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Hot beach action
  |  First Published: July 2005



The beaches around Narooma have been fishing extremely well and this should continue throughout the coming month.

Tilba Beach, about a 15-minute drive south of Narooma, is producing big salmon on bait and lures. Captures of 10 or more fish are not uncommon with some decent bream and tailor making up the bags.

Sunrise and sunset are the times to fish, the tides not really making a difference due to the depth of the gutter. Blue surf poppers have been working well also; rig these on a paternoster rig for best results.

The beaches further north, from Potato Point to Tuross, have produced some pretty good mulloway. The best fish I have heard of went 12kg, with a lot of smaller ones being caught as well. Most fish have fallen to large clumps of live beach worms rigged on a single hook, but fresh strip baits like tailor and mullet have also produced the goods.

If you can handle the cool conditions at night, a go at these majestic marvels is certainly worth trying.

Wagonga Inlet will gradually slow down as the water cools.

Tailor will still be prolific in the deeper sections and a few bream and trevally will still haunt the channels looking for a feed. Striped tuna is the best bait I have found during the Winter months for the bream.

The trevally will respond well to soft plastics. Use the smallest softies possible and fish them slowly.

Every Winter good-sized flatties get caught in this system. Concentrate your efforts in the shallow water from Punkella Creek upstream – don’t worry about the sections below here, you will be wasting your time.

Use big soft plastics and hang on. Remember to let these bigger fish go; at this time of the year they average 70cm so be responsible!

The fishing offshore has been dynamite up to now. Reports of jumbo yellow fin are frequent and some boats are getting a dozen strikes a day. A lot of the fish are falling to berley and cubes, especially the bigger fish, with school fish victims of the trolling brigade. When this goes to press it will be a different story though.

The cold southern waters will be on our doorstep so southern bluefin tuna are a possibility, but that totally depends on ocean currents and water temperatures.

Montague Island will be quiet with the odd snapper and mowie will be available on the inshore reefs.

Potato Point, north of Narooma, has produced good Winter snapper fishing in the past so let’s hope this season sees a reddie or two get caught.

The rocks are the place to fish in Winter if you ask me.

Drummer, blackfish and bream are all there for the taking. Use fresh bait and berley and a feed won’t be far away. Red crabs, cunjevoi, ab gut and cabbage will all work at certain times; early morning is best on a low tide.

Dalmeny headland and High Rock at Mystery Bay are also good places to fish.

There have been some good bream caught inside the north wall at Narooma with striped tuna working well. Here you need to fish the ebb tide for best results.

Winter fishing is not for everyone but if you put in the hard yards, some decent fishing still exists.

Quality flathead like this 3.48kg fish caught by Andrew still exist in the upper reaches of Wagonga Inlet through the Winter months.

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