Plenty happening over the last two weeks, most of happening offshore due to the torrential rains we've had along our coast which has turned most estuary systems quite brown and made it a little harder than usual to fish. Reports in both our stores from customers and also from the Facebook group East Coast Tuna and Billfish of both marlin and yellowfin tuna being caught out in the blue water. Mixed bag of marlin with blues, blacks and striped all being caught. Chuck in there the reports of snapper, kingfish and flathead caught pretty regularly and you realise it really has been a good week of offshore fishing with what looks to be a great long weekend of it ahead!
Some good snapper have been caught recently off the Illawarra coast. A few different reports have come into the stores, the best we heard was one customer landing an 80cm fish, would've pulled hard! Casey Rogers is pictured with a nice red he landed using a 60g Hayabusa Jack Eye Slow Fall Jig.
Andi was one of the many lucky anglers to land a solid long tail off the stones recently. We had a nice run of them for a few days and then they were gone just like that, but we've just heard reports today that they're now back! Hopefully the mac tuna follow them as we haven't heard of them coming back in yet. Get stuck into them!
There's also been a whole heap of salmon around both off the beach and rocks. Plus plenty of bonito, there seems to be heaps but they're either really big or tiny, not too much in between.
Inshore fishing has been a bit of a drag since all the rain we've had, with spots of good reports here and there in the lakes and estuaries over the last couple of weeks, but it's all coming good now! The now tea-coloured waters of Lake Conjola still fished pretty well last weekend considering the conditions, but the rain has really opened up the entrance so it won't take long for it to clear out. I imagine that would be the same for most estuaries along our coast so it's a great weekend to get back into it!
The Jackson Artist FR80 was a winner the first day, and the Bottom Magic 55mm took over the next day. There was also a sneaky appearance from a trout spin lure the 7g Iga Jig Spin lure, which was eaten by a nice little flatty.
Some great news for Conjola fishos and also those that fish in St Georges Basin, 15,000 juvenile flathead were released into Conjola and 25,000 into the basin a couple weeks back by the NSW Fisheries. Very exciting stuff for those two systems, hopefully a lot of them survive to grow up nice and big! It'd be a smart thing to find a few lures to throw around with similar colour patterns and/or shapes to those for sure, there'll be bigger predators on the look out for them!
Cameron Manwaring fished with his mates Nathan and Adam on Sunday after hearing the successes from other boats on the Saturday, chasing blues and YFT. After about a 300m run a blue unfortunately pulled hooks so the spread had to be reset. A couple hours later the short corner screamed off and a weird 20min fight later they landed a very nice (24kg cleaned, 1.61m short length) wahoo! They had another marlin smacking there lures an hours later, stopped for a quick deep drop for a gemfish, then dropped in the spread for one last troll and ended up with a nice striped marlin, what a day!
More reports of another boat that landed a wahoo also came into our Warrawong store, so as far as we know there were at least two in the ocean recently hahah
David Moses and his crew landed this nice yellow fin tuna way out in 750 fathoms south east of Browns. After they called the marks in another few boats had a crack and one hooked up to something too which is good to hear!
More YFT action has been reported in our Warrawong store, fish around the 50-60kg mark caught off Wollongong recently.
Grant Kosh was another lucky angler this week along with his two mates Graeme and Robert. Graeme tagged and released his first marlin in about 90 fathoms in the morning. They then headed out into much deeper waters and ended up landing a solid yellowfin tuna, and then another marlin on the way back in! 3-3-3 is always a great day on the water!
Victor Obeid and his mates headed out into 300 fathoms of blue water on Saturday chasing blue marlin, but instead landed a pretty nice YFT! He says the water was 26.4ºC where they were with a strong current taking them south. Spewing he pulled hooks on another fish on the way back in, but hey that's fishing. Sashimi it was! Post from ECTB
Stack McKenzie got his mate onto his first striped marlin off Shellharbour on Saturday. The boys headed out and found some blue water that was 24ºC, after about an hour of trolling they got a double hookup and landed one of them to take back for dinner that night!
Mitch had a recent trip up north to Swaine's reef just to rub it into everyones face :/ Plenty of fish were caught over the 5 day trip, the double up on these two doggies was just a highlight!
