Albany Catches
Picture: Yellowtail Kings (YTK’s) are dynamic pelagic hoodlums, often making their presence known shooting up towards the surface, or preferably around your lure – as they smash through the bait balls with unmistakable fervor – and they make for a tasty feed too!
Small boat and kayak fishers are achieving bag limits of King George whiting in the most unlikely of places – King George Sound. The King George have mostly been in the 35cm to 45cm range and have been responding well to local squid, coral prawn and blue sardine baits. Sand whiting, herring and small skippy have also been picked up through the inshore waters, however squid have remained rather scarce close to town.
The seagrass beds out from Cheynes Beach and towards Denmark have fortunately been producing fair catches of squid however. The coral lumps in 60m to 85m of water provided fair catches of reef fishing including big skippy, breaksea cod, queen and pink snapper. Schools of big samson fish and a few yellowtail kingfish have been found in a range of depths and areas. The local beaches have been producing mixed results with some managing to pick up herring, skippy, sand whiting and the odd resident salmon and others struggling to bag a single fish.
Cables and Sand Patch appear to be the better performing herring spots while the beaches east of Cheynes are producing bigger numbers of salmon. The deep gutters at Bluff Creek seem to be holding some big skippy at the moment. Black bream are believed to be hard to tempt in the King and Kalgan rivers because of the high concentrations of fresh water in both systems and the likelihood that the local populations are engaging in spawning.
Esperance Catches
Picture: The ubiquitous squiddy – although being prolific in west coast waters, it appears larger hoods going 30cm and over have been more of a common catch in southern waters in recent weeks (Photo: Courtesy of Squid Hunters WA).
Salmon continue to be caught from the local beaches including Salmon Beach, Fourth Beach, Fourteen Mile and Roses. Herring and a few skippy have also been coming from these spots. Plenty of herring and fair numbers of squid have been picked up at the Taylor Street Jetty. King George whiting can still be sought at the Bandy Creek boat harbour as well as the inshore waters within a mile or so from there.
The small boat and dinghy fishers have been picking up their bag limit of 30 chunky sand whiting within an hour from the protected waters close to town. Mitchell Johnson encountered a dozen samson fish in the 15kg to 25kg range on jigs from 12 drops last Wednesday. He then went on to catch a nice feed of swallowtail and skippy.
