The saying is that the fishing improves after a rain. This is true but unfortunately there is a little pain before that gain. We are starting to see a little improvement in the passage but the bay itself has a long way to go to be back to what it was before this rain event. With so much rain flowing into it from all the creeks and rivers another week or two and we will finally see the water quality back to where it should be and then the fishing will be much improved.
The reason the passage has come back a lot quicker is that it is very tidal and has had a week of cleansing so the salinity levels are up and the fish are coming back. We have seen bag limit catches of good sized snapper and large bream taken from all the normal areas especially the ripples and the drop off inside the ripples. The snapper have been up to 70 cms and taking most fish type baits like herring, pilchard and mullet as well as soft plastics. The bream seem to have grown overnight and the larger fish have come from the canal systems. This is because bream are a scavenger and love a bit of dirty water.
Another fish that has fired up after the rain is jewfish although the size has dropped a little. They are another schooling species that doesn’t mind murky conditions. As they are schooling fish they need deeper water and the bridge is the ideal place for them. They are a fast growing species and because of this have to eat all the time so they take advantage of all the extra food that get washed into the system after rain. They have big mouths so will readily take a larger bait but prefer movement so live baits work best or if using dead baits make sure you have plenty dangly bits that can move in the current. To do this with a fish bait like a dead mullet or a large pilchard you can fillet either side of the bait but don’t cut the fillet off the head, remove the back one so you have the fish with two flaps of fish attached. Place a large circle hook in the head of the fish so that the current can move the flaps to entice the jewies. Don’t forget the jewfish has a legal size limit of 75cm and a bag limit of 2.
The wet weather has played havoc with the lagoons up the beach which is both good and bad. Bad for all of us that want to drive the beach as they are flowing across the beach and we are limited to 1 hr either side of low tide to travel the beach. Good for us fishos as the flowing water creates its own burley by stirring up the sand and bringing up the worms and the pippies which are natural feed for surf species like whiting and dart. This in turn brings the predator species like tailor which are being caught in good numbers at the moment.