March | 2024 | Landangler's Blog

In June, winter finally arrived on the Clarence River. We had plenty of bright and calm sunrises. The early mornings were the time to fish with light south easterly and south westerly winds, first thing.

I fished the rocky headlands and caught plenty of jewfish/ mulloway, trevally but only very few bream. Whilst the mulloway definitely prefer certain spots to school up, they seemed to be everywhere in the half an hour between first light and dawn. I caught smaller fish on all the headlands but could only land the bigger ones at Woody Head.

Some nice gutters had formed on Ten Mile Beach and I caught some good sized flathead in the wash using soft plastic lures. The run out tides seemed to be the best time to fish. There were also plenty of flathead and juvenile jewfish/ mulloway in the river.

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The weather cooled but very slowly in May. The water temperature dropped quite quickly and averaged about 2 degrees C cooler than May 2022. We had a few misty starts on the river and some spectacular sunrises.

The swell settled and I managed a few rock fishing sessions at Iluka Bluff, Fraser’s Reef and Woody Head. I landed a few jewfish using the GULP Crazylegs Jerkshad and Squidvicious soft plastic lures, mainly in the nuclear chicken colour. The dangling legs of these patterns often seem to attract a strike when other shapes are not working. Only two of the jewfish/ mulloway that I caught in May were big enough to keep. Both were around 80 cm long. There were a few tailor around but not many bream.

The flathead were still hard to find in the river even though there were plenty of jelly prawns hatching on the new and the full moons. The trevally were still marauding around, especially at dawn and dusk.