Cubing for Yellow Fin has historically produced a greater percentage of bigger fish, larger fish raised can be difficult to feed a bait to and it’s important to persist and present a few different options to a nice tuna should you be lucky enough to raise one in your burley trail. Quite often it will require tying the hook directly to your 50 or 80lb line swiftly to get the fish to eat. Floating and deep set live baits, a steady pilchard cube trail and a whole Pilchard or piece thereof being stripped and retrieved consistently will all help produce fish on any given day. High quality pilchards are important as baits, a lesser quality pilchard may be used to cut up and cube with. Persistence is the key, a 2 or 3 hour session is quite often not sufficient and the best results are achieved by those who do the time (ie all day wherever possible).

A push of cooler water in close has helped produce some good Snapper, the average size of these fish is better this year with fish just either side of 40cm being common. We have seen some nice specimens of up to 65cm which are large fish for here and hopefully a sign of a good season to come (May, June and July in particular). Last weekend these fish were quieter in close aside from some good fish (Snapper & Kingfish) taken on the Eden Explorer and a few visiting boats fishing off Goalen Head including a kingfish of 16kg. Those fishing the 6 Mile Reef last weekend proved that the wider reefs are now holding good numbers of Snapper and both Jackass and Rubber lipped Morwong.

Fishing deep on the Continental shelf has been hampered by a north flowing under current this week but the temptation of the superior eating qualities of Blue Eye Trevalla, Ling and Tasmanian Trumpeter will see some persist in targeting these fish. Obviously, electric reels like Daiwa’s Tanacom Bull and Shimano’s Dendou Maru have made this style of fishing more efficient, the Tanacom Bull having a clear advantage of a greater line capacity and dead lift capability. Basically, we use standard leader materials of up to 600lb, 3 way crane swivels and heavy 10/0-13/0 circle hooks to crimp together an effective 3 hook rig with a 32 ounce sinker on the bottom. Fresh squid and pilchards the preferred baits so too barracuda and slimey mackerel pieces.

Montague Island has consistently produced Kingfish either side of the 65cm legal length for a few months now and the use of live baits has proven most effective. We have seen some nice Bonito taken on trolled lures early morning coupled with a few under sized Kingfish for release. A couple of times during April fish well over the 90cm mark were taken following on from a relatively quiet 2008 season.

Those chasing Flathead will find areas such as the Step, Cemetery and Tilba consistent whilst to the south of the port captures of good sized fish have been sporadic although on occasion the 3 Brothers in 30-40m of water and Cuttagee in 55m have produced both Snapper and Flathead in acceptable numbers. The 4 Mile Reef should now start to produce a few Snapper also along with the wider reefs.

Our local estuaries were producing some nice whiting amongst the bream and flathead earlier in the month but they have moved on aside from those in the harbour at present but they are hard to catch. Berkeley has produced a 5 inch Jerk Shad with ‘Crazy Legs’ which is an excellent soft bait accounting for plenty of flathead. It is available as Gulp Alive in the wider tub which is a better option as it’s harder to tip over and a good place to stash the rest of your Gulp’s versus the smaller traditional tub first launched 2 years ago. Some stand out lures we’ve been using include the Zip baits Rigge 35F and the Khamasin Jr, the later being a very impressive suspending lure it just seems to hang there forever. Wallaga Lake fishes much slower these days given it’s been closed now for a couple of years but it has produced some legal size snapper and more recently frequent captures of nice sized Flathead, especially by lure using Gulp 3 inch Pumpkinseed minnow grubs.

It’s from now on we see some of the best bream fishing of the year as the cooler months hence cooler waters of crystal clear nature become more prevalent in the regions estuaries. Whilst bait fishing provides a somewhat mellow day out in the tinny and some great captures, lure fishing with soft and hard baits is the most challenging means of tempting this species. Light braided lines, strong graphite rods and small thread line reels along with a piece of neatly crafted expensive Japanese made craftsmanship on the end of the line is the ultimate means of catching these fish. It is well worth making an attempt to pursue these fish by this means and your local tackle shop will steer you in the right direction.

Local beaches are producing some Tailor amongst the Salmon and the odd bream. Mulloway (Jewfish) were fewer during the month and those captured were small relative to those taken in Wagonga in recent weeks. There has been a few small kingfish spun up off the rocks amongst the Salmons. The local clan of Luderick fisherman has been quiet this month but they have caught some nice fish with the average specimen down on size from last month.

Cheers

Scotty, Michael, Cam and James at Bermagui Bridge Motors