Luke from Leisure Coast Bait and Tackle at Corrimal said customers were elated that the weather really turned it on for them last week.
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The billfish bite down at Jervis Bay was still red hot with many anglers getting multiple fish each day and some from extremely small trailer boats.
There were far too many anglers to name who got multiple fish over the weekend, but many boats were throwing out big numbers of fish both stripes and blacks and many big dolphin fish.
Locally Jamie Maguire put Cameron Bartlett onto some solid dollies with the biggest going 1045mm before putting him on to a solid black from the same area.
Captain Trent from Five Island Charters put his customers on some good stripes locally as well with his crew going 5-4-2 on marlin for the charter last Saturday.
There were plenty of good snapper caught as well over the weekend for the boats that didn't go wide working the vast bait balls that are about at the moment.
As well as the snapper, there were considerable numbers of little makos working the bait schools as well with plenty of them in perfect eating size up to 40 kilos that stole live slimies meant for something much bigger.
The better fish came from the 40 to 60 metre depth range and the best bait was fresh slimy fillets dropped down on the edges of the bait balls where the snapper were sitting underneath.
With the reds, were plenty of pigfish, mowies plus plenty of bonito and frigate mackerel as well.
The kingfish really fired up too over the weekend with customers finding spots holding many legal fish and very little rats which is always welcome when chasing these guys.
The biggest weighed in at the shop, was just over 10 kilos but gossips had reports of some 15 plus kilo fish being cleaned as well.
Flathead drifts produced many quality fish again over the weekend with many customers telling us it wasn't hard to get the bag limit on some very healthy fish to 50cm along with some solid gummy sharks, flounder and red spot whiting.
Yellow fin's journey out to Pacific Islands
A rare and long-time at liberty, yellow fin tuna recapture has stunned DPI researchers.
From time to time, DPI's Game Fish Tagging Program is lucky enough to receive details of recaptures, that come from remote regions of the Pacific Ocean.
Recently, a game fish recapture form was submitted by a researcher from the Japanese Fisheries Research Institute who received a tag from a skipper of an international longline vessel who had just returned from a long-distance fishing voyage throughout the Pacific Islands.
During this trip, they captured a mature tagged yellowfin tuna while fishing an area, known as the Pocklington Trough, which is east of Rossel Island, way up off Papua-New Guinea.
A quick search of the database found that the tuna was tagged at the Southern Canyons offshore of Port Hacking.
The fish was originally caught on July 17, 2016 by Gina Cleaver, who was fishing aboard her brother Chris's boat Double Edge.
The juvenile tuna was estimated it to be only 5 kilos when it was tagged but upon recapture, it weighed in at 61 kilos.
The yellow fin spent 1649 days or just over four and a half years at liberty and was caught more than 1330 nautical miles (2460km) from its original release location.
Raffles return
Kev Callaghan announced following discussions with Hotel management earlier this week, the regular raffles will be re-commencing on Friday afternoon.
Competition is on this weekend, so see you at the weigh-in on Sunday.
Flathead feast for the family
Father and son team Terry and Joshua Liaropoulos fished the general channel area of the lake entrance last weekend and using just plastics, jigged along the run-in tide, scored a swag of flatties and kept six for the table.
There was plenty of boat competition from around the drop off and into the entrance but most were courteous.
Who said the lake was fished out?
Shoot-out
Entries are soon closing so a final reminder for Jervis Bay GF club's AWCON Top 10 Billfish Shoot Out to be held over weekend March 13-14.
Details and entry forms are now on their website.
Shellharbour Game Club's Mark Halling spent a few days off Jervis Bay and said he and crews could not believe the numbers of striped and black marlin that were "just out the front" to out past the canyons.
They ended up with strike rate 16-16-12 billies and a handful of tag cards, so let's hope the fish stay around and the weather gods smile for this Billfish Shootout.
