sloth wrote: ↑Thu Oct 07, 2021 7:41 am
Roughly what area of the Yarra are you fishing?
I mainly fish CBD and the Nong - for the Yarra I was mainly downstream of crown …. Fairly sure the middle and upper brackish sections of the Yarra would fish like the nong though.
As sebb mentioned above - our estuary is a salt wedge estuary so in our metro rivers you’ll get a wedge of clean salt water pushing up the system on a incoming tide with a layer of fresh above it. This can means at times you can be fishing a section where the upper part of the water column is fast flowing dirty fresh water and deeper you’re into slower moving much cleaner fresh. They might not even be flowing in the same direction. So in some cases the dirty water you see at the top isn’t necessarily what you are fishing in when your working a plastic on the bottom.
It will take time and frustration to get your first few but you’ll get there. The main focus is finding the fish - so landbased it’s about being selective on where you think they are holding - give it a working over and if nothing move on. In terms of finding them it’s useful to know a bit of fish behaviour and there’s plenty online about that but in the main I’d say the two main ones are food and shelter. They are opportunistic so you can catch them all tides and a vast range of locations but there are ways to increase your chances.
When there is run they like structure. Structure with food is better. Structure that is in current which creates an eddy that they can sit in waiting for the current to bring food down to them is best.
On the slack they are more likely to roam around scavenging and you can pick them up on “flats” … slack high water gives them acesss to grounds to forage that weren’t available on the low….
Generally a fish will sit with its head into current so think about how your lure will approach it and which is best. The easiest way to fish and manage your line isn’t always the best presentation to the fish.
There’s heaps online about lure fishing for bream. It’s important to distinguish between landbased and boat/yak. If you have a sounder and you know fish are there then there can be merit throwing a dozen different lures, colours or different retrieves at them to see if you can crack the pattern. Landbased you can only assume the fish are there based on your watercraft and your understanding of how bream behave. Have a few confidence lures that you know work - give it a few casts and if nothing give up the spot and go check somewhere else. It really is a percentages game. A 1/16th to 1/8th zman 2.5 grub will catch a lot of fish in our estuary so that’s my go to plastics wise. For hardbody something like an atomic shad, strike pro Pygmy or baby archback will work and won’t break the bank (shads probably the easiest to cast).
Retrieve wise the simplest working retrieves are:
Hardbody - slow roll the handle a few turns pause a few seconds. Repeat
Plastic grub - rod tip up at 45deg wait to see bow of slack line (plastic has hot bottom). Count anywhere between 10to30s in your head. Crank your reel two to three turns. Let the plastic drop to a slack bow again, count and repeat. This will have the effect of hopping your plastic along the bottom without the mental anguish of worrying if you’re lifting too fast, too high, too slow, not whippy enough, should be doing double hops etc.
Starting off - it’s all confidence and you will doubt everything - location, your lure choice, the colour of it and your retrieve. This will really &$@* with your head. There’s so much info out there and so much lure choice it can be overwhelming but if you focus on fishing the right areas and stick to only a few lures and techniques you’ll be right. Once you get a few under your belt and a feel for it then you’ll develop your own preferences.
It’s a good time to start - coming into spring and summer should start to see things starting to fire up in the coming months.
Good luck
I also noticed that at one pylon I was fishing it was only 40 cm deep (see image) and I'm not sure if this is too shallow for the breambos.