By Jamie Coates
SOME wild weather is lashing the coast as I put pen to paper, but the last week has been quite good for the offshore guys fishing in the 40th annual tuna and sports fish tournament held by the Port MacDonnell Offshore Angling Club.
The average tuna size for the competition this year was a bit smaller than most had hoped, but the smaller fish allowed anglers a chance to get their ultra-light gear out and hone their skills.
Some great light line captures were recorded over the week, with tuna caught on 2kg, 3kg and 4kg line, plus sharks coming on 2kg and 4kg line.
The champion angler for the week was Kevin McLoughlin onboard Reel Scream who managed a tonne of fish over the week, his most notable captures being his 28kg+ school shark caught on 2kg line and 20kg mako shark on 4kg line.
The major tag and release prize went to Mark Ewens onboard Sea Rider who managed 107 tuna tagged and released for the tournament.
The most meritorious tuna for the week was won by Tommy Egan onboard BroJak and catching light line fish from big boats is no easy feat.
The juniors were well represented, with this year’s champion award won by Georgia Barrett who managed to tick off a huge number of fish on the list, one being a pending Australian record on 4kg line.
There has been no barrel news from the past week, even though a few anglers did put in some big hours.
The signs are there, but they just have not been hungry.
Surf fishos have been getting stuck into a few more salmon and I have heard a few reports of fish from the Jones’ end of Nene Valley, but the majority have come from inside the Canunda NP.
The size and numbers seems a bit better in there so far, which is encouraging.
There have been a few caught in the Beachport salmon hole this week and the size seems to be slowly improving.
There have been some nice garfish caught along the Limestone Coast.
The Petrified Forest at Port MacDonnell has been productive, as has Cape Douglas.
Livingstons has been good for the waders, but some fairly hefty piles of weed on the beach have made launching a tinny difficult.
Tommies, salmon trout, mullet and silver trevally have been in thick numbers in the same spots.
Most have been small, but there is the odd bigger sample mixed in.
Whiting numbers have been surprisingly good this week.
I have seen some reasonable fish from inside the Port MacDonnell breakwater over the last week when anglers could not get out wide to target the offshore fish.
There have been a few reports from Carpenter Rocks from the land-based guys.
The news is definitely slowing down, but there are still fish there for those willing to brave the conditions.
There are still a few reports filtering in from around Beachport and Southend this week, but much the same as down this way, things are definitely on the slow down.
The Glenelg River fished fairly well over the weekend, with mulloway, bream and estuary perch all caught.
The mulloway have been spread out from Nelson to Dry Creek, so just use the sounder, track down the schools and you are in with a shot.
The bream are also well spread out.
I know of some nice fish from the lure fishos on the sand flats of the estuary, through to some monster 45cm+ fish on baits in the upper reaches.
Perch are happily smashing deep diving minnows and fairly heavily weighted plastics hopped along the deeper rock walls of the mid sections of river, so mix it up and you will have a great session.
Until next week, safe fishing.
