Watch out, there’s sharks about

KALBARRI

Stephen Wiseman

With the river still brown, the mulloway are moving in under the runout water for some easy pickings to be had along the sand spit and around to bird island in front of VMR. The best bait is mullet or scalies, and make sure you put in some long hours as you could get lucky and back a ‘metre-y’ on your first cast. or your last. The catch rate has been two or three per night so there are plenty to go around. Macks are harder to find unless you can get into some clear water. I’ve tried up around the Sound Patch and down along the cliffs; many long hours trolling did get us some fish but the sharks are still around, as Abbey found out. We did get the lure back to swim again and managed two nice fat macks to around 10kg each for the box. Our

While there are still some tailor around, the numbers are down and they are less active so the best catches are usually around the new moon. Larger green back heaps in the shallows in front of sea rescue, they can be fun to cast small soft plastics to and often in a single session several other species may take a jig, like skippy, herring, fish were caught on both shallow and deep diver lures, so it’s all trial work as nothing seems normal this year.

There are lots of macks around, but there are also plenty of sharks too!

Reports of some nice size yellowfin tuna have been circulating but, as yet, no nice photos or reports of any getting to the scales. The only one we hooked was lost at the boat and estimated at about 20kg+ but the big schools shouldn’t be too far away.

The tailor have shown in good numbers around back beach and along the beach down to the blue holes, although they are in good numbers they are playing hard to get on baits or lures.

Divers have done well at Lucky Bay with good catches of coral trout, baldies and a good feed of crays. One lucky angler going out from the beach managed a nice mack in the clear water in front of the reef.

Look for the clear water when searching for macks.

River activity has been very selective with most people chasing the mulloway but those that have tried for black bream have managed some nice fat fish to 420mm around the pens using river prawns.