I sometimes feel this report is a case of damned if I do and damned if I don’t. I copped a bit of slack last report from locals who were a bit upset with me about mentioning certain fishing spots because according to them, “That’s MY spot!”

I mean really, get over yourselves! There is about 160km of shoreline around the lake and there are many places to fish and nobody owns any spot. It is all about friends, family coming to the lake and getting a feed of fish and having a good time. If they happen to be near or on ‘your spot’ then go and fish somewhere else.

Anyway, on with the fishing.

The first few days of this month will see the prawns running in the lake and hopefully we should get some good sized prawns coming through. Fishermans Warehouse should have a good supply of nets and lights so stock up and get out there as a good feed of fresh prawns is hard to beat, and getting some for live bait will be worth your while. Try staying in the lake during the run-in tide and fish the channel on the run-out tide as you will find the water a lot warmer and the fish will be looking for a feed.

Fish to target using live prawns are bream, flathead and whiting. They all respond well to live prawns, particularly near Swansea Bridge on the run-in tide. Fish a heavy sinker here and use a very long trace and just drop the line over the side and hang on as you can be surprised with what can be caught there at times.

Other areas to try are the sand islands near Coon Island Caravan Park, and down towards Murrays Beach. These areas are also particularly good for whiting for those that want to try popper fishing early morning or late afternoon/dusk. These areas are even better when the prawns are running, as working a lure on the surface can trigger whiting to attack quite aggressively as they will be on the lookout for prawns.

Bream will also be about places like Salts Bay in the shallows, Black Neds Bay, tucked up around the Southern side of Pulbah Island, in around Wangi and up towards the shallows at Valentine/Green Point.

I have recently been using the new 3B Crankbaits from Berkley and they have been proving the goods at the moment. I am particularly impressed with the Pop Dog (65mm) and the Scum Dog (48mm). The Pop Dog as the name suggests is a surface popper and gives more of a subtle blooping action than some of the other makes and is a bit more slim-lined, giving it a great action on the surface.

The Scum Dog is a smaller lure and walking-the-dog is very easy with this lure, so it is worthwhile having them in your lure selection. The colours I have found to be working well in Lake Macquarie are hooch, snoop and mongrel. There are other different types of lures in the 3B Crankbait range and I’ll be looking forward to using them this coming summer.

If you prefer soft plastics, then it is going to be hard to go past the 2” Banana Prawns from Berkley. With the prawns running, then it only makes sense to ‘match the hatch’. Try using the 3” Gulp prawns or the Atomic prongs in the deeper water for larger flathead and jewies.

Speaking of flathead, they will be around in numbers this month and we use the 5” jerk shads but I have been giving the 4” Pogy a try and have had good success with these, particularly in areas where you’ll find poddy mullet schooling.

Croudace Bay has been a big surprise lately with quite a good number of fish here (when the speed boats aren’t around). This is a good area for those that are land-based as you can just ‘splodge’ along from one end to the other. You could do the same thing down behind the Co-Op at Swansea and Coon Island Caravan Park.

Coal Point, Wangi and not far from the Drop Over has been the main areas for flathead with Belmont Barge, Green Point and the Trench holding jewies very early morning or on dusk for the lure angler. For those that prefer bait, then these same areas are good for a night fish. The number of jewie scales at Valentine boat ramp of a morning is showing that there are plenty around.

There have also been reports of large numbers of squire through the lake and the above mentioned spots would definitely be worth a try. Lately Macca has been using live squid behind the boat as we drift along flicking plastics for flathead, and he has caught a few good fish with a 52cm specimen the best to date.

You could also be in with a chance of getting a jew doing this but it would be worthwhile using heavier line as Macca unfortunately found out when he got smoked by a big one on our last trip out.

You will probably get a lot of squire at the moment that are just under size but if you persist then hopefully the results will come.

There have been a few reports of kingies at Swansea Bridge recently so feeding a live squid back towards the bridge is a good option or, if shore-based, use the larger poppers such as the ones from Halco. There have been a few showing up around the Drop Over but not in real numbers. Most ‘rats’ have been caught around Moon Island with a few larger fish caught off the rocks at Catho. Up towards Redhead there are plenty of squire about with pilchards and squid being the better baits to use.

Off the beaches things have been a bit quiet, however there are flathead, whiting and bream along the gutters during the day with the odd salmon and tailor around dusk. There has been the odd large jewie around but with the build up to the next moon things will start to improve.

I left out a bit of relevant information in last month’s report that I thought I would share with you. I have resigned from Fishermans Warehouse, Tackleworld Marks Point, and I am now working as the warehouse manager for Pure Fishing. I have left Tackleworld on friendly terms and the staff there are second to none and I will miss them but I am also looking forward to new challenges in my current job. I also look forward to doing a bit of product testing on my days off and I will keep you informed of new products as they come out on the market. To all my customers over the years I just wanted to say thank you and I look forward to seeing you out on the water.

For those that want to keep in touch my new email address is --e-mail address hidden--