My 2015 Australian adventure

snatcher

snatcher

Well-known member
Hi everybody,have I missed much when I have been away ? We left the UK early October for Australia and have just got back. We stayed with our daughter,Paul and 2 grandsons again on this trip. Amanda lives at Colleroy now on the Northern Beaches just about 60 yds from the beach.

I did not fish much on this trip but spent as much time as I could with our grandsons. Having said that did catch a few fish so once I have sorted out my thousands of photos from the trip will wedge a few reports onto here.

Will just add to this thread to keep it all in one place. Believe it or not its nice to feel cold again.

John
 
This was our fifth Australian trip and every time I go over I take more fishing gear which I leave there. The only thing I did not have was a decent beachcasting outfit.

Had only been there a couple of days when an ozzie angling pal pulled up with this trolly full of goodies !!!!!!

"Here you go Snatcher you can have the loan of these for your stay" It included a fishing trolley (he had to send to America to get the NUFC sticker),about 10 rods with reels too match,loads of weights,hooks,lures,a bait bucket,landing net,yabbie pump,2 tube rod rests etc



Canny mate or what. Now Frank had arranged 3 fishing trips away for us during our stay. Unfortunately the first 2 had to be scrapped due to extreme weather conditions. The last one had to be cancelled due to engine failure on his boat. Well that fishing for you.

The little angling I did was concentrated on the local beach at Colleroy and on the nearby Narrabeen Lagoon. Reports to follow shortly.

John
 
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On the way down to Narrabeen Lagoon we passed a garage and as a rule of thumb most of them have bait freezers on the forecourt. This one was no exception so I bought a bag of frozen squid and pilchards.

Never having fished it before sought out a deepish stretch with some shade as it was roasting. I rigged up two of the rods with running legers,squid on one and pilchard on the other. The third rod I held back for livebaiting - hopefully.

I had taken a folding crab trap over on a previous trip and so put some bread into this and waded out,putting it onto a couple of feet of water. The hope was to catch some small mullet/whiting to livebait with.



Was unsure what hook size to start off with so decided on a size 1 baitholder hook. The wife and I fished for about 3 hours and we both had some good bites but could not connect. Also got bitten off 3 times using a 20 lb mono leader.

No fish entered the crab trap either. We headed back to our daughters at this point and I needed think about what I was doing wrong and change my tactics.

Could have been bitten off on 20lb mono by tailor,flathead,mudcrabs - I will never know.

To be continued.

John
 
We were on a 3 month trip so there was no rush to go back to the lagoon so it was about a week later when we headed back. Did not want to up the 20lb leader to solve getting bitten off as it would probably have resulted in less bites. Decided to instead "gang" the hooks. I used a 3 step gang sizes 1,4 and 6. You can catch a big fish on a small hook but you cannot catch a small fish on a big hook.

As for the bait trap bought a clear plastic sandwich box and simply cut a hole in the lid and put a couple of bread slices in.

Well the gang hooks paid off and Dorothy hooked a fish fairly quickly on squid. It was a tailor which we had caught before on previous trips. They are known as "chopper tailor" to the ozzie fisherman because of their ability to bite through line.



Gave the bait trap about an hour then waded in to check it. There were three or four bait sized mullet in. I had the livebait rod fishing within seconds,hoping for a decent bream/flathead or jewfish.

We gave the session just about 3 hours as we wanted to get back and spend time with the family and grandsons.

In that time the tailor came in fairly frequently - for Dorothy anyway. Never got bitten off again so the gang hooks appeared to solve that problem. Not sure what the final score was but as usual I got well beaten by the wife !!!!!

Not a touch on the livebait but I fancied I would get something decent eventually.

to be continued --------------------

John
 
Narrabeen Lagoon really is a beautiful place. The lagoon is tidal only sometimes as the outflow into the sea is prone to blocking by sand bars. Periodically the local council will send down diggers to open up the entrance to the sea again. This is especially true when the creeks that feed it are in full flood and lakeside properties are threatened.

The very first time we had a walk to it was a midweek afternoon and guess what,some schoolkids were getting fishing lessons there. How cool is that !!!!



This the lagoon entrance to the sea.



A bush trail walk around the lagoon was just completed last year,in total its about 9/10 miles. We done it twice during our stay. Never seen any snakes but we did take heed of the warning notices and did not stray off the footpaths !!!!





During one of our walks thought I seen a man fishing near the top of the lagoon but on looking more closely he was just taking his dogs for a swim.



Promise to get back to the fishing next.



To be continued ----------------------

John
 
Our next visit had us fishing at the same spot and I was hoping for improved sport as had heard that the council had just bulldozed the lagoon entrance open again. The locals reckon that when there is a bit tidal flow the fishing normally improves.

We put out a bottom rod each baited with squid and I again put out the bait trap. Once more we were using ganged hooks to try and avoid bite offs. After missing a few bites I did eventually hook up and it proved to be a small snapper. They are bonny fish.





Dorothy was in next with a bream (foulhooked)





We gave it about 3 hours or so and got a mixture of bream,snapper and tailor. As usual Dorothy caught more than me. I did get some good baits in the trap so had a livebait fishing most of the time but had no takes on it.

To be continued ---------------

John
 
One fine day we decided to take all the family down to the lower part of Narrabeen Lagoon close to its entrance to the sea. Had never fished here before but we thought we would get grandson Joshua fishing for the first time.



For a 4 year old he got the hang of the casting straight away.



Check out his first ever fish - a puffer fish. Think he looks a bit pleased with himself.



We had 3 sets of gear so we all had a bash. It was virtually a puffer fish or a bream every cast. Nothing big but enjoyable and the kids were enjoying themselves which was the main thing.



Even 2 year old Theo got in on the act.



The boys attention span was not great so eventually they just started playing in the water.



Have heard Joshua tell folk about about his first fish and it gets bigger every time.

To be continued ------------------

John
 
Looks like you had fun snatcher,but you wouldn't get me in the water there to many crocs.i went to cairns up north east coast and crocs every where !!!! 😁😁😁
 
I had heard that salmon and jewfish were a possability off Collaroy beach using pilchard for bait. It was simply a case over walking over the road to the beach,just about 50/60 yds away from our daughters apartment. Someone had kindly left a table and chairs at the top of the dune so that is where I tackled up.



I set up the 14' beachcaster as the bait rod and the 12' rod for lure fishing. In the Sydney area the drop between hw and lw is only about 1.5m so you cannot go scouting for gullies at lw like you can back here. I whacked out the pilchard bait as far as I could and settled back.



The upside of fishing the Australian beaches is all the bikini clad fairer sex that keep wandering past !!!!!

Anyway back to the fishing. I did miss a couple of good bites before finally connecting. It seemed like a big fish and I was really hoping it would be a salmon or jewfish. I only had 25lb mono main line so could not exert too much pressure. After about 10 mins I got a glimpse of it and could see it was a ray of some kind. On getting it in it proved to be a stingray of about 10lb.

I had foul hooked it on the outside of the mouth so had to go back up to my tackle bag for long nosed pliers/cloth and camera. I had put the rod back into the tube rod holder and asked a lady to keep people away from it in case anyone got "barbed"

As I was rumaging through my tackle bag I was trying to work out the best way to safely unhook it . I got back to the rod and the lady said that the ray had flapped itself free and then a large wave had taken it back into the water. What a relief that was.

I decided to give it one more chuck before packing in and got a real savage take. It turned out to be a nice plump bream. As I was returning it to the water it managed to spike me.



Bloody sharp spines I can tell you !!!

to be continued ----------------

John
 
kevin collins said:
Looks like you had fun snatcher,but you wouldn't get me in the water there to many crocs.i went to cairns up north east coast and crocs every where !!!! 😁😁😁
Click to expand...


Sorry Kev and Fishy,never seen your replies. You really have to go north of Brisbane to get into croc territory. On our first trip we had a couple of weeks staying at Port Douglas and we seen a few up the river there. I hired a boat to go fishing up the river and a croc larger that the boat swam past us !!!!! Will add a couple of pics I took at the time.





I was more concerned with sharks when fishing the beach. I seen a large shark fin just about 25yds out the first time we checked it out. There were a couple of beach closures when we were there due to numbers of sharks being sighted close in.

I do have respect for them and never went past knee deep when fishing the beach.

John
 
Super report John. Fingers crossed I will be back in Aus next year for a spot of fishing, I am hoping to get up to exmouth and my mate Jacob has got a new boat down there and done great new marks he tells me.

Graham.
 
I tried a few more spots along Collaroy and Narrabeen beaches but could not catch my target species of salmon or jewfish. All I could catch was bream - better than blanking I suppose.

We had a lot of things planned on our last two weeks in Australia so decided to make Xmas Eve my last fishing session. I caught a couple of medium sized bream and then caught a fish which was new to me. Confirmed by an ozzie angling mate as a "dart". My 44th ozzie species in 5 trips over there,a result.



Xmas Day arrived and once the grandsons had opened all their presents my daughter brought out my present - a 14' Shimano Beachcaster. Was not expecting that !!!!



In the afternoon we decided to take the boys over to the beach so I just had to give the new rod a go. No fish but lovely to cast with.



We did hit the beach a couple of times before we left but that was purely for "family fun"



Well I hope you have enjoyed my latect ozzie reports,nothing big but enjoyable,relaxed fishing. We plan to head back to oz again early Feb 2017 for another 3 month trip. Lets see what I can catch next time.

Just looking forward to opening our static caravan again in Drummore now and spending a large part of the summer there. Looking at the weather it will be late March/early April before we head over. Will hopefully post up a few reports from the Mull of Galloway this year.

John
 
Great post. We met once when I was at the Clash a couple years ago with my kayak buddies. It's posts like this that make interesting reading and seeing how life can be enjoyed. Keep them coming.
 

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