Fishing Monthly Magazine | April 2022

Page 66

NSW

A perfect fishing month FORSTER

Luke Austin

How good is autumn – offshore winds, warm water and too many fishing options! April is an absolutely perfect month to get out on the water to chase a fish or two.

(towards the mouth of the estuary) as they prepare to travel and spawn. This year’s season is shaping up to be a cracker! There have been plenty of nice fish pulled from the rock walls and leases lately, with most fish falling for lightly-weighted strip baits or whitebait. Chasing these big travelling fish can

Ethan caught this nice longtail tuna while throwing plastics for snapper. Flathead are still fishing very well for those wishing to chase a tasty feed. These fish are spread out all over the place now, but your best bet for numbers of fish is to get up around Wallis Island or down past Green Point and target the weed edges and drop-offs with soft plastics and vibes. There are still some very nice fish being caught down along the rock walls and around the bridge, with live herring and mullet proving to be particularly effective. With plenty of rain falling over the past couple of months, bream have really started to stack up throughout the bottom of the system

sometimes be a frustrating and very challenging affair. If you fish too light they’ll bury you in the structure before you get a wind on them, and if you fish too heavy the buggers won’t touch your offering! For those wishing to fish the flats, there are still decent numbers of bream sitting up about The Cut and on the weed beds around Green Point/Coomba Park, although most of the fish are just legal or undersize. These fish are very responsive and will hammer small hardbodies, poppers, stickbaits and bent minnows, which can be very fun on the light gear! The luderick season is yet to kick off in earnest but

there have been some reports trickling through of decent numbers of fish sitting down near the Fish Co-op as well as along the northern rock wall and the bridge. While you may not hit your bag limit this month, you will generally be able to find a few fish willing to feed, and there will be the odd monster mixed in with the smaller fish. The local beaches are a beautiful place to be in autumn. Flat seas, offshore winds and warm water make them a delight to fish, plus there’s generally plenty of fish. The tailor bite we have had over the past month has been great, with just about every beach holding decent numbers of fish. They are taking both lures and bait, and there has been the odd bonito and salmon mixed in with them. Bream numbers have been good on the beaches, but finding the better-quality fish has been a bit tricky. You will probably have to fish through a fair few barely-legal fish to find the big ones. Hopefully

Curtis Chalker with a cracker cobe. There is always plenty of cobia action in April.

about for a while yet if the water temperature holds. You will find though that as the water cools these fish will feed less and less, so your ‘effort to catch rate’ ratio will blow out significantly! The deeper reefs are fishing very consistently. Reefs in the 60-80m depth range are particularly productive at present, yielding nice mixed bags including teraglin, pearl perch and the ever-present snapper. We also find the odd nice kingfish out on these reefs during April, which is always a welcome surprise. Deep drop enthusiasts love the calm weather that April brings, and results are generally very good with tasty mixed bags of bar cod, nannygai, bass grouper and gemfish coming back to port with each trip. • Luke is the owner of Great Lakes Tackle – your ‘local’ bait and tackle store. They sell only the best brands and offer sound, friendly advice on where you can go to land your next trophy fish while visiting the wonderful Great Lakes region! They are open 7 days in the main street of

Fishing from the local stones in April is very exciting due to the number of different species on offer. The water is nice and warm and there are plenty of pelagics cruising along the coastline, so casting lures or floating baits out is definitely worth the effort. In between the big guys there are great numbers of solid tailor, mac tuna and bonito so you can rest assured that a day on the rocks will be filled with plenty of action. Bream and luderick are slowly schooling up, with some great fishing on offer in the washes down around Elizabeth Beach and Jaineys Corner. Sea conditions during April are often about as good as we can get, which results in loads of anglers heading offshore, and most will find plenty of action. The local snapper have been good in the shallow stuff; most reefs under 20m have produced

Tuncurry, and you can phone them on 02 6554 9541 or find them on Facebook to see what they have been up to!

Need tackle? Need a new boat?

Give Kris a call for a quote!

3 FINANCE AVAILABLE

Australia’s Number 1 Dealer

02 6552 2333

13 VICTORIA ST TAREE NSW admin@manningrivermarine.com.au

www.manningrivermarine.com.au

66

APRIL 2022

Mackerel mayhem with Mitch and Luke. by the middle of April this will change, and there will be more good-size travelling along our beaches. Unfortunately, whiting seem to be very hard to find at the moment. Anglers are reporting plenty of small fish but not too many big ones. The better reports have been coming from 7 Mile Beach and down around Seal Rocks.

fish lately, and the fish have been of a good size, with not many reds under 40cm being reported. Chasing big fish in skinny water is very addictive. Just about every report on the shallow water snapper this month will end with “and they were just the ones we could stop, there was twice as many that we couldn’t turn!”

April is a great time to chase the inshore snapper. The same shallow reefs are still playing host to mackerel, tuna and cobia, and these fish may well hang


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Freshwater

11min
pages 122-123

Lancelin

4min
page 118

Exmouth

3min
page 120

Mandurah

4min
page 117

Karratha

5min
page 121

Metro

4min
page 116

Augusta

6min
page 114

Bunbury

5min
page 115

Eildon

3min
page 100

Tournaments

24min
pages 108-112

Fun page/Sub

3min
pages 105-107

Shepparton

5min
page 99

Ballarat

7min
page 97

Hobart

5min
pages 81-83

Phillip Island

5min
pages 90-91

Albury/Wodonga

4min
page 77

Geelong

5min
pages 86-87

Canberra

4min
pages 78-79

Offshore

5min
page 80

Lithgow/Oberon

5min
page 75

Batlow

3min
page 76

Batemans Bay

5min
page 71

Central Coast

8min
page 69

Forster

5min
pages 66-67

Sydney South

4min
pages 62-63

NEW SOUTH WALES Pittwater

9min
pages 58-59

Sydney Rock

4min
page 60

Sydney North

4min
page 61

Testing Booth: Tokuryo Line Lab

11min
pages 54-56

Cape York

3min
pages 48-49

Sustainability of morwong stocks

10min
pages 52-53

Freshwater

13min
pages 50-51

Cooktown

4min
page 47

Hinchinbrook

4min
pages 44-45

Townsville

6min
pages 42-43

Gold Coast

5min
pages 22-23

Northern Bay

5min
pages 32-33

Noosa

6min
pages 34-37

Easter holiday fishing

12min
pages 8-11

Southern Bay

3min
pages 28-29

QUEENSLAND The Tweed

6min
pages 20-21

Jumpinpin

5min
pages 24-26

Starlo’s back to basics

6min
pages 16-19
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