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Bream brawlers blessed at Tweed
  |  First Published: September 2016



The tailor are on the bite big time and I’ve been doing a bit of exploring, walking the rocks of the Tweed chasing these classic fighters.

Work’s been pretty slow, so I’ve had a few extra days off to explore. I was about halfway out the north wall fishing for bream with a 1/4oz jighead loaded with fresh chicken thighs. Generally speaking, bream bites are usually pretty light, a little ‘tap-tap’ – it might be a big fish, but normally not a big hitter. On this day, I was feeling the taps, then whack! The rod almost got pulled out of my hand, and I got totally zipped, my 20lb leader bitten cleanly off! I retied and tried again, only for same result. It took me half an hour before I landed a tailor on chicken. That’s right… chicken. You know they’re around in numbers if they’re going to eat chicken.

The first spot I looked at was the rocks at D-Bah at the bottom of the cliff where the Maritime Rescue is situated. It’s not easy but you can walk the shore all the way to Snapper Rocks, which I found to be an awesome fishing platform. Care must be taken as the swell can be dangerous, so it’s a good idea to check out what the surf is doing before you start fishing.

It’s too dangerous to fish there at night, but just around the corner is a real hot spot for night time lure fishing and that is the entrance to Jack Evans Boat Harbour. Both entrances fish well, but the wall closer to the sea entrance is the easiest to cast from.

With so many tailor in the river, I’d be betting some nice school mulloway would be lurking around the Condong sugar mill in the middle of the night, so this area may be worth a try by boat. Some weird stuff goes down at this spot when the mill is in operation, sucking in water from one outlet and running it through the whole factory, before it comes out steaming hot from a second outlet, and this is where the fish hang out.

Both walls are good spots as well, just remember to take a gaff, because you might just hook one and not be able to lift it up!

On the whiting front, a little known spot, and boy is it beautiful, is a little beach right at the end of the Fingal dirt road. You can pick up some live worms on the way, and it’s very family friendly. After you catch your feed, you can even go for a dip – well worth a squiz!

It’s been a special winter on the Tweed, with some fantastic weather and a clean river system. Bream are just starting to spawn and should only grow in numbers, so whether you’re bait fishing or tossing lures, the Tweed is the place to be.

The beaches from the sand pumping jetty down to the headlands are worth a fish as well, just look for the gutters where the water is dirty. Some decent mulloway are also being landed off the beaches and the headland at Devils Island.

As for me, I’ll be chasing whiting on surface lures, as this is the best time of year to get amongst the big ones.

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