Craig Coughlan from Tournament Fishing Australia reports some great fishing in the Moruya River, where the quality of fish has been superb.
Over the last few trips he’s managed to get some great bream to the net, with the biggest going 39cm.
Fishing the incoming tide has been the best towards the mouth of the river and the best technique has been casting over the shallow weed beds with small shallow-diving hard-body lures.
The water is cold so the bream are not quite as active as they are during the warmer months and as a result a slow retrieve has been best.
The biggest challenge Craig has found, though, is avoiding the massive number of tailor – it is hard to get a full retrieve in without the lure being taken by a tailor, which can be very costly if they manage to get their sharp teeth anywhere near the line.
Craig found the majority of tailor to be in the four to five feet depth, so he moved in as shallow as two feet of water where he found the least amount of tailor and the bigger bream.
Using a slow retrieve with the occasional small twitch followed by a pause of the lure, he often detected the lightest touches of the lure after which he found a very small light twitch of the lure often enticed the bream to take it with a fair amount of aggression.
A suspending hard-body lure is perfect – when paused it will sit in front of the fish for a longer period of time, which in a lot of cases will make the difference of a fish losing interest or striking at the lure.
There are quite a few good sized trevally on the same weed beds that will readily take the lures as well, along with the occasional flathead.
If the river is not firing, the beach and breakwall just downstream is fishing very well with huge numbers of salmon around near the wall or the beach gutters that will happily take baits or lures during the high tide period.
Bait anglers have also fared well in Tuross, with the best bream coming out to bite at night – one beauty measured 46cm.
Among the schools of chopper tailor, salmon up to 2kg have been recorded and flathead have been common, but many are undersized so take your ruler and your rule book.
Hook some brook in icy waters
Brook trout are quite rare in this country compared to brown and rainbow trout, but they do exist, especially in the coldest of climates like the Snowy Mountains.
They are an introduced species stocked by NSW Fisheries as a put-and-take fish, and if you ever get to catch one they are a brilliant looking species that taste great if you handle them properly – don’t bruise them and keep them on ice.
But keeping them cool is normally not a problem, as brook trout fishing is best when the water temperatures are icy – for example, Lake Jindabyne in winter!
They respond to all the usual techniques used for other trout, after that it is a case of being Johnny on the spot – just make it a cold shady deep spot for best results.
See you on the water, Facebook.com/RobPaxevanos