BERMAGUI
November 2023
Melbourne Cup week means time off for Victorians and a lot of them don’t care about the race when there is fish to be caught out from Bermagui. Often the cup weekend brings a lot of anglers to the town of Bermagui for the unofficial start to the game fishing season.
Already there is plenty to offer in the form of small to medium tuna. These are in the form of albacore, yellowfin, striped and the occasional big eye tuna. Most of these at present are being taken on the troll with diving, swimming lures providing most success. Using these in conjunction with skirted lures will often see the divers taken first resulting in other fish from the school then reacting to the skirts. The areas in which to target are from the Six Mile Reef and beyond with most fish coming from out over the Continental Shelf through to the Canyons. It helps if you can work with other boats as often one may find a school of fish and by other boats coming into the area will help keep the fish up on the chew. With water temps now on the increase don’t be surprised to see the odd marlin starting to show, so when rigging lures make sure your hardware is sufficient to handle an early season beaky.
I’ve always stated that where there is tuna there are sharks, hammerheads, whalers and especially makos. The makos are out there in numbers and to mix with one a well laid burley trail of tuna should attract one to your vessel. Do this where the tuna are concentrating for the best results or the Twelve Mile Reef may be considered giving you the option of some reef fishing whilst waiting for the big one to come along.
Fishing on the Twelve Mile you can expect most of your common reef fish to be encountered with recently good captures of morwong, snapper, ocean perch and some lovely tassie trumpeter being produced. This is also the time of year for big tiger flathead, and you won’t get them bigger than on the edge of the Twelve Mile Reef, it may be hard fishing out there but the results are worth it. Thankfully those tigers don’t reside just around the Twelve Mile, these fish can be found in closer around the many reefs that surround Bermagui, in as close as 30 metres water depth. However most medium sized fish will be taken from water depths of around 50 metres close to the reefs where you can still encounter some of those other reef fish already mentioned. Closer to shore sand flatties will prevail out from most beaches providing tasty bags for anglers with the added bonus of a gummy shark thrown in for good measure.
Onshore the land base and estuary action is hotting up as a result of earlier than usual warm water temps. With a lot of lakes closed to the ocean this year, those that are open are the places to target with the Bermagui River being the pick of them. Luderick are in massive numbers in the river, responding to weed or nippers. With so much happening on the food front in the estuaries like prawns, or bait fish on the move so are the flathead. Already there has been some very large fish taken with most fish averaging around fifty cm along with some lovely 70 plus fish being released. Bream, whiting, trevally, and tailor are all there on offer, which are reacting more to anglers using baits.
While around the entrances or adjacent beaches and rocks salmon are prolific with some nice tailor mixing in. We should also start seeing other small pelagics travelling the coast in the form of bonito, kingfish, or frigate mackeral which at present are in good numbers up at Montague Island.
Brogo Dam is in full swing with the ongoing stocking program of the Far South Coast Bass Stocking Association efforts providing excellent angling within the dam. Sizes are mixed with the average being around 30cm with the odd thumper over 40 cm. There are also some nice fish in the river below the dam but there is now a no fish zone for the immediate 300 metres below the wall.