Sydney
NSW
Bountiful autumn transition period SYD ROCK & BEACH
Alex Bellissimo alex@bellissimocharters.com.au
We have had a great run of weather. We’ve had only low to medium rainfall events, and the swell has not been consistently gigantic, as it was nearly half a year ago. I have found that autumn weather tends to be pretty stable, so seize the opportunity to fish the later part of autumn as the transition period provides a broad variety of species. ROCK FISHING Snapper numbers have certainly increased with the cooling of the weather and water temperatures. The offshore boat anglers are catching larger numbers in 10-25m of water. Translating that for the rock fishers, that means that the snapper are in pretty close. Wash fishing for snapper
is a great method to fish for them. You’ll be using a lighter outfit compared to the snapper angler distance casting. A good choice is a rod around the 10-12ft size, like the Daiwa 109MH, suited for line classes from 7-15kg. Complement your rod with a 5000 size reel, such as a Daiwa 5000 BG MQ, and you have a match
excess salt off the pilchards, and put them in a colander to drain. Then all you have to do is pack them in a clip seal bag and pop them straight into the freezer. 12-15 pilchards per bag is enough for 24-30 baits in a session, if you chop them in half. On your fishing trips you should also bring prawns (king, banana or endeavour),
Power for your GOPRO or VIRB from your navigation light socket
$250 + P&H
AVAILABLE FROM:
www.tournamentboats.com.au
GOPRO not included
54 MAY 2023
A 97cm cobia caught and released by the author. It was taken on the very last cast using a ganged gar meant for a king. You can see the catch on the author’s YouTube channel. made in heaven. With this outfit you have a great wash fishing outfit for snapper and common bycatch species, and it’s a great rock blackfish outfit as well. And a sensational lure outfit for plastics and metals for the pelagics too. Back to the snapper, and what my clients have been catching them on. Pilchards are a great option, but these soft baits can be demolished if there are loads of yellowtail, sweep and mados around. You can make your pilchards last a little longer by salting them to make them tougher. A 20kg bag of swimming pool salt is cheap and never goes off, and for the average angler it will last for years. To salt your pilchards, place them in a bucket and add approximately one big handful of salt for every 15 pilchards. Put a lid on the bucket, and check it after a couple of days. You’ll find that the pilchards are now firmer. Add a little bit of water so you can get the
and some squid cut into strips, so you have all baits covered. For berley, all you need is wet mushy bread, chopped up pilchard, and chopped up prawn heads. Light ball sinkers and 2/0 to 3/0 hooks are the standard set up for fishing the washes off the rocks. If you want to learn how to do it, and many other techniques/species, check out my contact details at the end of the column. Lately, snapper from 32-45cm have been caught, with the odd bigger fish thrown in as well. Kingfish, trevally, and bream have also been part of the mix. A few quality groper are also available for anglers who want to target this great species. Typically, most groper anglers refuse to use anything other than a red crab. However, sometimes catching these crabs is not practical. There can be a number of reasons for this. For example, you may want to fish a rock fishing ledge that does not have cracks, and/or there might be no carpet of red weed close to the water level where this species of crab lives. Additionally, it may not be the low tide period or it may not be safe enough to catch the red crabs, because the waves are a bit too big to get to the spots where they are. The alternative is to use those crabs which are found above the high tide rock area, under boulders, in the cracks and above the high tide ponds. You can gather these crabs by hand or with a crab spear. Heavy gear is required when fishing for groper. Line class in the 24 kg range is
Goran Drapac with one of several fish he caught in a recent session. Flathead are often a bycatch whilst fishing for tailor and salmon off the beach with whole ganged pilchard baits. good when wrangling with a sizeable blue groper and a rod to suit the line class preferably one from 10-12ft. The pelagic action continues with late season bonito, some kings, salmon
Quality whiting fishing in the rain off the surf beach. This one, caught by Daniel Drapac, fell for a live pink nipper, which is a good bait if you can’t get worms.
and tailor. Whole pilchards on gangs, is a basic way to catch all of the pelagic species. Metal lures from 30-40g using the wash fishing outfit iI mentioned earlier. Bait Junkie soft plastic Jerkshad in the 5 to 7 in size with jig heads from 1/4 to half oz work well. if f there are too many tailor around I recommend to step away from the soft plastics because these sharp teeth will rip them up! So spots to fish for all of these species are Bluefish’s east front, The northeast face of Bluefish, Little Bluey which are the ledges at the south face lookout of Shelly Headland, South and North Curl Curl ledges and North Whale ledges. preferably fish any of these ledges in a swell size of up to 1.2 metres max. BEACH FISHING There has been a consistent run of pelages on the surf beaches as well. salmon and tailor are fairly abundant on a lot of the beaches. The outfit i mentioned above is great for spinning off the beach. I did not mention the metals. I tried out the new OT Jig from Daiwa. They work absolutely amazing, cast really well with there realistic slim profile,
