Well it seems that spring is early this year, rising temperatures over the last week is a sure fire indicator that spring is on its way.  While september can be a difficult time to fish with lots of snot weed, October through december is my favourite time of year to fish the seaway.  Edge fishing the walls on dawn or dusk with poppers, stickbaits and minnows can pay big dividends with large tailor, bigeye trevally and yellowtail kingfish all a possibility.




Water temperatures have been between 18 degrees and 20 degrees all winter and spring should see those water temps rise quite quickly.   Weather will get increasingly erratic with lots more strong southerly winds making fishing the north wall a suitable challenge for any experienced seaway fisherman.  I'll be attempting a few bad weather fishes over summer so it will be interesting to see if I can get a few decent fish out of them.

Fishwise, Bigeye trevally should start to show up in bigger numbers and sizes with 60cm fish becoming more prevalent as we head towards summer.  Poppers and minnows around the walls and slugs near the pipeline on early morning run in tides.  Vibs dropped down deep around current lines should also pick a few good specimens.  Surface feeding schools can show up at anywhere at any time  but generally only during run in tides.  Giant Trevally have been around in numbers for most of the year so it will be interesting to see if they taper  off this month as they usually do.  Mid to late september usually sees a few big schools of bigeye trevally feeding on surface in the broadwater after dark on run in tides, keep an eye and ear out in the main channels leading to the seaway for these  fish.

Tailor numbers should increase with the biggest fish showing around the north wall in October, November and December.  Poppers, Stickbaits, big minnows and live pike will catch the bigger fish, slugs will catch plenty of the smaller fish, look for surface feeding anywhere in the seaway, the broadwater or just off the shore break of south straddie.

As for Tarpon, I haven't seen any large numbers for months now so they have probably already moved up the rivers.  I’ll still have a quick go for them when I go out but I'm not expecting too much.  Australian Salmon have been very random this year with only a few small schools showing up, so its pretty much a case of fish them if you find them.  I have seen them in the seaway in previous years until mid October so they may stick around for a bit longer.

Yellowtail kings should show up in increasing numbers between now and the start of summer though they can show up anywhere at anytime.  The pipeline is a given but getting one up from the pipeline is almost impossible, there should be some hanging around the north and south walls which are easier to land.  Stickbaits and livies work well for the larger fish, twisties and plastics work fine for smaller fish feeding on surface.

Mulloway should still be around and will be able to be caught at the tide changes with vibs, plastics and livies.  Flathead should show up briefly as the spawn in the seaway in large numbers in september, plastics or live herring on the bottom are best for these fish. Dart should show up around the north wall and outside the beach break on south straddie towards late spring and will take small slugs and occasionally minnows.

Offshore, Mack Tuna numbers should increase, we may see a run of bonito and frigate mackerel as well.  Mackerel should show up towards the end of spring but won’t really get going until we are into summer.

Towards the end of spring (usually mid to late november)we should see large schools of frogmouth pilchards enter the seaway and broadwater, this is the cue for some top quality surface action with trevally, tailor, queenfish and kingfish all busting into big schools of bait, keep an eye out for this as it can happen at any time.

Lures I will be using alot over the next 4 months:

• 20 gram twistie
• 40gram Raider
• 9cm Rapala Skitter Pop
• Megabass vision 110 & 111
• Daiwa Dorado Slider 14s

Looking at the forecast for this weekend, sunday was undoubtedly the better day so with my new resolve to fish the worst days that I can find I picked saturday to go for a fish.  The wind was up from the north west ranging between 10 and 20 knots, swell was around a metre from the north east.  Into the seaway at around 3am spent alot of time sounding around and looking for fish, the southern end of the pipeline had tons of fish stacked up over but they wouldn't hit a lure. Every other location we tried didn't have any fish that were eating either so we messed around a bit until dawn.

Right on first light we headed up to the north wall and began prospecting with minnows.  The new Megabass vision 111 is my new favourite and I picked a chart pearl colour to start with because of the low light levels.  Didn't take long to pick up my first tailor and then with a bit more prospecting to find a good school of tailor sitting just inside of the line close to the rocks.  From then on for the next 30 minutes or so we had double hookups on tailor nearly every cast.  Size ranged from about 30cm up to a very nice fish of 53cm which is the biggest one I've seen this winter, average size was around 40cm. we landed over 20 fish though, best tailor session i've had this year.  For the first 15 minutes or so we had them to ourselves but soon enough we were surrounded by boats. The fish went off the bite just as the sun rose over the horizon.  Unfortunately that was it for the day, we looked around for more fish but found nothing.  the fish over the pipe had disappeared and didn't see anything of interest in the broadwater.  Water temps remain steady between 18 and 20 degrees, water visibilty 5+ metres at the top of the tide, didn't see much bait around.

Into the seaway at 3.30am, tides weren't the best(a run out tide from dawn), the swell was up and the wind was varying between 10 and 20 kts. Spent an hour casting for tarpon with no hits so we trolled around for a bit and found a bunch of small bigeyes feeding on surface over the southern end of the pipeline, we managed 3 all around 30cm but it was hard to get a hookup on them.. who'd of thought small bigeyes would be fussy feeders? Anyway just on dawn we moved down to the north wall(big big swell) and on the second cast along the front of the wall my vision 111 was inhaled and after a good fight up came a GT in the high 50's, it was right down his gob too. We tried for a bit longer with a couple of different lures but got nothing so we moved on.

Into the seaway at 4am, went looking for Tarpon, landed 2 tailor up to 45cm and dad landed 1 tarpon at 59cm.  Pretty quiet though.  Swell was way down  at less than half a metre.  At dawn we worked the walls with minnows and picked up a few more tailor best going mid 40's.  Did a long cast alongside the northern side of the north wall about a metre away from the rocks with a brand new megabass vision 111 a few twitches into the retrieve it got smashed and 5 seconds later got busted off in the rocks, unstoppables of the north wall strike again...Geez i wish they didn't have such expensive tastes.

Went back into the broadwater and had a look around, saw 1 bustup that looked like salmon but it was all over in seconds.  Saw nothing else.  Back in the seaway the small mackt's were on the job near the pipeline so we chased them for a while and caught half a dozen of those.  Had another look around but saw nothing so called it a day around 9am. Lots of boats around, water temps between 17 and 19 degrees.

Looks like some big swell and strong winds due this coming weekend, that might change things up a bit.