Happy Hookers Hope To Encounter Some Snapper Snapping
Sun Herald
Sunday September 30, 2001
THE holiday roads will be chockers with happy hookers towing boats, carrying beach rods on their roof racks or with the tips protruding perilously from windows, hoping the long weekend delivers tight lines and plenty of fish for the frying.
Bluewater anglers should gear up for yellowfin tuna and inshore boaties will find the snapper snapping. The estuaries and beaches have woken from their winter slumber.
Yellowfin tuna were the notable capture, tag and release candidate last weekend at the game-fishing tournament at Coffs Harbour.
There were plenty of school-sized fish, a smattering of 30-35kg middle weights and a few nice 45kg trophies. Ten spearfish, one of the rarer billfish in Pacific waters, were encountered in the deep blue. But the striped marlin were less common than in previous years.
Graeme McCloy landed the biggest blue marlin, a fish weighing 187kg, and tagged a bigger blue the following day. Closer in, game fishers set the anchor in the arvos and bagged a few, but big, snapper.
Word is the snapper are still snapping off Port Stephens and the central coast. The fish are in the 1.5-3kg range, which the old-timers call squire, and there are plenty for the picking from Broughton Island to Boat Harbour as well as off Terrigal.
A few jewfish have come from the beaches around Newcastle, with big bream and the odd thumper whiting in the deeper channels of Lake Macquarie.
Calamari are also on the menu if you work the weedbeds.
South of Sydney, the water has improved markedly. Wide of Wollongong, there are reports of yellowfin tuna. Striped marlin were taken off Batemans Bay last weekend. A few tuna are jumping in the 22C water.
Keeper-sized kingfish have been prominent on the reefs off Ulladulla.
The snapper have been a bit slow but the bream are moving around the oyster leases in the Clyde River.
Closer to home, some great catches of snapper to 3kg have come from The Hump off Stanwell Park. A strong current running to the south was making fishing tricky on Friday.
Game boats will be lining up for the Port Hacking 100 this weekend. Some school yellowfin, jumbo stripies, a vanguard of striped marlin, and some lumpy mako sharks will keep crews busy.
Small boaties and rock-hoppers should hit the headlands and estuary mouths for some spring sportsfishing action. Schools of Australian salmon and tailor are gorging on whitebait. Underneath them are trevally and flathead.
On Friday at 7.10am, the kingfish were jumping just off the Spit Marina. Kings to 4kg have been coming from the deep hole downstream from the Spit Bridge and upstream around Seaforth foreshore.
Bait fishers will find mixed bags in the harbour. I spent a good few hours soaking baits last weekend for three nice sand flathead, two solid trevally and two very well conditioned bream. The pesky Port Jackson sharks, banjos and fiddler rays, which were returned to the water, gave plenty of false hope.
It was good to see friendly NSW Fisheries inspectors on patrol.
They pulled up beside the half a dozen boats in my area, asked for fishing licences and inspected the catch.
The trout season opens this weekend in NSW. All the rivers are ripe for fishing. This is also prime time for big bass in Glenbawn Dam near Scone and the Nepean/Hawkesbury system.
© 2001 Sun Herald
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