South Coast
WA
Cool winter nights fishing off the beach ESPERANCE
Murray Johnson
Esperance and the south coast has seen plenty of fish caught, with the usual winter varieties coming in to play. Anglers beach fishing around town are still catching plenty of salmon, with the schools heading back from the west coast and hanging around local waters. The best beaches around town are Salmon Beach and Fourth Beach, with a few also turning up at Stockyards. Further out of town, areas like Roses, Munglinup, Alexander Bay, Thomas River and Poison Creek are all yielding plenty of fish. There are some bronzies around as well. The most popular way to catch salmon off the beach is
with a traditional paternoster rig using pilchard and squid, with a 4/0 or 5/0 gang for the pilchard. Most guys when
they’re fishing with fresh or IQF pilchards tend to leave them lying in the bag before putting one on and casting
and other slices as well. Mixed in with salmon are plenty of herring, a few flathead, and some bigger
Some days, it’s just great to be out there – and catching a fish is just a bonus. Image courtesy of @lachy_warren.
Oli Stevenson with a quality silver ghost off the beach. Image courtesy of @olistevensonn.
Lachy Warren has had some great sessions this past month. Image courtesy of @lachy_warren.
it… and then seeing it fly off the hook in mid-air. A better option is to use a salted pilchard because it’s a bit tougher and stays on the hooks better. Just get a bucket of seawater, put the frozen bait in there and ideally add another handful of salt. They’ll sit in there for hours and get slightly firm, and won’t fall off the hook. If we’re going camping for a week, we’ll ‘super salt’ the water and keep adding pilchards to it, and it keeps them quite fresh. The salt helps to preserve herring fillets, too. If lure fishing is more your thing, there are plenty of salmon taking Halco Twisties
skippy up to 4kg. Roses and Thomas River are the best spots to chase those. We are still seeing the occasional smaller mulloway and gummy sharks, with the gummies going up to 6ft. Anglers fishing off the jetties around town are catching plenty of squid, with the best times still being early in the morning and late in the afternoon into the dark. Popular squid jig colours have been the whites and light greens. A standout jig at the moment is the 3.5 Shimano Egixile BB in the ‘B chart’ colour. The jetties are also
producing plenty of garfish, and there’s still the occasional bonito coming through. Anglers fishing in the bay are picking up plenty of squid, with guys getting their boat limits and big sizes, with some tubes going 35cm+. The bay is also still producing some snook, and the Bomber Long A in the brown/orange belly colour is always a good go-to. Out wide there are plenty of nannygai up to 60cm, and mixed in with those are good numbers of breaksea and harlequin. There are also big Samsonfish around, with samples going 30kg+, and some small yellowtail kingfish mixed in. There have also been plenty of sea sweep around. Back in town, local bream lakes are yielding some good fish over 40cm, although because the lakes are full, you
have to search a little bit harder to find them. The Daiwa Infeet Sazanami is the gun lure at the moment, and has very realistic colours. It’s effective when slow trolled with the occasional twitch. JUNE In the coming weeks, as the water temperatures continue to drop, squid numbers will get better and better. Bigger skippy will continue to stay around, and we should still see plenty of salmon hanging around too, with bronze whalers chasing them. We will still see plenty of herring being caught this month, because they don’t mind the colder water. And also more yellowtail kingfish will start to turn up. The best place to target kingies is around the bommies and white water close to the islands, as they like hiding in messy water.
Prepare for a land-based assault BUNBURY
Whiteys Tackle and Camping
This has to be my favourite time of the year for a landbased assault. Whether you’re fishing the local beaches, the cut or inside the marina, our famous Australian salmon can pop up out of nowhere and in huge schools. I’ve spent many mornings and afternoons chasing the salmon up and down jetties, rock walls and beaches around Bunbury
just to feel that screaming run on light gear that we don’t always have the opportunity to experience fishing land based locally. If you’re fishing the jetties and rock walls, I’d suggest a well-balanced soft plastic around 6” length, as those areas have sharp drop offs or ledges that benefit from having your lure get close to the bottom, something a diving lure can’t always accomplish it. Whilst fishing the beaches, I’ll take the heaviest metal slug or minnow profile hardbody lure that my rod will allow. Having that bit of extra
Ben White with a decent black bream. 96 JUNE 2023
weight with a well matched line can be the difference of 20m on your neighbour’s cast and ultimately first punt at the school of bruisers. With winter rapidly approaching, thoughts turn to the inshore pink snapper fishery with these pink slabs coming in close to shore in great numbers. The rough weather presents a good opportunity for the pink snapper to forage for food that gets bashed around and dislodged during (and following) the numerous cold fronts that will be coming through over the next few months. Since they move around a lot looking for their next meal, the best results usually come in the form of setting the pick and getting a solid trail of berley snapper cubes going, bringing the fish to you. Some days it will only take minutes for them to appear and once they come up in the berley trail the fishing is generally hot with fish coming one after the other. A berley that consists of fish frames, old bait and scraps works a treat but can be a messy job to do at home. Nowadays though there are quality frozen/premixed
berley options available in good tackle shops that are perfect for the job. Once the berley trail is established all you need to do is present an unweighted or lightly weighted mulie/scalie on a gang or snelled hooks with hook size determined by the bait used, 4/0 to 6/0 sizes are the most common. I have found occasionally they will go off the bite (usually when you drop a fish!) and then it is a good idea to change it up to get them switched on again. By that I mean put the baits away and try a couple of lures. Good results have come on soft plastics, especially vibes, as they can change the mood of fussy pink snapper. Some of my favourites are the Nomad Vertrex Vibes in a 150mm size, or the McCarthy paddle-tails in a 5”. With lures they will hit it out of aggression and can get them feeding freely again. Another technique to get them biting again is to drop down a micro jig in the 5-20g range. This smaller offering flicking and darting off the bottom will replicate a small baitfish. You could also get a bonus by-catch of any skippy that are milling around the berley trail.
Lachlan Atkinson with a nice salmon. Black bream are a popular target over winter with the Collie and Brunswick River always holding a few. While they can be tough to find sometimes the quality makes up for it. With the cooler freshwater flow leading into the river, the winter bream get sluggish and that means time to get out the soft plastics and vibes. Slow your retrieves down using long pauses, and small movements are the key to targeting winter bream. There
are certain plastics on the market that have a large amount of scent built into them to provide the bream a smelly scent-filled target in the dirty water. In this situation some of the most successful plastics would be the Berkley Gulp Crabbies. Generally, you will need a little bit more weight on the jighead to counteract the harder flowing water, so look at using between 1/16 and 1/8 jigheads with a hook size to suit your plastic choice.
