After the first few days of June the rain stopped and cool, south-westerly winds took hold. The sea dropped a couple of degrees from 22°C at the beginning of the month to 20°C by the end of the month. The winds flattened the seas on the headlands but the early morning starts were suddenly very cold. At the beginning of the month the sea was pretty cloudy on the run out tides but it would clear as the tide ran in. The mullet were out of the river and all along the beaches.

I fished at Iluka Bluff on a few mornings at the beginning of the month, when swell and tide made it possible. I generally fish using metal spinners and hard bodied lures for tailor and soft plastics for mulloway. However I quite often get tailor and trevally on the soft plastics. If I’m fishing through dawn I’ll often use a surface lure initially but once the sun is up, switch to a shallow diving hardbody minnow lure. Tailor destroy even the toughest lures so I generally buy cheap ones and beef up the split rings and trebles. At about $10 per lure I can just about stand the pain of getting bitten off by a passing mackerel or watching powerlessly as a decent trevally parks the lure on a rocky outcrop. My days of buying $40 Japanese hand crafted masterpieces may be behind me.

As we approached the full moon on the 10th the fishing got better and better. There were plenty of tailor around, especially at dawn and dusk and during the tide changes. There were also quite a few decent trevally.

As the cold south-westerly winds kept the swell nice and flat they also boosted my casting ability. I fished a few new spots that are usually out of reach. The small jewfish were hiding under the ledges on all the headlands. I caught a lot of 55 cm to 65 cm fish and a just few over 70cm.

When I’m chasing mulloway I seem to often cross paths with the big ones just as the horizon starts to glow. This first 30 minutes of partial visibility is without doubt the time I have lost the most big fish out on the headlands. In June I couldn’t stop a few freight trains that grabbed my soft plastics but a couple of times I did stop the big trevally. I suspect some of the fish that I failed to stop might have been snapper. They are often in fairly close at this time of year.

With conditions so flat on the headlands I didn’t fish the river very much, but when I did there were plenty of flathead and bream around. Smaller tailor were also destroying my soft plastic lures as they chased the bait up river. The river water clarity improved dramatically through the month.