'The Bay of Plenty'

Hiya,

I hate to mislead you here. I'm talking about Botany Bay not the real 'Bay of Plenty' in NZ...In my last blog i had the eviable task of relaying the exciting winter fishery we have been enjoying in Boatny over the last few seasons; winter time kings. While in the this persuit the boys and i have uncovered some interesting new fisheries and some new patterns in the bay which remain largely untested but for now seem to be yielding some good results.

The first observation is that flathead in the bay are now a year round target. I can head out most days and get my limit, even though the fish seem to move around a touch more in Winter. One day you will find them in some obscure patch in the middle of nowhere and the next session they have vanished like a well oiled magician. This winter has seen a very poor baitfish run and working birds are mostly adbsent the days i have fished it. This means the sounder is a vital tool, and a lot of time is spent finding activity on the screen. Some days we can't find anything decnet marking up at all. In this situation we will fish sublte water depth changes and current lines. There are many in the bay so our pattern is to spend time on each area to we find fish.

The key to successful flathead luring in winter is to keep mobile. My old man gets miffed when we catch a flathead and 5 minutes later i pack the electric and head to another spot. Flathead are a schooling fish contrary to belief and a single fish in 15 minutes of flicking a new spot is a poor return. When a school is located flathead are usually caught in multiples. Until this happens i will rarely commit to one spot in the bay. Ming you i can go a whole day without finding a school of fish. A straggler here and there will usually make up my quota for dinner though.

Trevs and sambos are only now starting to yield good returns. While trevs may be more prolific at the entrance to the bay, they have taken a while to venture well inside, down past Towra and towards Captain Cook's. The sambos are quite nomadic at the moment and can be found literally anywhere down to Ramsgate. We are getting the odd one or two at any time of the day. No set patterns seem to be highlighted thus far.

Bream are an interesting absentee lately. The lack of baitfish are not helping on this front. The season is quite late though as warm water is still around. The cold currents havent fully set in yet. Maybe a month or so before the bream start to venture back in the bay. I have heard some decent catches around Kurnell but i rarely head over that way these days.

This has been our weakest season for tailor thus far too since switching exclusively to lures. While we have caught the odd fish, they are not stealing our jig heads as much as previous years. The ones we have caught though are monsters. I got one on the weekend that nudged 3kgs! I orginally called it for a sambo as it had a bad attitude and being lip hooked allowed me to be patient and enjoy the fight; usually on 10lb leader it would be game over. It did bite my thumb though; that was fun. Probably a good lesson here for the youg-uns, keep your fingers well away from a tailor's mouth. The temptation to salvage a plastic isn't always worth it!

So pretty much more of the same. At the moment its rightly named the 'bay of plenty'; if your brave enough to battle the freezing mornings and copiuos Av-gas!