides. As well as smashing the jewies off the beach, we started fishing at night out of Terrigal Haven. The springers were back in action and we caught plenty of beauties up to 58 pound from the Clark at places like Forresters Bommie, Toowoon Bay and Foggies. We would often come home late at night and have to be at work early the next day. If we caught a few jewies we’d usually leave them in the bath tub with a couple of bags of ice covered in a towel. This caused a few problems with some of the female housemates at the time.
I remember fishing one night out of Terrigal with my boss, Bill Toh. We were in an old Quinnie, one of the models with a ’glass deck and aluminium hull. The boat hadn’t been out for a while, and halfway through the night we began sinking. We scrambled home furiously bailing. It was a very nervous jewie free night.
We left Gosford in 1984, but just prior to this I found a few tricky scenarios unfolding near the Gosford rail bridge. I was driving past one night and saw a bloke cast a big lure along the edge of the light. I stopped to watch. He had that “I’ve been sprung” look and I could smell the unmistakable odour of a freshly caught jewie. When I asked him what he’d caught he said he had a couple of bream. Pig’s arse! I bought a big green Bomber the next day and went to try my luck at the Erina Bridge near my home. To my amazement I got one on, in a relatively small creek. It was a big fish as well but I pulled the hooks. Over the next two weeks I caught three jewies on cast lures, but I’d accepted a job in Queensland and it was time to move before I got the bridges and lights thing fully worked out.
When I started work on the Gold Coast it took a while to work out the fishing. The Southport Bar at the time was quite treacherous, and I was working up to 80 hours or more per week. I met one of the radiographers who was a keen fisho and we became good mates. That was Brad Job who writes the rod building column for this mag. I bought a 6m Sportfish centre console (Gemma 1) and custom fitted it out in the style of what I knew at the time. That boat is now about 28 years old and was recently bought by another mate who wanted to know what all the holes down the side were. When I told him they were springer holders he didn’t know what I meant, which shows the way things have changed.
I fished a fair bit off the Tweed River rock walls with Steve Hall in the late 1980s and early ’90s and we caught plenty of really good ones up to 24 kilos on live mullet. One night, using an A series seven-inch Alvey, 40 pound mono and a massive jewie pole, I was sitting on the wall half asleep when I got a tremendous hit. The Alvey spun and the handle got caught in the crutch of my overalls, nearly ripping the crown jewels into the spool. That fish was 22 kilos and left me with a very bruised groin!
We caught a few jewies in the Southport Broadwater prior to the Gold Coast Seaway being built but when the new entrance was opened we started to get consistent results. At first we drifted live baits through the channel and along the south wall, and in the first three years I never saw a jewie under about eight kilos. I fished a lot with Steve Hall, Brad and Jeff Adams at the time, and we’d go offshore to get our livies and then drift them through the Seaway. In 1990 we started to catch a lot of smaller fish, which just seemed to show up one day and have stayed since. I caught a tagged jewie around 65cm at this time. It had been tagged at Ulmarra in the Clarence River at 27cm 14 months earlier, which shows how fast these fish grow.
These days we continue to catch jewies in the Seaway and Jumpinpin and also offshore, on bait and lures. The thrill of catching a decent jewie is, for me, just as exciting as ever.
Two nights back my mate Aykut caught a 121cm fish, about 15 kilos, from my tinny and his grin and excitement for his PB jewie showed how special these great silver fish are to those who chase them.
It is curious how a fish can follow you through life. For me, jewies have always been a big part of the fishing landscape and it seems that I’ve always fished for them, caught them and eaten them.
Writing this article has made me feel old, but this afternoon I think I might just sneak down to Jumpinpin. I’ve heard the jewies are back on the chew on plastics.
The thrill and chase of catching jewies never fades.
