Over the years there has been many articles written about so many different techniques and all state that they will improve your fishing in one way or another. So what is different about this article to all those others? Well, what I will attempt to do is give you a variety of techniques that will enable you to not only fish all year round, but also give you the option to fish for four different fish species while doing so.

 

The four fish species will be the yellowtail kingfish in the summer and autumn months, yellowtail bream in the summer, autumn and winter months, dusky flathead will be a year round option and Australian salmon will be from the beginning of winter through to the middle of summer. All of which, will have a couple different techniques for each of the fish species. What you will find is that a particular technique that you may use for flathead in the winter you could also use for bream in the summer months with a slight variation to it.

 

In the main I will cover live bait for yellowtail kingfish in the summer, then bait fishing for yellow fin bream in the autumn, how to use plastics for the dusky flathead during winter and then finally in spring on how to lure cast and troll minnows for Australian salmon.

 

During the summer months many anglers think that all you need to do when live baiting for yellowtail kingfish is pin a 6/0 hook into a yakka or squid, then drop it over the side to the bottom with a rather large sinker, put the rod into a rod holder and then forget about it. That is until you hear the line scream from the reel as the rod is doubling over from the strain of the kingfish after it swallowed the live bait and is heading for that reef or structure to bust you off.

 

What I have found over the years is that you need to constantly keep one eye on the rod while at the same time keep fishing for other fish species. Now while you are fishing you notice that the rod tip starts to jump around a fair bit, you will most probably find that a kingfish is harassing the live bait that you have just sent down.  I have found that it is definitely better to take the rod out of the rod holder and give it all your attention, and as soon as the kingfish takes off you should strike. The reason that I prefer to do it this way, is that kingfish need to swallow their prey whole and it is at this time when the whole bait and the hook are in its mouth you have a much better chance of getting pinned inside the fishes mouth.

 

There has been many a time when I have gone out to chase kingfish, only to find that there is not squid or yakka to be caught anywhere. If this happens to you, don't despair, try using slimy mackerel, sweep, mados, tailor, pike and nannygai, all of which will come into their own as a live bait. Too many anglers tend to get into a groove or frame of mind, no yakkas or squid, no kingfish. What you need to do is experiment and try a variety of live baits, as long as they are of legal size and you too will be surprised at what a kingfish will take at times.

 

Now yellowtail kingfish just love to hang around structure and it was to no surprise that when I was out on Botany Bay earlier in the year in autumn I came across a school of about nine kingfish to about 80 cm in size swimming around one of the marker poles. After spending twenty minutes or so casting both poppers and plastics to them with no response it was decided to cast a live bait to them. What we did was take off the large sinker off the live bait rig and then I got my mate to drive over to the pole so that I could cast the unweighted live bait at the pole they were around. At the same time I was hanging onto the rod with the reel in strike mode. It only took about one to two seconds for a kingfish to take the bait.

 

The next few seconds are critical to whether you are going to win the fight or not. While you are hanging on for grim death your mate will then need to either steer or reverse your boat away from the pole/structure out into open water. This will usually give you a much better chance of landing the fish.

Even though bream can be caught year round in the Sydney area, the last months of summer and the beginning of autumn seems to be when the bream are around more of the beaches and the bays in Sydney. Maybe this is because more anglers tend fish for them at this time of the year or they have started to move up and down the coast looking for somewhere to either take up residence or to start breeding. Whatever it is, late summer and through to the end of May is a good time to target bream in the estuaries of Sydney. Bream can be caught in so many different places. They love to hang around oyster leases, cockle and weed beds, and structures like bridge pylons and drop offs, rock platforms and beach gutters and mangroves. Now what I would like you to do is think of an area that you fish for bream that at certain times of the month it has very fast running water running past or over it and all you usually catch is small snapper. To get away from these small snapper you will need to change your technique.

 

What you need to do is get yourself a tide chart and look for days when there were very high, high tides and very low, low tides that occurred earlier in 2003. For example the 16^th to the 18^th of March, 15^th to the 17^th of April and the 17^th to the 19^th of May 2003, had tides between that were between 1.9 metres at high tide and a low that got down to about .2 of a metre. Once you have worked out similar tides for yourself in your area, you will then need to anchor in about 1.5 to 4 metres of water and make sure that you berley with a combination of chicken pellets and cubes of either pilchards or tuna. While laying out this berley trail you will need to rig up your line so that you have a leader of somewhere between 1.5 and 2. 0 metres. Once this has been done you will then need to cast out as far as you can from the sides and the back of the boat, then put the rod in the rod holder, set the baitrunner and just sit back and wait for the action to happen.

 

What this allows to do is that the bait will rise off the bottom (getting it away from those small snapper) giving the bream a chance to swoop by and take the bait. If there hasn't been any action for about twenty to thirty minutes you will need to move, re-anchor, set-up and start the waiting game. An area that this technique is very effective is a place called the STICKS in Botany Bay. In the Port Hacking you could try near Deban Spit, the small reef on the northern side of the entrance to Middle Harbour and the entrance to Hen & Chicken Bay in the Parramatta River. I find that during the autumn months the baits that get the best results for me are pink nippers, blood and squirt worms, chicken gut, strips of striped tuna, bonito and mullet, whole Hawkesbury River and peeled blue tailed prawns and also large whitebait. Small live poddy mullet are also worth a try.

 

During the winter months I find that the bream will move much further up the rivers and creeks and that if you fish with unweighted baits like pink nippers, fillets of pilchard, strip tuna, mullet and spider crabs around oyster leases and rock shorelines you will be in with a chance to tackle with one of those blue nosed bream that get around these areas during the winter months.

Over the past couple of years plastics have been all the rage. Nearly every time you pick up a magazine you will come across an article that has a new technique that you can use when fishing for flathead with soft plastics. In this part of the article I will give you a technique that you can use with plastics. Now if you think back to the last few summer seasons that you have had chasing dusky flathead, you may remember that the wind came up to a point where it made it very hard or near impossible to keep that plastic on the bottom while drifting. This is when a sea anchor will come into its own. A sea anchor is like a parachute, which in turn is dragged through the water to slow your drift down. Now if you have always wanted to improve you flathead fishing I would go say that it is a must that every boating angler who drifts while fishing should have one of these in their boats and if you have never used one before you will be totally amazed at how much it does slow down your drift, enabling you to get that plastic or bait down to the bottom where the dusky flathead lay in ambush for that passing prey.

           

Now the trick to using a sea anchor is you will need to cast the plastic with a weighted jig head towards where you are drifting, not from where you have drifted. You then allow it to sink to the bottom and then retrieve it in a jerking motion, allowing it to sit on the bottom before each retrieve. When casting plastics the sea anchor will slow you down enough so that you will have plenty of time to work all around the boat. I have been using a Para Anchor for around five years and I wouldn't be in the boat without it.

 

During the winter months you will find that the dusky flathead move further up stream and seem to go into a semi hibernation state, making it very hard to get amongst a few. What I find works for me is to troll deep diving minnows along the edge of drop-offs during the last hour to an hour and a half. The dusky flathead will lay in wait for the baitfish to come off the sand flats during the last part of the tide.

In our neck of the woods spring usually heralds the start of those large schools of surface fish like salmon that move up and down the coast. These fish will usually patrol current lines, the edge of rock washes, drop-offs, bomboras, reefs, beaches and bays. A good indication that salmon are about is when you see those small black-headed terns start to hover just above the water waiting for the Australian salmon to push the baits schools to the top. Once the salmon have balled the baitfish up against the surface the feeding frenzy will start. This can also be indicated when sea gulls are doing the same thing.

 

While you are waiting for this surface action to happen, you should keep yourself active by trolling around some of those structures that I mentioned earlier. If I am trolling Manns Stretch 5's or 10's I will not travel any faster than five knots, as the lure tends to pull out of the water. On the other hand when trolling with Rapalla CD 7's, 9's and 11's I can troll at up to seven knots.

 

When trolling I will usually have three rods out the back. The port side lure will be about twenty to twenty five metres back, the starboard side lure will be placed at about thirty-five metres back and the middle one will be positioned where the prop wash starts to break up. For depth I will have one of the deeper divers in the middle and shallower running lures on the outside. I find that as soon as there is a hook up on any one of the lures I will immediately cut the motor and start retrieving the others so that they too have a chance of hooking up. It is not un-common to get a three way hook-up at the same time making landing the fish all that much more exciting.

 

Now that I have given you a couple of basic techniques for catching kingfish, yellowfin bream, dusky flathead and Australian salmon you need to get out there and try them. Once you have mastered each of these different techniques you could try them on the other fish species mentioned in the article. For instance try putting on an either live pink nipper, fillet of mullet or a plastic and cast it unweighted right up against a floating pontoon or a moored boat for bream during the middle of the day in summer. The trick to getting success with this is to pick the pontoons that are in the shade.