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Lunker lizards and hope for YFT
  |  First Published: October 2014



The local beaches continue to fire with most beaches holding good concentrations of salmon.

North Tura Beach has been a stand-out, with catches of a dozen sambos to 3kg the norm.

The northern end of the beach towards Bournda Island has a deep gutter at present, fishing this section early in the morning on a flooding tide has been excellent. Anglers using surf poppers on a paternoster rig with no bait are doing very well. Both a blue/white and red/white poppers have been the better colours of late. Those using bait like ganged pilchards are catching plenty to as are anglers casting a few metal shiners.

Tailor numbers should improve this month, with the rocky foreshore near the island itself fishing better for bream. Cut crabs and pipi are both great baits here if targeting bream. Using a little berley in the shore dump will also increase catch rates but don't over do it or the stingrays and banjo sharks will become a nuisance.

Offshore, the snapper are still doing the right thing, with most boaties getting a feed without too much trouble. Anglers using berley have been getting the best results, with chook pellets and frozen bread with tuna oil doing the trick. Anchoring up on the edge of the reef and floating baits up the shallower sides of the reef has seen snapper to 5kg taken. All reefs are holding fish with Long Point and Lennards Island down south probably being the most consistent.

The reefs out wider have produced tassie trumpeter up to 8kg, with blue eye trevalla and hapuka available along the canyon walls. Fishing for the latter has been good of late, as the weather and tide has allowed anglers to stay stationary over the canyon walls and fish deeper sections.

There hasn’t been any sign of tuna as yet, but this month could see that all change if last year is anything to go by. We did have a cracking SBT run but that has now completely tapered off. Towards the end of October, good yellowfin and albacore should make an appearance, so let’s hope as they are a whole stack of fun.

Trolling both skirted and bibbed minnows is the only way to target these early season pelagics. Fishing the shelf to the second drop off is the place to fish, it's a long way out but worth it if the tuna are there.

The estuaries continue to produce with Pambula Lake a stand-out. This little system is only a puddle, but recent guides there have been nothing short of sensational. You can expect flathead, bream, blackfish and whiting with the pelagic species like salmon, tailor and trevally all there too. It's not uncommon to get 8 different species in a day here and most of them quality fish. Casting smaller soft plastics and vibes around the ribbon weed edges in 3-5 meters of water will get you results.

Merimbula Lake is fishing great guns also, with all the usual estuary dwellers having a chew. The top Lake is the place to fish with anglers catching fish with a number of different methods. The entrance to Boggy Creek has seen tailor and nice flathead on a run out tide with lures catching the majority of fish. The lower sections of the main channel on the eastern side of the bridge has seen trevally, bream and good numbers of blackfish for those anglers who like soaking a bait.

Most local rock platforms are still producing fish with Short Point the pick of them if targeting blackfish and drummer. I had a look down there the other day and saw two anglers with their bag limits for blackfish. They were using cabbage as bait and were berleying pretty hard. The fish averaged 800g with the odd bigger fish thrown in. There’s still a few salmon around the washes of most headlands, with whole ganged pilchards and chrome lures the best way of catching them.

This month will see bonito turn up with Long Point and Tura Head the better places to fish. It's a bit of work getting there but the rewards will come with bent rods and good times.

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