There’s a heap happening at the moment and lots of good fishing about for the upcoming holidays.

After a reasonable Spring mako season the game season will be starting to get into gear.

By the time you read this there should be a few yellowfin about, although they were pretty quiet over Spring.

The makos were a bit patchy early with a few from 80kg to 120kg but a few bigger models turned up in November to make things interesting.

The water got warmer earlier than it normally does and we were fishing in 21° in mid-October.

If that water stays warm we might be in for a strange season with a few tropical species on the capture list. I heard of a 30kg wahoo caught off Kiama in mid-October and a few early striped marlin.

Hopefully we can add a few big mahi mahi to the list and maybe a few more wahoo this Summer. A half-decent marlin season wouldn’t go astray, either

I’ve just put a new Furuno FCV 585 sounder in our boat. We’ve been running it for a month on the snapper and kings and it is absolutely awesome.

I’m running a 1kw transducer and the picture quality in deep water is outstanding. A lot of guys are running FCV 585s for finding bait schools out wide and I’m excited about doing the same this Summer when the striped marlin show up.

Steve Howes of Culburra did a very professional job installing the Furuno and he also replaced some old copper wire with the tinned variety and soldered the joints.

Last month I mentioned the new boat ramp at Greenwell Point and how I’ve had time to check it out I’m very impressed with the dual ramp and improved parking. It make Greenwell Point a much more attractive proposition for visiting boaters and fishos.

I went for a walk along the pontoon the other day and was amazed at some of the blackfish swimming around. I’ve been told some of the locals are catching them at night on squirt worms, so that might be worth keeping in mind over the holidays.

Finally I’d like to wish all our readers a safe and happy Christmas. I hope you all get out and enjoy some quality time with family and friends and most importantly stay safe and catch a few fish wherever you go.

As many readers would know I do a bit of work with Loomis and their Australian importers, EJ Todd & Son.

Graham Todd is a very good mate and we try to get together and fish whenever the opportunity arises. That usually involves Graham coming down our way for a few days and fishing out from Greenwell Point or in Jervis Bay.

Over the past 10 years we’ve had some great fun and caught a lot of fish out at the Banks and in close.

For some reason we always seem to find a few fish when Graham’s down and we always have a great time.

Our most recent exploits involved heading out off Culburra and chasing some reds on plastics. We had two trips and caught a few good to 3kg fish each day and lost a couple of better snapper that we couldn’t pull up on 20lb braid.

Graham always brings some exciting new gear. EJ Todd & Son are importers for Loomis, Yamashita, Lucky Craft, Sunline and Snowbee, among others.

We fished some of the Sunline Super PE braided line in 20lb for the reds and it’s soft, supple and very well suited to fishing plastics.

Images

1

Graeme Todd gets stretched by a Culburra reddie.

2

Graeme snared this nice snapper on a Gulp plastic off Culburra.

3

Steve Howes in the process of rewiring the author’s boat, replacing old copper wire with the tinned variety and soldered joints.

4

Nowra angler Christopher Neville with a 13kg jewie caught on a plastic in the Clyde River.