THE push of warm water discussed last month in to our offshore reaches has proven quite productive with big schools of bait in many areas in particular between 70-110 fathoms.
Water temperatures have been between 21 and 24 degrees, and inside the 100-fathom line where less current prevails plenty of slimy mackerel have been holding where the continental shelf itself creates an upwelling of cooler water and food creating the right environment for bait to stay within.
Between Christmas and New Year, a solid marlin bite occurred and on some days individual boats were able to raise multiple fish.
Both lures and skip baits being highly effective, obviously the conversion rate on lures is considerably lower than skip-baiting and switch-baiting.
Teasing a marlin and then feeding live bait back to it is highly effective as long as you have the people on board to manage the method.
Key areas holding fish include the 12-Mile Reef, Bait Hole, inside Bermagui Canyons and the ‘Kink’.
Should the pattern of ocean currents hold similar to what it is today we’re looking at a reasonable marlin season.
Most of the fish range in size between 75-90kg at this stage with the odd to 110kg.
Wide of the shelf where the current picks up some boats have stumbled across smaller yellowfin tuna to 10kg and even a few 2kg models have eaten whole slimy mackerel rigged as skip baits.
The run of kingfish continue and have provided a mixed day offshore where some boats have headed to the Montague Island in the morning to catch a feed of kingies and managed a marlin wide of there in the afternoon.
The Tru Dee V managed do this three days in a row and landed two of the marlin switch-baiting on a spin rod and reel using Saltiga 6500 and a 15-24kg T-Curve rod loaded with 60lb Super PE braid.
The kings are fickle and the use of jigs will more often than not land you plenty of undersize fish and the odd keeper, even jig choice can determine whether a size or under size will result.
The use of soft plastics is highly effective as long as the bait is more than 4-inches in length it will generally produce fish but ensure your jig head weight is sufficient to work the bait properly in line with how much current there is on the day.
Live baiting and fresh strip bait of squid or cuttlefish continue to produce fish most days. The Island has shut down a couple of times when the northerly current has eased but not for more than a day or so and many return home with a few keepers and have thrown plenty of undersize (<65cm) fish back.
The lack of rainfall in recent months has lead to local estuaries staying closed and water levels within them a falling quickly.
This has resulted in better fishing in places like Wallaga Lake where legal size snapper are being caught regularly,
Tailor of good size can be taken readily on poppers and pillies or strip baits drifted beneath a float.
Those trolling new and old school 1-3m diver lures around the edges are catching flathead of good eating size between 40-45cm.
Only a handful of larger models have been landed whilst whiting and bream on the flats in the lake beneath the powerlines are worth a bash with either surface lures or lightly weighted soft lures such as 2 inch Gulp shrimps and Squidgy wrigglers.
It seems that with the closure of so many local estuaries small school-sized mulloway are becoming a more common capture along numerous beaches, the majority of these fish are around 3-4kg and some beaches to the north of the township have produced fish to 10kg on occasion.
We can only assume these fish want to move in through the estuary mouths this time of year but are not able to and therefore are holding on the beaches often in good sized schools.
Despite not prime time for drummer, they are being taken regularly from the rocks and cabbage has worked as well as cooked prawn and cunjevoi this month.
Those spinning from the rocks have been catching salmon of reasonable size and the odd tailor.
We have only seen a couple of smaller kings this month amongst it. Calamari are patchy and the larger cheaper style jigs seem to work best. Areas to try are the rock walls in the harbour, the Blue Pool, First and Second points.
The use of poppers across the flats continues to gain momentum and over the past five years it has produced some excellent captures from whiting to bream to flathead and when surface temperatures peaked during this past fortnight there was a lot of fun had by all whether using the cheaper Surecatch lures through to high end Japanese stick baits such as Fakie Dogs, Sugerpen 70’s or Gunfish 75’s etc.
The river is producing better sized duskies but remember the larger fish are breeding females and their release is certainly preferred.
Cheers,
Scotty, Milla, Cam, Nick and Barks at Bermagui Bait and Tackle
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