In memory of Andrew ‘Roy’ Symonds

In memory of Andrew ‘Roy’ Symonds, fisho and all-round legend .

Pictures from Instagram

Rebekah Ellis of Iluka with a nice pan-sized flathead taken on a soft plastic lure on Shark Bay beach.

Lismore angler Guy Stewart watched in disbelief as the 30lb Platypus Low Stretch line disappeared from his Penn Slammer reel while fishing for jew. The fish finally spat the hooks. Bec got a few nice bream while targeting flathead off Shark Bay beach using 4” Berkley PowerBait Pumpkinseed soft-plastic lures.

Heavily taxed jewfish

from P30 Iluka Bluff has been fishing reasonably well for chopper tailor around the 1kg mark and the occasional nice school jew to 10kg, but it’s only a matter of time before reports start filtering in of bigger fish getting in on the action.

Both Main Beach and Back Beach have produced reasonable numbers of bream and tailor and if you happen to come across a bit of water with mullet holding in it, you’re in with a shot of getting a nice jew as well.

Lismore angler Guy Stewart fished Shark Bay with us for a few days last month, trying to catch a big jew on whole mullet, to no avail.

However, he did have numerous hookups and finally landed a little blacktip shark that was quickly turned into crumbed fish fingers.

One evening Guy fed three butterflied mullet into a nice rip, with his first bait getting eaten by a shark which left him with only the tail of the mullet and one of his two hooks.

As he began to rig up again, I offered him one of my rigs that was ready to go with two 10/0 Eagle Claw hooks, but he insisted on using his own that had two 10/0 octopus hooks on it.

His second bait would have been in the water for no more than 15 minutes when he hooked a decent fish that duly spat the hooks after a short fight and he wound in an almost totally scaled mullet with all the hooks attached, which meant without doubt he had just dropped a jew for sure.

I convinced him to use my rig, which he finally did, but by this time it had become dark and started to rain, so while he used his third and final bait, I sat in my car listening to the football.

A short while later and over the noise of the radio, I heard what sounded like a whip crack, a few words a sailor wouldn’t use, then Guy appeared out of the darkness.

He had hooked up again, only this time his line snapped during a run for absolutely no apparent reason, as it broke along his rod that had perfect runners – the fact that the fish was taking line freely proved that the drag was not too tight.