Iluka – the Clarence River and Bundjalung headlands – June 2023

Posted on March 22, 2024 by Landangler

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.

img_20230608_181612_6186881536650676757562

Iluka – The Clarence River and the Bundjalung Headlands – December 2022

Posted on November 12, 2023 by Landangler

The swell was up and down again in December. I managed a few mornings fishing on the rocky headlands and caught quite a few juvenile jewfish on my favourite GULP Squid Vicious soft plastics. I can pretty much no longer find the lime tiger (green and orange) colour so I have switched to the nuclear chicken (red and green) colour. When the mulloway are hungry they don’t much seem to care which soft plastic you use, but I think the dangling legs of the squid pattern can tempt them out of hiding, when they are reluctant. I also believe the GULP scent makes a difference.

There were also a few tailor around, particularly at dawn and dusk. I caught them on the surface and with the soft plastics I had intended for mulloway. I found plenty of flathead, fishing the Clarence River around Iluka and Browns Rocks.

There was a hatch of prawns and when the jelly prawns were in the shallows close to the rocks, so were the flathead. I swapped through a few different Powerbait Shrimps and tried the Berkley Shimma Shrimp soft vibe. They both caught fish but so did any soft plastic minnow, worked slowly along the bottom, close to the bank.

Iluka – the Clarence River and the Bundjalung Headlands – October 2022

Posted on October 9, 2023 by Landangler

My fishing diary is now so far out of date that posting pictures may seem superfluous. But in the interests of trying to maintain and approximate record of what I caught and when, I will post some pictures for each month and try to catch up.

There were lots of flathead in the river in October and loads of junior jewfish. I only managed one rock fishing session and landed one just legal size jewfish / mulloway. Everything was caught on soft plastics.