Table of contents for July 2022 in Fishing World

THE Daly River is one of the most popular waterways in the Northern Territory. It has a reputation as one of the best rivers to chase big barramundi. It is home to both the Barra Classic and the Barra Nationals, two of the most iconic fishing tournaments in the country. For me, it is a river entrenched in fond memories. I first went to the Daly in 1991 having never before caught a barramundi in my life. I was invited to fish in the Barra Classic with the aim of producing an article for this magazine. It may seem a bit strange to the younger generation of anglers, but back then magazines were king. There was no social media and a lot of people hung out for their edition of…

Last weekend we headed out wide of the continental shelf in my six metre plate aluminium boat. It had been the worst fishing season in over 20 years when it came to the weather, with floods, strong winds and never ending rain. This has been the same story for the entire East Coast of Australia. This particular day was one of those rare jewels on the predictive weather app, and after a disrupted start due to Covid, we headed out the Gold Coast Seaway on a calm dirty ocean. The blue water was out well beyond the horizon, in fact we had trolled for an hour in very borderline water until we hit a depth of 540 metres and the current finally changed into that inspirational deep purple water that…

I recently spent an afternoon fishing an impoundment west of Sydney. After months of rain, the sun finally made an appearance and it didn’t take much convincing when I asked my eight-year-old son, Ethan, to come along. The lake is full of redfin, trout and some natives. While it’s usually a productive fishery, unfortunately, as much as we tried, we came back empty handed. Ethan wasn’t too disappointed and looked forward to the next stop on the way home… mushroom hunting. Many of the state forests in NSW Central Tablelands offer an abundance of wild mushrooms. Most are easy to identify and some are safe to eat. We turned into a muddy forestry road and stopped the car before walking through a thicket of pines. It was late afternoon and…

The Australian Fisheries Management Authority (AFMA) turned 30 in February. It continues to support sustainable fishing practices and the 22 commercial fisheries operating within Commonwealth-controlled waters. It sets catch quotas which can lead to structural readjustments of individual fisheries such as in the South East Trawl Industry, which will have $20 million made available for the buy-back of trawl vessel permits, plus $3 million in levy relief and $1 million to transition management to a smaller scale. Four stocks have had their quotas cut in the fishery…. silver trevally, john dory, redfish and jackass morwong….by 609 tonnes or 86% as AFMA considers stocks are not recovering or have declined. While they’re not the primary targets in this fishery, they are unavoidable by-catch, and in the future further quota reductions and…

CUSTOMISING and upgrading fishing tackle, in particular fishing reels, can transform a decent and usable reel into ones that offer enhanced ergonomics and performance. Spools can be upgraded to higher spec and lighter, balanced models while bearings can be added in some reels that have down spec’d by the manufacturer to quality Japanese or ceramic bearings for optimal performance and longevity. Handles and handle knobs can be changed for increased leverage, balance or ergonomics whilst drags can be replaced with washer materials that offer lower start up inertia and consistently smooth performance during extended battles. I often upgrade my reels to suit the fishing that I do and make the reels more comfortable to use with the handles often getting the first modification. UPGRADING HANDLE KNOBS I have been tinkering…

I started writing this column several months ago and it was all going to be about not having to be up in the dark and before dawn to catch many of our target species. In the past, I’ve always been one to be out there on the water before the sun came up but as I’ve gotten older, those early morning starts have become less attractive. I started recounting all of the trips that started very early and realised that many of our best fish were hooked, not at sunrise, but often an hour or two into the session. I seriously believe that tides play a more important timing role than being on the water at dawn. These days a lot of my fishing revolves around tides and tide changes…

THERE’S little doubt that angling can be a smelly business. Ask any non-angler, and they are likely to comment about the smell at some stage, be it bait, hands or even the cooking of seafood. Yep, I stink at times … but to me, the odours of the ocean are sweet indeed. One smell that I love is the smell of a freshly caught mulloway. In days past, when I’d target big fish from the rocks or the beach, the return journey to the car always involved balancing the mulloway on a shoulder whilst holding the bony ridge under the gill plate. No matter how I did it, with a raincoat or not, I came home with a huge grin and an equally imposing smell. The only time I escaped…

How many times do you change your lure during a typical session on your favourite estuary? If you go through an entire session using the one lure, my theory is that you’ve either had a very good day, or you haven’t tried hard enough. More than likely, it’s the latter. Being versatile, flexible and open to change is part and parcel of estuary lure fishing. That’s especially the case at this time of the year, when fish don’t always come easily, particularly in the southern states. During a full day on your typical system, you will most likely be fishing varying tides, a range of depths and a cross section of terrain. Of course, you’ll probably also be targeting a number of different species. The other day, during a six-hour…

FIVE key Recreational Fishing Havens have now received a significant boost of dusky flathead fingerlings, marking the end of the most successful dusky stocking season to date. Lake Macquarie, a well-known flattie hotspot to the north of Sydney had 23,200 fingerlings released along its shores. A marine stocking first, the Camden Haven River, on the Mid North Coast, received 11,300 of these highly popular and accessible sportfish. All the Lake Macquarie and Camden Haven fish were produced by the dedicated hatchery team at DPI’s Port Stephens Fisheries Institute. On the South Coast, St Georges Basin received 14,000 duskies,16,000 went into Lake Conjola and 12,000 into the Burrill Lake. These fish were produced for DPI by Narooma Aquaculture and are a top up to the first batch of flatties stocked in…

FISHING IN THE GOOD OLD DAYS WAS IT REALLY BETTER? BOB KEARNEY, MELBOURNE UNIVERSITY PRESS THIS is a great read. Bob Kearney has produced a book that combines his passion for rec fishing with his fisheries research career and gives us 15 chapters that recount wonderful fishing experiences in his “good old days”, centred around the Kingscliff rock fishing spots he fished heavily in the late 1950’s through the 1960’s, and sporadically beyond. He uses fishing for his favourite target species the jewfish (mulloway) to highlight memorable fishing sessions, techniques of the time and long-gone characters he fished with. As well as the jewfish, there are great encounters with outsized bream and tailor and even GTs recalled. There are also mentions of his later fishing adventures chasing bonefish, Spaniards, NZ…

AS I write this am sitting in camp on the Limmen Bight River in the Gulf Of Carpentaria. I have just had the best meal of mangrove jack, finger mark bream and chips. It’s lucky I enjoy eating fish as it makes up the biggest proportion of my meals while I’m travelling and fishing! I love fish, catching them, releasing most of them and eating some of them. I was reminded of last year. I had met up with another solo traveler and we had a few days together touring around Birdsville and Innamincka. We were having a beer at the pub at Innamincka and I mentioned to my mate we would finish this beer and go and catch a feed of fish for our tea. This conversation was overheard…

1 14 year old Oscar caught this 36cm flattie 2 Paige Justic with a luderick caught on the NSW South Coast. 3 Ben Spence with a tailor caught at Lake Macquarie in NSW. 4 Ethan Howard (right), age 12, with a 52cm flathead and 46cm flathead. And Isaac Hills (left), age 13, with a 47cm flathead and 45cm flathead. All caught at Bridport in Tasmania…