Fishing east coast of Australia.

**samfish** · 04-04-2006, 20:24

Greetings all,

I am currently taking a year out to travel and have just returned from India with great success with Mahseer and Barramundi. I'm off to the east coast of Australia in a couple of weeks and have lots of info regarding boat charters but am lacking any leads for shore fishing.......

I will be spending time in Sydney, Airlie beach, Mission beach, Cape tribulation and Magnetic Island. If anyone has any experience of fishing in these locations from the shore I would love to hear from you and your experiences. Any tips, advice or tried and tested marks would be greatly appreciated.....

BTW my passion is for chucking lures....

Look forward to hearing from you.

**PanamaJack** · 05-04-2006, 11:11

Hi Samfish
I imagine there're one or two rather envious individuals out there, me included of course! Racking my brains I can't recall any current members of the forums who have mentioned that part of the world before. But we'll see if anyone comes 'out of the woodwork'.

One of our Club members similarly during his gap year visited New Zealand and Australia. He spent most of his time I suspect rock or shore fishing. So he may well be able to help. Let me contact him and get him to participate in this thread.

I recall him lending me a video of, and I accept it's fairly specialised, rock fishing for Black Marlin from Jervis Bay, just south of Sidney. But that's very much 50 wide game reels on stepped up beach casters. And your truism about fishing being more about enjoyment - they seem to hook many more than they ever land!

Casting the 'Net' further (whoops - sorry, my apologies) have you tried any of the Australian forums? If not here're a couple of fairly active sites where I'm sure you should get some feedback - http://www.sportsfishaustralia.com.au/ and http://www.fishnet.com.au/.

I suspect you don't need your appetite whetting any more, but for others that might read this thread here's the url to a brief report and photographs from one of our members trip to Oz - http://www.scbi.org.uk/pages/News_WhatsNewNfc200404.asp. It covers a trip, light tackle fishing, to Cape York - much further north - and the Gulf of Carpentaria.

Finally Samfish do please post details of your trip as it progresses back to this thread. I'm sure a number of us - particularly those with aspirations to visit those 'long lost' relatives from the Antipodes (well that's the excuse) - would be delighted to read of your experiences.

Every success, sorry - Enjoyment!
Dave

**samfish** · 05-04-2006, 11:42

Hello dave,

Thanks for pointing me in the direction of those links! I will check them out and see what I can find! I had'nt thought about getting on the australian forums - thats got to be the best way of getting some inside info. I'll give it a bash.

If you're interested, I've posted some piccys of my India trip on the "Asia" section of the international angler forum threads. It's entitled ' fishing in Goa India' . Hope you like em!

I will keep in touch with regards to results in Oz too! Thanks again for the links and info!

Sam

**Kingfish81** · 09-04-2006, 17:22

Drat! Just wrote a long reply to you Samfish which then didn't post! I'm the club member Dave mentioned and I spent three months travelling up the East Coast of Oz, doing a fair bit of fishing. I devoted a lot of my time to land-based game-fishing with livebaits, although there is some pretty decent lure fishing available too.

Let me know if you want any specific info, particularly with regards to land-based game as I have a heap of info about it. Once out there, you should definitely get a copy of the 'North Australia Fish Finder' aka 'The Barra Bible'! That will point you in the right direction of spots to fish. Your best bet however is to go into local tackle stores and ask for advice - most are pretty friendly!

Dave's right about the Black Marlin from the shore. The video contains the immortal quote that 'One fish for every ten years of trying is an above average strike rate'. The mind boggles!

**samfish** · 10-04-2006, 16:54

Hello Kingfish!

Good to hear from you!

Shame about the reply that did'nt post! Blinking pooters eh!

As I said I'm mostly into lures as the kit packs away nice and easy for travelling and the smell of fish associated with bait fishing seems to stay away! However, I always pack a few bungs, wire and trebles for live/deadbaiting as a back-up technique.

I'm guessing you did most of your fishing from rocky headlands or harbour walls etc.. and either float the baits out or tether them up and fish 'em static ??

How did you go about getting your livebaits then??

In India we were using a throw net for this purpose, however I'm not so sure the Aussies will take too kindly to this! I do'nt really have time to sit around snatching baits and wondered how you got 'em!

I named the spots I will be spending time at in the above post, if you have any info regarding these locations I would love to hear about them. I'm generally going to be fishing blind have to do the groundwork upon arrival, so anything to save a bit of time and point me in the right direction would be greatly recieved.

I hear what you're saying about popping in the local tackle shops and asking! Theres no substitute for local knowledge.....you can't beat it!

Look forward to hearing from you,

All the best,

Sam.

**Kingfish81** · 10-04-2006, 19:45

Samfish,

Yeah most of the fishing was from rocky headlands, break walls, jetties etc. I personally chose to fish the baits either under a balloon if they were mackeral/Australian salmon or under a pike bung if they were herring (which in Oz are little fish about 5-6" long and a bit herring-like!). Lots of the Aussies use throw-nets to catch the herring, although I didn't buy one and just used very small jigged flies which are sold in all tackle stores. Bigger livies I got with smaller spinners and lures. Essential bit of kit was a small kids paddling pool to keep the livies in though!

I didn't fish much in the spots you mentioned and think you may struggle from the shore at Mission Beach and Cape Trib, but I could be wrong... I know from the book I've got that Magnetic Island's west point gets lots of pelagics off it, some of which come close enough to catch from the shore. There are some pretty good spots around Sydney, although they're a car journey away. Think there may be some OK fishing in the harbour though... The Whitsunday's btw are awesome! If you can get some people together, it's worth hiring your own boat for a few days, but that's not really a fishing-related topic!

I'll have a hunt for some more specific info on the spots you're going to and get back to you...

**samfish** · 10-04-2006, 21:27

Hey kingfish,

Thanks for the top tips there! Especially like the one about the paddling pool - tip of the day I reckon!

Cant wait for the whitsundays though. Missed out on it when I was in Oz ten years ago due to a lack of funds, this time will be different!

I like the sound of the fishing on magnetic island! You are not the first person who has said that it is a good spot there. It comes highly recommended!

If you have any more info there it would be great, I really appreciate you taking the time to pass the it on!

Many thanks,

Sam.

**samfish** · 15-04-2006, 18:29

Hello all,

I'm heading out to Oz tomorrow (easter sunday) evening. Will keep you posted on how things go as we work our way up the coast. I'll try to keep y'all up to speed with some fishy tales and piccies (with any luck!!) on this thread. Watch this space!

Regards and tight lines.

Samfish.

**Ken L** · 16-04-2006, 20:33

Hey Sam.
Been looking arround a few sites for a little inspiration and have discovered that there are charters out of Fraiser Island going out to chase the GT's with poppers.
No idea of the price but it might just let you beat Scott's 10Kg fish.

**lucky** · 15-05-2006, 17:59

Hi Sam - I'm from Sydney originally. Don't know if your still out in Oz but here's some info on a place called Berowra Waters in Sydney. I haven't been there for many years but in those days we used to fish the Hawkesbury River which is a fair size river about 45 mins drive north of the city centre. We used to hire a dinghy with a small outboard for the day from the marina at Berowra Waters. It was quite cheap back then but I think they charge about AUS$90 these days - about £37 for an eight hour day plus gas - still pretty good if you can manage to split it between two or three of you. Bait, ice and fuel were available at the marina. You will probably need a car to get there as it's inside Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park. There is a rail station at Berowra but I'm unsure just how far this is from the marina itself. Being surrounded by national park Berowra Waters still remains a beautiful and relatively unspoilt spot. Common fish species included bream, flathead and leatherjackets - all good eating. We always used to fish with bait which was mainly prawns and sometimes beach worms but I believe they fish for flathead these days quite successfully with lures. You would normally also catch the odd small Yellowtail which were also good bait. You can either fish Berowra Creek - a good size body of water itself or head down it to the main stream of the Hawkesbury. Here's a couple of links:

http://www.sportsfish.com.au/fishing...wra-creek.html

http://www.walkabout.com.au/location...raWaters.shtml

Also here's a link to some guidebooks on fishing in Australia. Ther's a couple which focus specifically on marks in Sydney. The Fishing Guide to Sydney - Hawkesbury maybe helpful as it would probably give information on a lot of shore marks in Sydney that are accessible by public transport. I believe a lot of fishing is now done in the harbour and on the Parramatta River which runs into the harbour. This wasn't the case many years ago due to pollution so I don't know much about marks on these waters.

http://www.guidesgalore.com.au/defau...=97&ParentID=3

and here's some Aussie fish:

http://www.amonline.net.au/fishes/fi...calcaratus.htm

Good luck.