Cool winter nights fishing off the beach

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 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