Around The Bay - Tuesday, October 4, 2022

With Jim’s Bait and Tackle

DAYLIGHT savings, calmer weather, sunshine and the water slowly warming up all adds up to the start of the season. 

With the start of daylight savings, we start to see more people heading out after work for a quick fish. 

The barrel tuna reports continued over the long weekend, and despite them seeming to head to the west and wide, there were three caught out to the east again. 

We were also told about a handful of school fish caught off pyramid rock. 

We didn’t actually see them and if the reports are correct, it’s much earlier than last couple of seasons where they have turned up around mid-December.  

Don’t forget the kingfish this season, they have been left alone over the last few years with the tuna showing up but they haven’t gone anywhere. 

Many are now geared up for chasing kings having up graded their rods and reels for the tuna, so why not give them a go. 

You will find the kingfish to be a bit more of a challenge than the tuna in all ways. 

Finding them and getting them is probably the easiest part, getting them to bite and then landing them you will find the hardest thing to do, but the reward when you do get them home and into the frying pan makes it all worth it. 

A subject of conversation that comes up all the time in the shop is the way some peoples catch is treated and the wastage. 

There is a simple way to get around this.

That is to purchase yourself a set of scales or a brag mat, then you can take your photos in the boat and do what you need to do to the catch to ensure it’s in the best condition possible for putting on the dinner table or in the freezer. 

Most fish will taste better when bled and cleaned not long after you catch it, but at the very least if you are going to leave it whole get your catch on ice as soon as possible after it’s on board. 

Filleting is another that causes a lot of wastage and isn’t as easily fixed as the ice as some just struggle. 

Many times, it’s the knife used or they just don’t know how, you tube can be your friend here with dozens of short demonstrations to help. 

Failing all of that, fish like whiting, salmon, snapper can be easily cooked whole, head, clean and fin and they can be baked, grilled, or done on the barbecue and I guarantee once you get to the flesh on the bones, you will pick them clean as it is the sweetest of all the meat.

There are fish around and reports coming in, but it is still a bit tough, and you need to just luck out and drop on them. 

Typical of this time of the year it’s the customers that are just picking an area and spending time, especially snapper and whiting that are sending in the reports, not that they are getting a lot. 

The water is still cold, the conditions haven’t been perfect and as is the case every year people forget it’s still very early season. 

The reports we have seen of snapper have come through in patches during the day. 

The early season spots of Elizabeth Island to Lang Lang is where the bigger snapper are coming from.

But at the same time, we are getting reports from Elizabeth Island to Rhyll of some smaller snapper even pinkies. Gummies, very similar to the snapper reports.

Whiting were a bit hot and cold this week and where good reports came from only a couple of weeks ago nothing at all this week. 

Calamari have probably been the most consistent of all with the land and the boats fishing reasonably well. 

There has been patches where they were hard to find or a little slow but compared to everything else a bit more consistent. 

The sizes generally mixed and if you find a patch of bigger ones you get some excellent quality and only bigger ones.