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All set up for Summer
  |  First Published: October 2009



With some warmer weather on offer, the fishing is looking good down with local estuaries firing for some very nice flathead, jew, blackfish and bream.

t
he Shoalhaven River and St Georges Basin are firing. The Basin has fished very well just about all winter for some nice bream, snapper and big tailor.

The upper reaches of the Shoalhaven along with Flatrock Tallowa dams are also producing some good bass. A lot of the local bass gurus are ducking out before or after work and having a great time.

By the time you read this the new boat ramp at Greenwell Point will be in business. At the old ramp site adjacent to the main trawler wharf, the new model consists of two concrete ramps with a pontoon down the middle.

The design is very good and the installation took several months and is an enormous improvement over the previous ramp that was probably 30 years old. The pontoon is a great idea and the parking area has also been upgraded significantly.

t
he whole set-up is going to be a great thing over the upcoming
s
ummer.

The fishing out wide is pretty hot at the moment. September and October produced some excellent mako shark fishing with a heap tagged and some very impressive captures on 6kg, 8kg and 10kg line.

I heard of several boats spending hours hooked up to makos on light line with a couple of fights going well over six hours. The weather was pretty kind to us over that period so a heap of boats were out fishing most weekends.

If the shark fishing didn’t interest you there was some reasonable deep bottom fishing out around the Kiama and Drum canyons.

This is fairly specialised fishing and not everyone’s cup of tea but the rewards are well worth the expense and effort. Gemfish, blue eye and hapuka are the targets – some of the best eating fish in the ocean.

The work involved catching them includes having a sounder that accurately marks the bottom in up to 300 fathoms (550m) of water along the gear and tackle to drop baits down that deep.

Most of the experienced crews use electric reels with 150lb to 200lb braid or big Alvey deck winches.

Also about in September were some nice albacore and the odd yellowfin and those may still be around when you read this.

LIGHT TACKLE

With the Shoalhaven Light Tackle Tournament on November 14 and 15 there will be a lot of boats and crews out there sniffing around for a tuna or shark. The Light Tackle is a great and very relaxed tournament run out of the Greenwell Point Bowling Club.

A lot of local trailer boats fish this tournament and last year there were 192 albacore tagged along with yellowfin to 22kg taken, along with some impressive makos on light tackle.

Gear is restricted to 10kg and under and the tournament is run by the Shoalhaven Gamefishing Club and sanctioned NSW Gamefishing. It’s open to all NSWGFA members, ANSA members or you can get a temporary membership. For more details or an entry form contact Darren Tickner on 0411 206151.

My son Andrew has been cleaning up on the inshore reds over the past few months.

Several years ago I couldn’t get him out to chase a red. If it wasn’t sharks or marlin he just wasn’t interested.

I guess he’s developed a bit over the past few years and these days he even suggests going out to chase a blackfish from the rocks, which would have been unheard of a few years ago. He also loves to chase a feed of calamari.

He went out this morning with a mate and got back about 10 with half a dozen fish between 1.5kg and 2.5kg in Jervis Bay and out the front of Crookhaven on soft plastics. His mate got a 5.2kg red.

Neighbour Jared Donnelly is a keen fisho who has just completed Year 12 at St John the Evangelist Catholic High School in Nowra. For one of his major projects eh designed and built a portable fishing storage unit.

Part of the design process was to consult various anglers and the brief ended up calling for a lightweight, waterproof, portable storage unit with internal storage with rod holders and a cutting board on top.

Jared achieved all of that in a very tidy unit with an aluminium frame and waterproof ply.

The unit can be clamped to Jared’s boat and carries all of his tackle. I was very impressed with the workmanship, time and effort and it is rewarding to see a young local keen enough to make a fishing accessory part of his Year 12 studies.

Images

1

Reds on plastics are the go at the moment. Some very nice fish are available in Jervis Bay and out around Currarong and
t
he Mud.

2

Rebecca Finney puts in the hard yards on a mako shark out at the Kiama Canyons.
b
ehind her, Andrew Finney looks quite bored with the proceedings after a two-hour fight.

3

Elspeth Finney with a 32kg southern bluefin taken on 24kg tackle out of Dad’s
b
oat.

4

Jarrod Donnelly with the Rod Pod tackle storage unit that he designed as part of his Year 12 studies at St John’s High School in Nowra.

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