26 May 2017 – South Coast Fishing Report

Cockburn Sound squid

Picture: Western Squid Wranglers members have been doing really well on squid by drifting over broken ground in the Sound lately.

Keep your eyes peeled for Recfishwest’s Tip of the week, see below!

Your Fishing Photos

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Demersal Jigging for Beginners

Albany Pink Snapper

Jigging is a very effective, hands-on and fun method of fishing for demersals. Many fishers are reluctant to try it as they are not sure what to do or if their gear is right for the task. In this article we will show you how easy it is to get started with jigging for demersals.

Get up to speed with jigging for demersals, here.

Esperance Catches

Esperance queen snapper

Picture: The bigger boats that ventured to the islands and beyond caught good catches of queen snapper (Photo courtesy of @pjgringo).

Boats

Boat fishers scored fair catches of nannygai, queen snapper, breaksea cod, samson fish and yellowtail kingfish near the islands and beyond. The inshore areas are producing good mixed catches of whiting, herring, garfish and squid.

Shore based

Bread and butter species including herring, skippy, garfish and squid can be caught from the Taylor Street Jetty and Bandy Creek boat harbour with black bream an addition at the latter location. Salmon turned up at Salmon Beach, Fourth Beach, Blue Haven, Nine Mile, Fourteen Mile and Poison Creek. A group of Southern Sports and Tackle customers landed six mulloway, skippy to 3kg, salmon and herring at Fourteen Mile last week. Poison Creek has also been fishing well for mulloway as well as skippy to 6kg and salmon. Thomas River is worth a visit with more mulloway, skippy and salmon being caught there during the past fortnight.

Albany Catches

Albany black bream

Picture: Black bream are being caught in rivers between Walpole and Bremer Bay (Photo courtesy of @massamone).

Boats

The inshore waters east of town are still fishing better for squid than the waters between Albany and Denmark. Herring, sand whiting and skippy can be found with little difficulty through most of the inshore areas. Reef fishers who visited the coral in 60m to 90m when the weather permitted found better numbers of dhufish compared to previous weeks. Pink, red and queen snapper were also picked up in these waters together with breaksea cod and harlequin fish. Schools of samson fish were encountered in some areas. Black bream are being caught in the rivers between Walpole and Bremer Bay. There were a few bream around 40cm recently caught in a few of the systems. Schools of chopper tailor are occupying the lower reaches of the King and Kalgan rivers.

Shore based

Surf fishers enjoyed another week of high quality salmon fishing with dozens of 3kg to 8kg fish caught from the beach at Salmon Holes, Shelleys, Bornholm, Cables and Sand Patch. Herring are still about in excellent numbers where a consistent stream of burley will assist in picking up a bag of the important bread and butter species. Tailor have been turning up at Nanarup and Bornholm some mornings and evenings. There are some bigger skippy starting to be caught from the areas that feature reef and deeper sand holes. A couple of fortunate fishers managed to land King George whiting from the shore at Frenchmans. Squid have been caught from the marina early morning and at night.

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Circle hooks

Technical Rating: Novice

A simple innovation that both saves time and produces less unwanted damage to non-target fish is the circle hook. Various shapes and forms of circle hook are available with some representing more of a triangle shape but essentially what defines them is an inward facing point. Effectively what this does is when a fish swallows a bait deep in its throat, the point doesn’t catch deep in its throat. When the fish pulls back on the line the hook can slide up the fish’s throat until the hook settles around the hinge of the fishes jaw before exiting its mouth. Another small tug or a strike in the rod from the angler results in the hook rotating as it is caught in the corner of the fishes mouth, now exposing and coming into contact with the hook point which penetrates and creates a neat hook up in the corner of the mouth almost every time. The clean hook up allows easy release of unwanted or undersize fish causing minimal damage and means you don’t have to be digging a hook out from deep in a fish’s throat.

For more on catch care and releasing your fish properly, click here.

2017-05-26T18:03:40+08:00