SYDNEY CITY HUSTLE & BUSTLE

Sydney City

Hustle and Bustle

Words & photos by Jonathan Jones

Growing up here in Sydney I was lucky enough to spend all my time on Sydney Harbour’s waterways. Living in North Harbour, where it all began for me at the age of five, my grandfather would take me fishing down at the wharf, just down from our house, for Yellowtail to go into the live bait bucket. After loading up with fresh bait, he and my great uncle would go fishing for real fish. Later on in life I found out they would use these Yellowtail for Jewfish and Kingfish, so you could say my obsession with fishing started well over 25 years ago and the obsession only got worse. At the age of 12 my family headed down to Tasmania for a holiday. The place they had rented had three Trout ponds, and it was here my grandfather introduced me to what is now my biggest addiction - fly fishing. Back then I would have never imagined that I’d be where I am today or the scope of opportunities fly fishing would provide me with from just one brief moment in Tasmania all those years ago.

After many years of fishing conventional tackle in my local waters of Sydney Harbour and all up and down the east coast of N.S.W. and southern QLD, you could say I was kind of obsessed with fishing. I was traveling at the time in the States - mostly just partying - when a good friend invited me to come fishing for Trout with a fly rod. I immediately told him I was in and all I’m going to say is that after a hot session of snagging flies in trees and hooking underwater logs I managed to hook a few small Rainbows. The moment I landed my first Trout in a small Colorado stream I was hooked on the long angler’s wand. Before leaving the States I bought myself a #4WT fly rod combo from Cabelas. I think the combo was about $150 and as soon as I was back in Australia, I forgot about all my conventional gear and only took my fly rods with me everywhere I went. Most of my friends thought I was mad. One of my mates would say stuff like “that set up is too hard for anything, you can only catch small fish on such a light rod.” Well I begged to differ and from that day on I set out to chase the biggest and most badass fish all over the world.

Years went past and I was just having fun with the sport, making some silly films and writing a few articles here and there, and suddenly my fly fishing career started out of nowhere. One day I got a phone call from a guy who was the owner of Nautilus fly reels and I lost my mind! I was like a kid on Christmas morning, and that was the start of what turned into a life changing friendship.

Sydney is not an easy place to fish by any means. You have to spend time working out the patterns and cycles for each of the seasons, which is exciting as this in when you begin to really catch fish and when you start to work things out after a few years of trying to crack the code. Long time friend Ben Foster and I managed to work a few little tricks out after everything we had experienced on the Harbour. We wanted to share this accumulated local knowledge and create life long memories with like-minded anglers, so it was time for me to get the drawing board out and get to work and figure out how all this was going to be possible.

Sydney was an interesting place depending on when you grew up. We grew up in the 90’s and early 2000’s. It was a little rough then, the place had growing pains and so did most of the people, which made it rough at times lol!! Those times made us a little rough around the edges although it taught us one thing - if you want something bad enough, NO ONE CAN STOP YOU APART FROM YOUR SELF, so we just applied that to everything we did. We went hard, we put in the time and the work when others were sleeping, we were fishing when others were partying. We were working non-stop as life won’t stop for a dream to come true…

Sydney Harbour is one of those fishing spots that can really kick your ass at times, while in other seasons or locations or weather types it can be exceptionally rewarding. After many years of throwing fluff around and chasing Sydney Harbour Kingfish and the old Aussie Salmon schools we were finding our groove.

After traveling a lot for work and fishing all over the place, I fell back in love with Sydney’s fishery and wanted to share this with my friends and clients. I had being playing with the idea of guiding here on Sydney Harbour and one day I said screw it, I’m just going to take the punt and do it. I’m going to set up a guiding company here in Sydney…. My good friend Ben Foster replied with, “Yeah man you never know it could be fun.” Little did he know he was going to be

guiding as well if I could pull it all off. So I started doing my research on getting a boat in survey, and after a few months of reading and making calls to friends in the marine industry I found out this wasn’t going to be easy! Great I said, nothing easy is worth doing, so anyway I dove in head first and after about six months had blown by and after talking to almost every boat builder from Australia to the Americas, I found my boat - a PIONEER CAPE ISLAND 186. It was a bit of a nightmare getting the survey done with all the new laws, but persistence and a boat load of phone calls and emails got it sorted despite others saying it could not be done.

Big shout out to Shane May over at Ocean Boats for putting up with ME and for providing all the help. After a year passed by the dream was sitting on a trailer in my driveway! Who ever said ‘there’s no way you can pull this off,’ you just gave me the coal I needed for my fire - thank you!

After many sleepless nights and long days we have put together a few techniques to help you improve your fishing in Sydney. There are a few things some anglers overlook and those are particularly around what bait fish they are feeding on, and that people tend to ‘leave fish to find fish.’ If the boat is holding position the predators will show up at some stage, you just have to know your tide and time windows. This fishery can be just as fussy as the people that live here. You have to feed them something that will entice them to commit to an eat and as the saying goes ‘match the hatch to get the catch.’

When it comes to leaders and fly lines we only use SCIENTIFIC ANGLER fluorocarbon leader and fly lines. Our ‘go to’ Harbour leader set up is a 30lb bite leader tapering back to a section of 40lb and on to a 50lb section. For your fly line choice, our ‘go to’ lines range from floating all the way through to a 700 grain full sink line. This means whatever the conditions are we can cover almost every angler from top water to dredging the deeper wrecks and reefs.

We fish on the heavier side for Kingfish as you never know when that bigger fish is going to hit you and you’re better off being over gunned then underweight. We like to use some pretty big flies when chasing the bigger fish. We prefer hook sizes ranging from 4 to 8/0 just to be on the safe side, as the bigger Kings love to play hardball and really test your fighting skills and tackle setup. Some days you can throw massive flies at them and they don’t even move

an inch, then switch down and throw a surf candy or sometimes a squid in there and they climb all over it like they haven’t eaten in a month. This is due to what I was saying earlier about spending some time finding out what bait they are feeding on and matching the hatch. Sometime the big flies get the eat, sometimes it’s the small flies, so make sure your box is loaded with a large range of flies from candys and poppers to large streamers and bait patterns - like squid and garfish - so you can maximise your chances and catch more fish when its game time.

When it comes to chasing the schools of Sydney Salmon everything changes a bit with respect to tackle setup. We go from fishing #10WT and #12WT’s to 6, 7 and #8WT rods with much lighter leaders ranging from 12lb to 20lb bite leaders. This all depends on water clarity and what the fish are feeding on. For flies we have a massive variety of flies specifically tied for Salmon ranging from small candy’s to small articulated bait fish. Salmon can be fussy, equally so as their friends the all mighty Kingfish. The fish feeding patterns can change overnight and being prepared is a key element to success. Pay close action to the moon’s tides and available bait. Documenting your catches in detail will help you work out fish patterns and behaviours. The deeper you dig the better the angler you become….. well so I’ve been told anyway. I’m yet to get my head around it all, fishing is a time game - the more time you spend on the water the more you will learn. For us that is the exciting part. Working it all out and the desire to learn more and more is the draw that keeps us coming back every spare moment.

Our business is going well and at the moment the heat is really on and the boat has been working her ass off with Ben and I putting the hours in. We are keeping our clients happy. For us at The Endless Session we are fisherman, this is not just a job - this is what we live for. Ben and I have spent many long days and nights fishing the unforgiving waterways of Sydney. Unlike others we don’t chase fishing reports, we are out there putting in the work to make sure we are on top of our game.

With myself traveling a lot for work, Ben runs the boat Thursday through Sunday, and I pick up the odd weekday and mostly focus on the business side of things like paper work and bill paying. Sometimes I get to host some cool trips and work on some cool film projects so I guess that evens it all up!

If you’re looking for something new and some pure excitement come and join us, we have you covered. You can find all our booking and trip information over at www.theendlessession.com.au and feel free to email us at theendlessession@gmail.com