With mind-blowingly perfect sea conditions last weekend many boats of all sizes headed out to places like Bandit and Wollongong reefs and every spot in between, in search of a late season billy.

There was a rumour of a couple off Bandit but this has yet to be confirmed and the bait was still stacked up on all the inshore reefs so it is not out of the question for an April late marlin.

Those who took advantage of the awesome run of autumn weather headed out past the shelf and found some good sized striped and some big blue marlin by trolling a pattern of skirted lures but these were upstaged with a couple of big yellow fin tuna that hit the decks up off Sydney.

The big fin that were landed were between the 50-60kg ranges and took a liking to the smaller 150mm to 200mm skirted lures.

There were still plenty of big sharks about the shelf with some big makos and tigers coming in from up and down the coast.

Closer to home, the snapper played hard to get over the weekend with only a handful of boats finding them in the morning session. However, for those who stuck it out until the afternoon tide change it was a truly different story with an insane bite on the deeper reefs - but it didn’t last any more than an hour.

Inside Bandit and Wollongong reefs, the afternoon bite produced plenty of good sized fish to over 3kgs and many returned to the cleaning tables with a good box of fish after a long day out at sea.

In amongst the reds there were some good sized sampson fish and trevally as well as the blue mowies and some big pigfish which helped round out the box.

Micro jigs outfished soft plastics and with some early cuttlefish showing up, there was some pretty good fresh bait to be had which the snapper and mowies devoured in no time.

-------------------------

Members of Shellharbour Game fishing club are reminded there is a monthly meeting on tonight from 7.30pm at Warilla Bowling club.