I MUST have the best wife in the world. I have been off work due to the birth of my first child and leading up to the event, I was told how fishing was going to slow down and I prepared for the worst. Now our daughter has arrived and rearing a child doesn’t seem as difficult as we were told it was going to be, this time off work has been filled with fishing trips as well as changing diapers. I’m one happy man!
I did another double header this last week, on Thursday and Friday with two different game plans on two different waterways. As this is the mulloway season it was time to head up to Brisbane Waters, on the Central Coast of NSW, to hit some deep water and raging currents. Being mid week, the only two people I could muster for a crew were my usual suspects of dad and grandfather.
It’s always interesting to fish for jewies on lures with my Pop. I know he knows they work but he still is a massive disbeliever, even though he has caught them to 7kgs on lures. I’m not sure what the go is. I guess in the twilight of your fishing days you end up similar to how you start out. All you want is constant action and little concern for the size of the fish. Long bouts of casting to the same piece of structure can wear a little thin. That’s why they say flicking lures for jew is the “land of a thousand casts”.
With the planets aligned, meaning we had good currents and the weather looked well, I was certain we had an excellent shot at catching one. After the first hour passed and one missed tap between three fishos, thing looked grim. We moved around the reef trying to find the schools and just about an hour before the high, I hit pay dirt. With a spritely fight in 50ft of water, I had a beautiful 5kg jewie to the boat. It hit a 5″ Yum Houdini Shad in green pumpkin on a 1/2oz Nitro jighead, which in truth has been slaying all my jewies of late.
Once the tide turned, we caught two more but they were bubs. I did pull the hooks on what could possibly been the biggest fish of the day but considering we flicked lures for eight hours, all we caught was three jewies and one lone flathead. If you asked my Pop he would say it was a poor day but a good day if you asked me.
On Friday we went across to hit Botany Bay, more so for a change of scenery than anything else. The good thing about Botany is its diverse species on offer. We hit the runways at first light and it was obvious the trevally were on the job. They are a great fish to target for newcomers as they are easy to catch and pull like stink.
The good news or bad, depending on who you ask, was the size of the tailor on offer. There was a good supply of fish in the 30-45cm class. Personally, I could go the rest of my life without catching one unless it’s for use as live bait. They decimated my plastic collection yesterday but I couldn’t change to a metal lure specifically to target them. I was more interested in catching the other fish on offer which dictated I persist with plastics.
To make things interesting the bream where on the chew and while the flathead were scarce, we did catch a decent fish to 60cms.
The standout lures for the day was the new 3″ Gulp Grub in Banana Prawn and the faithful Squidgies Pro Fish in Grasshopper. The Gulp caught the majority of the bream and also tempted the big dusky.
For those wishing to try Botany now is a good time. My advice is to use a long flick stick, a decent sized jighead and bomb the life out of the runways from the no-boat markers. The closer to the rocks you get, the more fish you will catch. Don’t stray inside the markers though, the security guards will think you really are bombing the runways for real!
