With the end of summer near and southerly winds becoming more common from an angling perspective, this is just what we want to see in the lead-up to our autumn fishing season. Some intermittent rainfall, southerly winds, warm current and the occasional bit of swell all bode well for the months ahead.
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For fishing on the beaches this week, a few local and visitor fishers experienced some terrific action on our coastline. North Shore beach in Port Macquarie has been producing good numbers of bream and whiting throughout the day along with a few decent sized tailor throughout the evenings. Further north around the Crescent Head beaches produced good numbers of flathead and bream during the week.
Off the rocks, bream numbers have been excellent around Queens Head and further south around Perpendicular Point. Tailor have also been reasonable with some larger specimens caught around Crowdy Head, while the odd school mulloway has also been taken at first light around the southern ledges.
In the rivers, bream numbers have been consistent off the breakwalls with quite a few bag limit catches reported. Green prawns have been the standout bait. Up in the Hastings River, whiting are active, with both surface and diving lures seeing good results. Flathead also remain consistent from all of our local rivers, whilst the Camden Haven River has produced some terrific sized lizards over the past week. Mulloway remain sporadic although a few school sized fish continue to be encountered around the bridges and up the deeper sections of the Maria River.
Unfortunately for the locals, Lake Cathie is almost closed with a little trickle from the ocean pouring in on the top of each high tide. On a positive note, we could see a late summer frenzy of school prawns. There are a few smaller sized prawns around, but I would be tempted to try to drag a net for a few schoolies just after the Easter full moon.
Offshore, mackerel fever continues off our coastline with South West Rocks and Hat Head producing some great catches of spanish and spotted mackerel last weekend. I received a few reports from Plomer Bay that cobia and mack tuna were popular throughout the week, but most fish were taken by a few larger sharks hanging around the area.
For fishing out wider, the FADs have been a little hit and miss although the mahi mahi that have been caught have generally been of good size. With one of the best fishing seasons of black marlin, fishos are still reporting catches from South West Rocks to Crowdy Head around the twenty-five to thirty metres of water. For fishing the reefs, I received a few reports of decent snapper, pearl perch and kingfish off Crowdy Head and Laurieton.
