Classic conditions yield big fish

It was great to see that we had classic Broome conditions over the weekend.

The calm conditions enabled anyone who loves to fish the chance to make it to fishing locations that we’ve not been able to make it to in the past few weeks.

Quite often anglers comment how many species of fish will feed strongly immediately before a poor weather event and then again once the bulk of it has passed. I haven’t seen any real patterns of this in Broome, but I used to witness it on the streams and estuaries in Victoria many years ago.

Anyway, the weekend as magic as it was, produced some good fishing.

The fishing through the Lift N Rig Brian ‘Fatty’ Albert memorial was pretty slow for the target species of sailfish and marlin. The inshore grounds are chock full of bait and what appeared to be some very full billfish.

Anglers who haven’t tuned their depth sounders well enough would have been forgiven for thinking that there were no fish in the area. However, a good quality well-tuned sounder would show otherwise. Many of the schools of bait showed the tell tale arcs of some good-sized fish holding deep around the schools of bait fish.

For those of you who want a good number of mackerel, the area about 6-10km west of Coconut Wells is holding some good numbers of fish in the 15-20kg size class. As I stated last week, it’s best to make sure that you are running some manner of wire protection at the lure. A 50cm-1m length of single strand wire is generally the best as it is solid. Braided multifilament wires are made up of 49 small strands which can sometimes break through wear or the teeth of the fish.

The connection to a lure should be a good quality snap swivel or a loop through the tow point of the lure. Both of these options will keep your lure swimming correctly. If you’re new to the bluewater trolling style of fishing you might want to purchase pre-made wire leaders. Just make sure that when you do, you buy the best quality that you can afford.

As always drop into the tackle store and ask for some advice all of our local stores really know their stuff.