The Hex has been Lifted

Hi All,

If you read along to my blogs, you would know there has been a trend lately in my fishing that makes any environmentalist and fishing die-hard a happy camper. The influx of juvenile jewies plaguing our waters is still in full swing. What a great situation as well, our apex predators in our Sydney estuaries are breeding well and in abundance.

My general beef with this whole predicament is that my catch rates on jewies over 3kgs has almost disappeared. There are days were hooking 20 plus fish but all were infants muscling in on big brothers turf. Talking with a few old salts that have lived on the Hawkesbury River as long as adam was a boy, say if the small jewies are around, you can bet your bottom dolar the big ones aren't. Not too sure what the reason might be, but one can guess, based on the voracious attitude to feeding that little might be left for the bigger specimens to eat. One thing is for sure. If you catch a jewie, you can almost gaurantee subsequent fish caught will be of similer ilk. I rarely catch jewies in a short timeframe of drastically different sizes.

Obviously being a schooling fish this pattern makes legitimate sense; fish generally school with others of similar age and size. But what complicates this theory is jewies are known to be canabalistic. They will eat a juvenile jewie. So if a spate of juvenile fish are abundant, where are the big ones ready to eat them??? Who knows, they still may be there but are only dialed in on a particular food source. Therein lies much of the answer really.

The good news is i broke my winter hoodoo. I hooked a beautiful fish last weekend around the old fashioned 16 pound mark. I was flicking around 6" plastics all moring without interest. The moment i switched to a small squidgy wrigler hot tail in white body pink tail, smeared s-factor on it i cam up trumps. As they say, even elephants eat peanuts. While no monster jew, it was hooked on 4lb braid and 10lb leader on a 2-4kg stick and fought in close proximity to a jagged rocky shoreline. To make matters more interesting i hooked it on a Nitro jighead - Bream Series which are a light guage hook for finesse fishing. When the jewie was landed after a dogged 20 minute fight and placed in the environet, the half straightened hook simply fell out. My luck was in last saturday and that fish was meant to model for the camera. After behaving itself it was great to see it swim away. I hope this is the begining of a new trend.

Now the monkey is officially off my back!