Moruya River.
The cold waters have certainly kicked in in the Moruya system, with the scourge of winter fishing, the dreaded slime weed in full force throughout the Moruya system. This stuff covers your rigs and baits, and generally makes fishing the river this time of year, nigh on impossible. Finding a section of river where there isn’t slime is the key to finding a fish or two. Try the areas around the airport flats, quarry wharf, and Preddy’s wharf and the back of hole-in the wall to see what is around. The only cure for this slime, is warm water, which is a few months off coming back.
I generally give the river a miss this time of the year time the slime dissipates.
Tuross River.
Tuross isn’t immune to the dreaded slime this time of the year either. What Tuross has in its favour, is the expansive system that can hold pockets of clear slime free water. A bit of exploration is the key here to find a section that is free from the winter slime.
If you can find a slime free section, live nippers or slowly worked soft plastics or blades can help you to connect to a fish of two.
Soft plastics fished on weedless style hooks that hide the point can be helpful to stop your lure picking up any weed this time of year.
Rock and beach.
For my money, the beaches and rocky headlands are the place to be during winter. There are plenty of good sized salmon around at the moment, with no particular beach having any advantage over another. This is due to the fact that fish swim, and they will be where you find them.
The Moruya breakwall has been a little hit and miss this last week, with some days better than others. My advice is be prepared to explore and look around at different locations till you find an active school. When you do find them, pilchards on gang hooks and paternoster rigs will be the go, as will metal slices, big soft plastics and even stick baits or poppers. There is nothing more exhilarating than watch a surface lure get bit!
The drummer guys are also have a good time of this season, with some solid fish coming from the rocks.
Offshore.
The tuna guys have been rewarded for the effort involved in getting out and searching for the old yellowfin this week. Several boats have had success with fish up to 70kg boated this last week.
For those looking for a more leisurely trip, mixed bags of snapper, trevally, flathead and even the odd gummy have been taken inshore this last week. Start looking around the 20m mark and explore from there.
We finally have mullet fillet back in the freezer, but no whole mullet or 1kg bags of salted pilchards. Supply issues are still something we are dealing with, but where possible I try and stock up on other options where possible.
For those that follow different brands on the socials, they will know that the AFTA trade show is currently in full swing in QLD this week. So there are lots of new products starting to be seen on the socials. Some of these items will be available straight away, while the majority of product won’t be available to later in the year closer to summer and Xmas.
Stay safe everyone and remember, “every days a good day for fishing…”
Team Tackle World Moruya.
