Augusta

Sun shines on spring fishing

AUGUSTA Anthony Gillam

The West Coast fishing zone of Western Australia still finds itself in a state of flux with the uncertainty always seems to bring on the fish.

The Blackwood River and Hardy Inlet are alive with assorted fish species and it is only the very unlucky that don’t find what they are looking for.

Jason Morgan with another bait-caught Augusta dhufish landed while out the back of Flinders Bay. Blake Gillam with a nice pair of dhufish jigged from the reef after a boat trip around the corner from the Cape Leeuwin Lighthouse.

These fish are responsible for the death of many soft plastics. Luckily leatherjackets are excellent eating, especially at this size.

of the proposed 9-month demersal ban creating a large amount of angst amongst the tourism dependant businesses in our small coastal towns.

One small consolation is that the Minister has conceded that there is a large amount of community concern. He has given another few weeks for consultation and submissions before making the decision that could mean business as usual or the demise of many small family enterprises. Let’s hope that good sense prevails.

With the warmer spring weather now coming on, it allows more fishing opportunities prior to the unwanted southeasterly winds of summer spoiling things. Plenty of sunshine Depending on your fishing type, there is no real reason to miss out. Whether you are land based or using small watercraft the fishing has been good for all.

Jetty fishing over the last month has mainly concentrated on herring and whiting with the numbers of herring dropping off but the size has increased not only in length but also in weight. They have continued to put the condition back on that was depleted during spawning and as a result some of the fish are huge. The whiting are also steadily increasing in size and weight with many King George whiting landed well over the 28cm size limit. Yellowfin whiting have been patchy but on the odd occasion it has been possible to get onto a good patch especially at the Ellis Street Jetty at night. Herring are taking squid, prawns and cockles with whiting showing a preference for glass shrimps, cockles and river prawns.

With the recent large winter runoff into the river there has been an obvious change in the structure of the inlet especially around East Augusta, The Colourpatch and the Dead Water. Plenty of shallow water and increasing sized sand bars has been shaping and reshaping the deeper channel systems with some excellent rock formations now showing through the sandy bottom in front of the Turner Street Jetty and The Colourpatch boat ramp. The structure is only 50m from shore and will provide plenty of opportunities for predators to lay in ambush. There have been several reports of fishers having large fish taking baits meant for much smaller species, however to date none have been landed. Recently an angler hooked a large mulloway on a whiting rig and fought it right up to the Turner Street Jetty landing before it managed to escape. With the close proximity to the ocean it is not surprising that larger predators are venturing into the calmer river waters using the large tidal flow through the cut to enter the system. size. The clarity of the water is making it easy to identify deeper channels and sand patches where the bigger fish congregate. They are very aggressive at the moment with numerous fish surprisingly having been caught actively hunting down a soft plastic or hardbodied lure. One of the members of the South West Kayak Anglers Group showed how it was done using 4” Berkley Gulp Turtleback worms with a bag out on herring and King George whiting with a couple of legal sized salmon and a tailor to cap off an epic session in The Deadwater.

The black bream seem to have contracted back from the Deadwater and Ellis Street Jetty up closer towards Molloy Island for some reason with only spasmodic reports of them being caught closer to town. This is in contrast to recent months when they have been rampant throughout the system from the fresh water right out to the ocean. You have had to search for them with better results around snaggy riverbanks using unweighted prawns or 3-4” soft plastics.

Getting out into Flinders Bay and Hamelin Bay on the warmer, light wind days has not only been very pleasant, the excellent range of demersals landed has made chasing a feed of whiting in smaller watercraft, however there were plenty of bigger boats that took advantage of the weather to chase demersals and pelagics.

There are still plenty of King George whiting to be caught throughout the Hardy Inlet and it doesn’t take long to work out where they are. I do a fair bit of kayak fishing and it has only been taking 5-10 minutes to find a spot where the fish are legal the trip well worthwhile. School holidays coinciding with great weather meant that the Augusta Marina was absolutely humming with activity as boats were launched and retrieved with lots of happy looking anglers onboard. Many anglers spoken to had been

Dhufish and pink snapper have been everywhere and show no sign of easing off. With many fish being over the 80 cm mark it is pretty obvious that the fishery is pretty healthy in this region. As usual there are also plenty of breaksea cod and bight redfish on the heavy reef areas and being two of my favourite eating fish are very welcome. Both bait fishing and soft plastic fishing gave good results and it was just a matter of whether you wanted to get your hands and boat dirty. A Vexed Bottom Meat jig head is a good compromise between the two, especially when paired with an oily fish fillet like salmon, mullet or herring. The leather jackets have eased off giving soft plastics a reprieve from being chomped to pieces.

Yellowtail kingfish and samson fish as usual were not hard to find and responded well to live bait, knife jigs and large soft plastics. Whole squid if fished live are never left alone and as dead bait still have good results but anything that wiggles, jiggles or moves will get a look at when you locate them. Anything sticking out of the water or rising from the bottom of any size generally has fish of the Seriola genus lurking about. They love structure, are very aggressive and respond very well to berleying.

Sand whiting and King George whiting have been everywhere in the 16-18m depths and haven’t been difficult to find at all. Just look for a pretty flat