Forster

Savouring the summer days

FORSTER Luke Austin

How amazing are summer days in the beautiful Great Lakes area! Calm, hot mornings followed by lovely cooling afternoon sea breezes… absolute perfection!

Our waterways have seen loads of activity of late, with locals and visitors making the most of the clear, warm waters. Thankfully, the increase in boat traffic seems to have little effect on the quality of the fishing in general, and there have been plenty of fish hitting the decks!

Flathead continue to charge along very nicely in Wallis Lake, with loads of fish being caught by anglers all over the place. If you cover ground throwing soft plastics or soft vibes, you’re bound to run into plenty of fish. Alternatively, you can do well drifting the drop-offs with whitebait, pilchards or mullet strips. If you are keen to try something different and love to throw lures, get yourself a 90-150mm (or bigger) surface lure or Bent Minnow and get up into the shallows on a nice high tide. Seeing a big flathead materialise out of the sandy bottom to engulf your surface lure is amazing to watch, and very addictive!

Sand whiting are about in really good numbers throughout the bottom of the estuary (towards the mouth). Drifting the shallows with yabbies or worms should see you bagging a lot of fish, even the sand flat directly across from the Tuncurry boat ramp has produced some red-hot action lately. Hitting the shallow areas over a high tide with small poppers and stickbaits is also a very productive option, and if you can find the right area, you will have half a dozen hungry whiting fighting over your lure every cast!

Trumpeter whiting are definitely still about, however you may find yourself having to move about and try different areas before you find the schools of fish. While fishing for flathead recently, we accidentally found loads of them in an area that was nowhere near where anglers would normally target them!

Bream have to be the unsung heroes of summer! While the whiting and flathead take centre stage, the good old bream just plods along. There have been some cracking fish sitting down around The Paddock and along the rock walls where they have been providing loads of fun for anglers of all ages and skill levels. If you are bait fishing, don’t be afraid to either anchor up next to (or sit on the outside of) an oyster lease and float baits in towards the structure. This is an incredibly deadly technique and will see your rods buckled over to the reel seats in no time at all as you struggle to rip the fish out. The rivers and weed beds are still producing plenty of fish as well, however most fish are between 20-35cm. The better-quality fish seem to be east of Wallis Island.

Things have been a little on the quiet side lately as far as the beach and rock fishing reports go. The rocks down south are producing some cracking tailor, with some fish getting up around the 3kg mark. Normally this would be great news but these fish are an absolute headache for anglers hoping to run into an early season pelagic or kingfish! Most beaches are fishing well for whiting and dart now, with the odd nice bream mixed in. The beaches to the south seem to be producing the betterquality fish.

Heading offshore can be incredibly productive in January, providing the sea behaves itself. The clean, warm water that hits our coast at this time of the year also brings with it plenty of fish, and we have already seen some great marlin landed recently. Mahimahi (dolphinfish) are about in great numbers out around the FAD, and there have been a handful of bigger fish mixed in which is good to see. Hopefully we will continue to see the average size of these fun sportfish increase a little as the water improves over the next month or so.

The shallow reefs up north have been producing some great snapper. The bite times are definitely centred around dawn and dusk, but there have been loads of fish there so it’s There are some cracking bream about over the summer months.

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possible to catch them at other times. The deeper reefs out off Cape Hawke are producing plenty of fish for those wishing to drop baits down, with some nice mixed bags of pan-sized snapper, trag and pearl perch coming in. While you’re out drifting around it may also pay to have a heavier outfit ready to go, or set with a live bait out the back as you just never know when a cobia may turn up! • Luke is the owner of Great Lakes Tackle - your ‘local’ bait and tackle store. They only sell 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! Open 7 Days in the main street of Tuncurry Ph: 02 6554 9541 or find them on Facebook to see what they have been up to!