Mindarie customer Alex with an excellent mulloway. 

 

There have been reports of early season salmon around North Mole and schools are popping up in various locations in the Sound as well. Using small metals and stickbaits has proven to be a sure-fire way of catching these awesome fighting fish. For some more reliable action Dunsborough, in places such as Bunker Bay, are seeing big schools come through.

 Locally, the Swan River, specifically around the Garret Rd bridge area has been producing some quality sized bream with a few flathead in the mix. To target the bream, try using mussels/river prawns on an unweighted hook thrown around the snags. Be on the ready, because as soon as you hook up, the bream head straight around the pylons. If you’re after a bit more fun, try using hardbodies lures such as the Zipbaits Tiny Khamsin Jr. Further down river the bream have been ravenous and staff member Laith has been cleaning up some afternoons. He had three good sessions this week landing between 12 and 20 fish each trip, all on Z-man 2.5” grubs. The fish seemed to be in feeding mode late in the afternoon, with big schools of bream hugging the shoreline and the larger fish were biting more readily as the light faded. There is plenty of bait in the lower reaches in all shapes and sizes and Laith witnessed scalies busting up on schools of grass shrimp. So, if you are after bigger predators here would be a good place to start.
 
Good numbers of shark mackerel have been caught lately with most being cast to. They have been swimming along with tuna and yellowtail kings taking advantage of all the bait on inshore reefs. 5 Fathom Bank has also been producing a number of these speedsters. There are still a decent number of Spanish mackerel getting caught with ballyhoo rigs (garfish/sanmar trolled behind the boat) and deep, medium divers trolled along drop-offs in changes of water depths of about 5-10m. There are good numbers in the Sound with anglers who are squidding reporting some big fish clearing the water after fleeing baitfish. Cobia have also begun to make an appearance locally and this is no surprise with the number of turtles that have been reported lately. The good size GT that was speared off Kwinana is also worth a mention, as it points to the fantastic warm water currents bringing down some seriously cool fish from up North.
 
The majority of the demersals have been coming from the 40’s with some solid dhufish, snapper and breaksea coming over the side. Good baldies have been landed North of Two Rocks right up to Jurien this past week up to the 70cm mark. Reel Force Charters took Sue to celebrate International Womens Day who landed a boat breaking record bass groper of 62kg. Well done Sue and not bad for a 68-year-old.


Customer Mark a solid dhu caught on premium occy

 
Sue and a massive bass groper on board Reel Force Charters. The fish was landed using the Daiwa Seaborg Megatwin MJ1200

The beaches are firing this week with tailor, small sharks and some very decent mulloway been hitting the sand. Most of the action has been North of Two Rocks but plenty of bread and butter species such as herring are still coming from beaches south of here and in some instances, plenty of chopper tailor too.

 
Alex and a mate had an awesome night on some mulloway

 

 If you have any information or photos that you would like to include in our weekly fishing report, please email [email protected].