Estuary fishing in winter – find one fish, find them all

Pick the right day and a fishing trip on the NSW south coast in the middle of winter can be beautiful. Pick the wrong day and you will wonder why you ever left the comfort of the leather recliner – you know the footy is on right?

The trend lately suggests there are fish to be caught; you just have to be brave or foolish enough to keep fishing until you find them. A nice break in the wind makes life on the water much more comfortable but also seems to be critical to catching a few fish, especially on lures.

Take recent trips to St George’s Basin, Sussex Inlet and Tuross Lake for example.  After countless hours spent idling over the artificial reefs, exploring the deep drop-offs and some of the ‘fishiest’ weed lined points imaginable at St George’s Basin, it was hard to believe there were any fish in the lake. Where do they all go in winter?

At Sussex Inlet, which connects to the basin via a tidal channel, our luck was finally about to change.  In a small hole, no more than 50 metres by 50 metres in size, we found a patch of fish. It was only subtle, perhaps 3.5 metres deep when the surrounding water was 2.5 metres, but the flathead seemed to be lined up inside it one on top of the other (presumably cuddling up for warmth).  It was dead calm and we took the opportunity to fish very slow lure presentations. By this I mean the 1/8th oz weight on the 70mm soft plastic lure took nearly five seconds to hit the bottom after each lift, giving sleepy fish plenty of time to chase it down.  If it was windy, it would have been impossible to fish this slowly and with so little weight. A dozen flathead with a matching pair of females measuring 62 & 63cms came to the net. These two were released in favour of a few smaller fish.

Sometimes the weather forecast gets it wrong. To add insult to injury, the howling wind seems to defy all reasonable laws of physics and bend around trees and houses and straight into your face. You can defy the wind, you can curse the wind, but eventually it’s best to hide from the wide.  It was for this reason we found ourselves back in the labyrinth of waterways at Sussex Inlet in a small tree-lined creek the following day. It was a pleasure to drift through this little creek and flick lightly weighted lures around. There were quite a few flathead that also thought it was a nice spot to hang out, the largest being 55cm. Once we returned to the main channels however, we didn’t catch another fish for the rest of the day.

At Tuross lake, the story was the same. Each time the wind gusted the boat started to drift more quickly and it was nearly impossible to keep the lure bouncing off the bottom without increasing the weight. Even when it was calm, the fish weren’t necessarily there. The last hour of the incoming tide, a calm window and a four to five metre hole where several channels converge was the only place that produced any number of fish. This time a 1/6th oz weight gave the necessary hang time – the water here is slightly deeper than Sussex Inlet.  Not a single fish was lured by a heavier weight of jig head.

After three full days on the water it was three short sessions of about 30-60 minutes that nearly all of the fish were caught.  One short session per day. The take home message for me is that there are fish to be caught in winter, but they tend to be schooled up in small patches – even the flathead. It pays to keep moving and if there is one or two fish to be caught, there might just be a dozen. The wind and the weather can have a huge bearing on how pleasant it is to be outside in the elements. But more importantly, finding those windows where the wind is still, or parts of the lake where it is sheltered, gives the option to fish really light jig heads and very slowly. As it turned out this was key to hooking a few nice fish that were otherwise too pre-occupied staying warm to chase down their prey.

Graham Fifield www.flickandflyjournal.com