With the Pirtek Fishing Challenge on over the weekend of April 21, plenty of anglers put their fishing skills to work in our estuaries to try and lure those large bream, dusky flathead, tailor, whiting, blackfish, and salmon. The weather was a bit average on Saturday and perfect on Sunday, with the fishing being good.
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Merimbula lake fished really well. I heard of some large dusky flathead caught and lost, bream up to 40cm, tailor trawling around the top lake edges and even blackfish on lures. Bega River was a little harder, but plenty of bream around the edges, only small dusky flathead, occasional mulloway, and mullet on lures.
Good luck to those who entered fish.
Outside the sand flathead are still good in numbers off Tura Heads to Bournda Island, fishing in depths of 30 to 40 meters, with sand flathead to 50cm in size.
There are also odd gurnard and gummy sharks for some anglers.
The reef fishing is still pretty slow off Long Point and Haycock. With the water cooling to around 18 degrees it should not be long before some nice snapper turn up. At the moment the snapper are very patchy, but a feed can still be caught with morwong, odd nannygai, and leatherjackets.
There are still plenty of salmon and fewer bonito being caught from our wharfs and headlands and trawling around the headlands for the boaters, and the beaches have salmon, tailor and plenty of mullet moving north for there spawn run. Beach worms as bait will catch the mullet and remember they must be 30cm long to keep. Also, odd whiting and bream could be caught on the beach worms as well.
With the cooling waters the bass fishing is slowing down a bit, but they are still being caught when the insects are moving around during the day at Brogo dam and in the local rivers. The trout at Lake Eucumbene are biting better with the cooler water temperatures, rainbow and brown trout are being caught trawling with tassie devils early and late afternoons and off the banks using mudeyes and power bait.
The game fishing has slowed right up now with the water cooling down, with temperatures of 19 to 21 degrees and it being very patchy the marlin fishing has slowed up. If you find some bait balling action, there might be a marlin or two in amongst the seals, but they have thinned right out. Now we wait for the yellow fin tuna to turn up. With the full moon only days away the chance of a first tuna is possible over the next week trawling inside and over the second drop off could start your season. Or heading wide for an investigative trip you might get lucky.
The Merimbula Big Game and Lakes Angling Club is open every Friday night, come down and enjoy a raffle and catch up on the week's fishing reports.
Everyone is welcome.
