The winter chill has set in bringing thumper garfish into our local piers and onto our dinner plates.
Through my inexperience with the species, I turned online and to Denis who thankfully shared his experience catching and cleaning garfish.
With this new found wisdom I headed out to catch my first ever garfish and here is the story that follows.
17/6/2020, Overcast afternoon with light winds on a rising tide. Success!
Trial and error finding the right part of the pier for the garfish school, but I was ready. I burlied light with a homemade fine burley and success, my float went under and on the strike the line starting darting before being concluded with my first garfish in the esky. Even though the trip went slowly, my first two garfish made it all worthwhile.
Feeling more confident in my garfish skills I went for some more, burlied up again in the same spot before getting straight onto the gars. They were picky, only two strikes with two fish, but I was hooked.
Check out the colour variation on these gars, the yellow/green robust garfish vs the southern garfish!
Great meeting you Chris from the forum, had a great chat! Look forward to meeting again.
Southerly winds had me excited to make a burley trail of tuna oil soaked bread and continue my hunt for gars. First cast within seconds the float dipped into a solid gar and like clockwork every minute became another fish! One after another until they were spooked by cormorant with eyes bigger than it's stomach.
A few more good fish followed in the next hour, but my favourite is this garfish without a bill. Due to the lack of structure, I think it never grew one! How odd! Ten chunky gars in two hours!
Massive thank you to Denis and all that have posted on previous garfish threads, you've all made this a fun experience.
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