Albany Catches
Picture: A nice pinkie caught on a pirate jig
Reef fishing enthusiasts, who managed to pick a break in the weather and headed offshore, reported stocks to be generally fair along the coral ground in 55m to 80m and this seemed to be the case whether they ventured out from Cosy Corner, Albany or Cheynes. Pink, queen and red snapper were about in reasonable numbers. There weren’t lots of the snapper varieties, but apparently enough for the punters to take home a feed.
A few dhufish were also found in places together with skippy and breaksea cod. A couple of the bigger boats reported scoring the shelf without drift late last week. As expected with these conditions, they had little trouble dropping onto hapuka and blue eye trevalla schools. Shoals of samson fish and yellowtail kingfish have been found near Mauds Reef and Vancouver Rock. King George whiting still require some effort through the inshore waters of the sound and harbours. Most of the King George have been in the 35cm to 45cm range. Skippy of mixed sizes, plenty of sand whiting and a few flathead have also been coming from the inshore areas.
Squid catches have been better along the seagrass beds east and west of town. Mostly herring and skippy have been caught from the local beaches. There have been salmon picked up, but most of the 3kg to 7kg fish have been caught along the Bremer Bay beaches. An estimated 10kg mulloway was landed in the Kalgan River recently. Black bream to 35cm can be caught with little difficulty in both of the local rivers, however the fish north of 40cm require some searching.
Esperance Catches
Picture: A samson fish was tagged south west of Rottnest in 2006 and recaptured off Esperance in 2014, 8 years later. It had traveled over 1000 kms and had grown 27 cm making it 1.5 m and 30 kgs (Photo courtesy of Brian K Norton).
The Taylor Street Jetty is continuing to fish well for bread and butter species, including herring and squid, while the Bandy Creek Boat Harbour has been providing some good sessions on King George whiting. Mixed-size salmon schools have been appearing at Fourth Beach, Salmon Beach, Fourteen Mile and Roses.
With the winter weather being as bad as it has the opportunity to fish in deeper waters has been limited, but those who took advantage of the recent good weather managed to pick up a of nannygai, pink snapper and small samson fish. There are large numbers of tuna out wide, both southern bluefin and bonito however the larger sized fish are few and far between.
Alexander and Thomas are worth the drive following reports of big skippy and plenty of salmon caught there recently. The small boat and dinghy fishers have been satisfied with the quantities of sand whiting and squid that are occupying the waters close to local beaches.
