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Ever wanted to travel to a place where you can catch bream, flathead, trevally, whiting, mulloway, luderick, tailor, salmon, kingfish, snapper and bass?
Well the area of Port Hacking and Botany Bay is the place to go. The following story will help both visiting and resident anglers to plan their fishing time better, and to explore the many rivers, creeks and bays on offer.
Port Hacking:
Port Hacking is situated on the southern side of Sydney and is surrounded by the Royal National Park and the Sutherland Shire. The Port offers very good access to the open sea for seaworthy craft, but there are also a number of picturesque bays and creeks throughout the system which the boating angler can explore.
Places like the deep waters of the North and South West Arms, Lilly Pilly, Gymea and Dolans Bays, the sand flats of Bundeena, Mainbar and
Gunamatta Bay, and the rocky and mangrove lined foreshores of Deer Park, Grays Point and Audley.
The map with this story, plus an accompanying table indicates and lists the positions of the public boat ramps in the area. Most of them have very good parking facilities with excellent launching and retrieving areas for both large and small boats, and they are all accessible off the President Avenue, which is one of the main thoroughfares in Sutherland Shire. If you are going to fish the deep bays you may need the help of a good depth sounder, as this will cut down on the time you will spend locating the deeper holes. Some of these reach a depth of 20 metres and are excellent for drifting for flathead, with either live yellowtail or mullet. Slab baits of slimy mackerel and mullet are also very affective.
Lilly Pilly:
From early October through to late May you will have a good chance of landing a mulloway or two at the entrances to Yowie, Gymea and Burraneer Bays, and at the drop-off near Lilly Pilly baths. I have also caught some good size snapper, salmon, striped tuna and kingfish in this hole of the baths, and during the summer months you will also catch whiting, bream, and very large flathead here.
The channel running from Lilly Pilly point through to the entrance of Bate Bay at times has a lot of boat traffic, but this does not deter the fish from biting. Drifting this area is a productive way of getting a feed of whiting, bream, flathead, trevally and squid.
Bate Bay: If there has been a big influx of freshwater to the system, head to the entrance of Port Hacking at Bate Bay - not only will you catch mulloway there but you can also get bream, flathead, salmon and tailor. I've found that around 5 to 6 days either side of the full moon is the most productive time for me to land a nice mulloway.
Bait Gathering:
The Port Hacking is known for it's large concentrations of pink nippers and soldier crabs, which are caught while pumping any of the large numbers of sand flats and bars throughout the system. But make note that you are NOT ALLOWED to pump for nippers in Gunnamatta Bay at any time.
Quite often, when I take newcomers out to fish the Port, the first place we stop is where I get my nippers. One visitor from the United States had never seen nippers before and I couldn't get over how much excitement and enjoyment Fred got out of catching them.
He told me that he had never seen so much wild bait in the one spot and that it proved that the estuary system is still a healthy one, and that we should only take what we need. This is a good lesson to all anglers - don't take bait gathering for granted.
Other baits are crabs (spider, brown, green and red), prawns shrimps, yellowtail, poddy mullet and white bait. Remember to only collect enough bait for your immediate needs and there will always be plenty for everyone. Further upstream Port Hacking narrows to a small and winding river, which is lined with mangroves and oyster covered rocks, and finally blocked by a weir at Audley in the Royal National Park. When there's not been a lot of rainfall this area is worth a try trolling, and casting lures for flathead, bream and bass.
For the boatie with a family in tow the Royal National Park would be an ideal spot to have a picnic lunch, or to drop the family off while you go and do a bit of exploring.
Winter can be cold, wet and miserable wherever you fish and the Port is no different, but if you pick the right days it can be very productive. Six-spined, fan-belly, and yellow-finned leatherjackets, oyster crunching bream, trevally and very large winter whiting, are all likely to be caught.
Botany Bay:
When Captain Cook first landed in Botany Bay he could not have imagined what the bay would look like in just over 200 years.
In these modern times the Bay always seems to be a hive of activity with the coming and goings of oil tankers at Kurnell, the loading and unloading of container ships at Port Botany and, of course, the big jets landing and taking off on the airport runway which extends into the bay from the northern corner.
Small boat traffic is fairly light during the weekdays but weekends sees more pleasure boat activity as well as the movement of cruise boats in the bay and Georges river system.
Many different species of fish frequent the bay at certain times of the year. I have caught leatherjackets, bream, kingfish, flathead, mulloway, John Dory, flounder, whiting, trevally, garfish, snapper, luderick, mullet, salmon, drummer, bonito and tailor. Other fish species which can be caught in the bay are tarwhine, mackerel, hairtail and groper.
The boat angler can expect to catch mulloway, flathead, luderick, bream, whiting, and leatherjackets throughout the bay.
Oyster Leases:
One of the features for which that the Botany Bay and the Georges River is renown for is oysters, and where there are oysters, there are oyster leases and oyster covered rocks.
I find that I can't go past these areas without being tempted to troll or flick a couple of lures near them. You will pick up bream,
flathead, tailor and even the odd mulloway and luderick in amongst these leases.
Drifting:
The Captain Cook bridge is the gateway to Botany Bay, and I have managed to catch flathead, mulloway and bream while drifting past and underneath its spans. The bridge is also worth a try for mulloway at night during the summer months using freshly caught squid. The squid can be caught right at the base of the pylons during the day on squid jigs.
Drifting over the many sand flats and drop-offs is also a very productive way of tangling with some of the large flathead found in the bay. During winter I have found mullet strips, chicken gut, live blood worms to be the best and through the summer months I like to use pilchards, strips of
tailor, live pink nippers and harbour prawns.
Brighton Le Sands is a very good place to drift until you locate a school of flathead, then-anchor up and berley right on the bottom. This method will also attract other species of fish, and blue swimmer crabs.
Witches' Hats:
I have found it is also worth putting out a couple of witches' hats to catch a feed of blue swimmer crabs while you are doing a drift. If I take the kids out for a fish, to keep them occupied we set up a row of witches hats over the sand flats off Sans Souci and then drift back along the line and try and pick up some flathead, bream and whiting. Not only does this keep them interested, but it usually gets us a great feed.
Botany Bay is a large expanse, and you can be quite pleasantly fishing only to find it suddenly whipped into a frothing mass of white water, so care with the-weather has to be taken at all times.
If the wind does come up and it's too uncomfortable to fish in the bay, you should in a southerly try the Kurnell side around the oil wharf, Watts reef, the Groynes and even Woolooware Bay.
In a northerly wind the end of bay around the airport runways and Port Botany wharfs are protected.
The Port Botany shipping channels are worth a try for trevally, bream and flathead. Drifting past the groynes at Kurnell will always produce a feed of flathead.
For those who like to moor, the end of the airport runways and the retaining walls of Port Botany can be very successful for the anglers who use berley. I have been using Fish Frenzy since it came on the market and have found it to be very effective. The berley is designed to release the contents gradually over a period of 6 hours (depending on conditions).
If the wind and water conditions aren't too bad certainly give the Kurnell side of the bay a go as it has a lot of structures in terms of wharfs and shipping buoys for the Caltex oil terminal there.
Early one morning my son Christopher and I headed out to the Caltex wharf after hearing that the kings were on the prowl in the area. As we pulled up near some of the tanker mooring buoys we noticed that three anglers in one boat were skipping garfish along the surface.
Two of the rods bent over from strikes on the surface - they had a double hook-up on kingfish!
Chris immediately snapped on a popper and cast it out to one of the buoys, but after 15 minutes we both had no results, while those three anglers were again into a multiple hook-up. This time they all had fish on.
After they had landed their fish they
came over to us and gave us some of their garfish to try - maybe it was the sad look Chris had on his face.
Even though we both tried so hard we were still fishless. I then decided to put a piece of squid on to Christopher's line and told him to cast it out and just let it float down.
It did the trick and he managed to land his first kingfish. It weighed 4.85kg.
Anyway that's enough of my experiences on the bay. Why not try it yourself, if you are a visitor there is quite good accommodation such as hotels, motels, caravan parks and launch ramps. There is also plenty of choice when it comes to bait and tackle stores, boat hire outlets and charter boats. In other words you don't even have to bring your own boat if you don't want to.
The Botany Bay area is also quite close to the city for those who might be staying in the city on business or holidays. It is within 15 minutes of the cities main airport and this might be useful for the person who is passing through and staying at one of the airport hotels and has a spare day to kill.
Those visiting the area with a trailer boat should first contact the Sydney Tourist Bureau on ph 132077 (anywhere in Australia). They will be able to send out information on accommodation as well' as maps of the area.
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