Sydney Rock

Bait back-up plans

SYD ROCK & BEACH Alex Bellissimo

alex@bellissimocharters.com.au

The weather is warming up, and things are looking on the up and up as September progresses. But you will note that when you feel the water it is petty cold. It may be springtime for us, anglers as well.

ROCK FISHING

The fishing has been pretty good in recent weeks, with catches of trevally, tailor, rock blackfish, groper, luderick, and a report of silver drummer. Trevally are in good numbers and seem to be different size fish from one location to the next. For example, you

might get smaller trevally (ranging from just legal fish to about 40cm) from Dee Why and Manly’s ‘Little Bluey’, compared with trevally up to 50cm in smaller numbers from Long Reef Collaroy. Half to three quarter pilchard baits are the go, and I like to berley with pilchard cubes (a pilchard cut into 6-8 cubes) or pilchard and water soaked white bread mushed together. You need to deploy this berley consistently.

On one outing there were trevally to near 50cm, plate-size snapper, tailor and a legal out of season king. Peeled prawns like king or banana. River prawns are good but preferably used unpeeled because the sweep, mados and yellowtail will demolish your baits to oblivion. I use size 1/0 Mustad hooks for the smaller baits, and for the larger baits I use a 2/0 92554 hook. Plastics are also working quite well when combined with a berley trail. I like the Bait Junkie 3.2” Minnow and 5” Jerkshad rigged on 1/8-3/4oz jigheads with a 1/0 or 2/0 size hook.

For the rock blackfish, peeled prawns, cabbage weed and white bread are the most productive baits. It’s up to you as to what type of bait you want to use on the day. In a lot of spots the small fish will drive you nuts, annihilating your baited hook within a minute. The answer can be cabbage weed baits.

Rock blackfish feed mostly on weed baits. When inspecting the intestines of this species, you’ll see a variety of weed types, including pink, brown cabbage, some kelp, and their favourite – green cabbage weed. The small fish like sweep, mados, yellowtail and more don’t like the weed baits, mostly avoiding them, so you can have a bait that will last a lot longer.

Fish your weed baits suspended below a small, foam egg-shaped float in water depth approximately 1-4m. Look for sunken boulders and submerged ledges with white oxygenated foamy area runoffs.

A well-weighted foam float will work for most rock locations. I use a ball sinker above the small swivel and a 35-45cm leader. A strong no. 2-4 hook will suit the weed baits better than, say, a larger 1/0 hook (although a 1/0 is OK when presenting an extra-large weed bait.

You may encounter luderick as a by-catch but the hook size for rock blackfish is a few sizes larger than you would normally use for luderick, and the gear substantially heavier than what you would use for luderick as well.

Spots to try for luderick and groper are South Curl Curl’s ‘Flat

Rock’, and also along the headland to Freshwater. At Manly, ‘The Hat’ can yield rock blackfish, luderick and groper.

Distance casting for snapper has been worthwhile lately, with fish to 40cm reported. I had a quick snapper fish recently and caught four snapper from 34-38cm on squid strips and salted slimy mackerel. North Curl Curl, Dee Why approximately 70m past the ‘goat track’ and the front of South Newport rocks are good

locations to try.

BEACH FISHING

There is a subset of anglers, including myself, that still target whiting when they’re out of season. The beaches that are holding whiting is one of the key things you need to know. In my part of the world, the Northern Beach suburbs of Sydney, I fish

Steven Hull with a swag of trevally up to 40cm. Fishing was slow for the first 1.5 hours but success eventually came thanks to fishing very light sinkers, fishing a deepwater area of rock ledge with washy white water, and berleying consistently.

but for the fish it’s still winter – at least when it comes to inshore water temperatures. Of course, the water temperature could change due to a tongue of current coming in, or a swell change. A southerly direction swell, for example, can suddenly lift the water temp.

Having said that, with some of the species it doesn’t matter too much, especially residential fish like rock blackfish and groper. Also, there are some areas that are producing out-of-season species like whiting. Yes, whiting at this time of the year off Sydney beaches!

I haven’t been doing many client guiding trips lately because of the COVID restrictions, but I am still getting out there relatively regularly and have noted some successful outings by other

One of several pigs (rock blackfish) caught during an outing last month. If you find that small fish are vaporising your baits, try switching from peeled prawns to unpeeled.

Rob Marich with a bag of luderick from Dobroyd Head, fishing with an Alvey centrepin reel. On this day, the fish came on around the 2nd hour of running to the 4th hour of run-in.