Forster

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 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 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!”

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 Mackerel mayhem with Mitch and Luke.

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

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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 April is a great time to chase the inshore snapper.