Lancelin

Follow the flight path

LANCELIN

Peter

Fullarton Number one on my list this month is chasing tuna schools. You don’t always need to go very far west to find these schools, as they can be just outside the bay to well out past White Bank in the 30s and beyond.

Birds give away the schools, as many thousands of them breed at Lancelin Island, so if there is an obvious flight path the birds are taking, then it is a good indication on the direction to head in scanning the horizon looking for flocks above the schools.

Early morning is the best time to chase the tuna. As the sun rises, they can become flighty sounding to approaching boats and less likely to take a lure. The early start has absolutely Ron Allan only needed one bite to make a session hard to forget. A 97cm,13kg pinky off the cast! Number one target this month for some fun on the briny would be chasing down the tuna schools.

Chris Hartanto has been smashing it on the demersals with the Halco Paddle Prawn of late.

gone off! With a good mix of yellowfin, bluefin and big eye tuna averaging 6-10kg.

There are also plenty of watsons leaping bonito are out there. Slow trolling a live bonito is a good way to find the largest tuna shadowing the shoals.

During the month, big samsonfish move out congregating on deep structure. The Key Biscayne is an oil rig that sunk 10nm northwest of Ledge Point in 1983. It’s one spot worth dropping some jigs or live baits to stretch your arms on these brutes.

For some light tackle action, it is hard to go past berleying up skippy along the White Bank. Use a block of pilchards, keeping a fine chop going over the side and mashing the odd one in your hand. It usually doesn’t take too long for some to turn up in the trail. Feed unweighted pilchard cubes down the trail with a #1 circle hook or use small lures like soft plastics or micro flutter jigs.

The ever-reliable feed is to go smash out a bucket of sand whiting. Nice fish can be caught in the sand holes north and south of town in 5-6m, otherwise head out past the White Bank. Whiting schools have similar size fish so drift around the 18-22m area until you start hooking up some bigger ones. Once onto a decent size, drop the anchor and you should keep catching similar fish. There is always the chance of a decent flathead or flounder here too.

Squid are great to target pretty much everywhere this time of year. Putting out a floating whiting on a squid spike seems to make them magically appear in places you wouldn’t normally expect them to be! Even out on the whiting grounds in 20m is a good spot, especially if there is a lot of floating weed about. Put a few of your smaller whiting under a float while catching what you want to eat. You can also stop off at some various depths on the way back, drifting along with the squid baits on a paternoster a few metres off the bottom. King George have made a comeback in recent months. KGW like to hang close to weed feeding on small mussels and worms, etc. Gulp soft plastic worms are a great bait from the boat, as are prawns with their shell on. It’s also an option for drone fishers to target something they are allowed to keep during the ban. I prefer baits that going

to stay on the hook for longer like octopus, cuttlefish or fresh squid. I rig a threedropper paternoster each hook set is a double snell of #1 circle hooks so a small strip of bait can be used. You can never be sure what you might catch, flathead and flounder like the same grounds and the bigger male brown wrasse can offer some quality fillets that many overlook.

November is a cracker month for the beach fishers. Big tailor and herring are usually in good numbers. It’s a great time for mulloway and small whaler sharks. I prefer to fish for herring and tailor in the mornings, unless it’s a calm evening. A sea breeze will bring in the floating sargassum weed. Gutters are best for tailor and mulloway at this time

of year. Back beach or the stretch north of Narrow Neck up through Wedge Island and beyond usually has the best gutters. Whereas the deeper beaches, like Didie Bay or Fence Reef, are more likely to produce herring, smaller tailor and sharks.

If you like to wade the shallows casting small lures or even use the wand the flats along the south end of the bay can make for some entertaining sessions on mixed bags of herring, skippy, flathead, flounder and tarwhine.

The white cray run starts late this month. Once white walkers start it will be on, many boats launching each day pulling pots full of succulent crayfish. DEMERSAL FISHING BAN

The ban on demersal fishing is now in place. At the time of writing, there was still much uncertainty as to when and how often we will be able to fish for these species in the future.

Fisheries Minister, Don Punch, offering draconian

unacceptable alternatives in the form of multiple-choice submission period “to have our say” on ‘a two day per year access to fish’ or at best ‘a 3-4 month open season’. The Minister seems blind to alternate suggestions on what we ‘want to say’ for a better way forward that would protect the fish from all sectors during the breeding season. Meantime we have 10s of thousands of angry anglers wanting to have a fish and no idea when or for how long the season will reopen. A lot of people are wondering if it is even worth keeping a big boat, I am certainly put off upgrading to a larger vessel. Fisheries might be saving a few dollars for the ease of compliance, but what will this cost small business, our lifestyle and wellbeing?

Jack pulled several fish one morning casting the Halco Roosta popper over shallow reef enticing the tailor in the wash. Aiden Roe just went to test out his new car on the beach, good thing he took a rod!