Gary Wade's Reel Deal fishing column

With the start of the season being really dry with little flow in most of the well-known creeks and rivers, it wasn’t looking like we would get a good season.

That has now been turned on its head with nearly 300mm falling across the Illawarra.

The creeks and rivers are looking really healthy compared to a month ago.

There have been some nice fish caught and released already and with more flow we should start seeing some really good fishing over the next month. This weekend is looking really good for a shot at our Aussie natives.

With some warm days ahead, we should see some great fish being pulled on top-water surface lures for a quick picture and then returned.

A few took on last Saturday morning’s weather and were not disappointed with plenty of good pan-sized snapper about the inshore reefs, as well as some big drummer and groper.

One boat took home a bag limit of groper on three crabs in the space of five minutes.

With all the recent rain and swell – and if the weather holds for the weekend –  we should see a red hot bite for just about every species imaginable on the inshore reefs with all the creeks bursting open.

The rocks again produced some great bread and butter fishing with more drummer than you could poke a stick at. And with them, there were big schools of bream and trevally, as well as luderick.

With weed scarce, the imitation weed flies came into  their own and in a few spots again out fished the real stuff.

Beaches should fire once the weather abates and already many anglers are making plans to soak some baits, on the hunt for a big jewie.

Hopefully they’ll be sitting in close on the beaches gorging on the bait that has been washed out of nearly every creek on the coast.

Send them to Gary Wade at gazwade@bigpond.com to run in the Mercury’s weekly column. Please ensure they are high resolution, ideally of at least 1MB. For more fishing information and product reviews, go to reeldealfishing.com.au.