A good time to expect unexpected catches

SWANSEA

Jason Nunn

Off our coast here are hundreds of little baby black marlin, ranging from around 10kg to 20kg+. There have been good catches on the inshore reefs in around 20-30m of water. There was a report here just the other day of a little black being caught between Swansea bar and Moon Island. Anglers trolling for bonito around Moon Island have also encountered those small blacks.

The standard way to catch them is with a 7/0 circle hook, and a good hard shock leader from 50-70lb (fluoro preferred), and no more. Some guys use wind-ons, but because these are little blacks we’ve been using 10kg line tied to a little crane swivel and the leader attached to that. As well as overheads, you can catch them on a spin reel which can hold around 300m of 10kg because they don’t take heaps of line. People are putting braid on their egg beaters and top-shotting 30m of 10kg mono for a bit of stretch. For consistent success you’ll want to use live bait, either live slimies or live yellowtail if you can’t get slimies.

The little blacks have also been caught on floating pilchards meant for snapper on the inshore reefs (we should start to see a few more snapper on our inshore reefs this month). The blacks have also been taking live baits fished on the bottom for jewfish. A few people have been keeping their marlin, but the eating quality isn’t particularly good – give me a snapper or tailor any day. There has been a good mixture of species caught over the last month or so. Recently a spotted