Squid are the number one live or dead bait in my books.

In my early years of fishing Botany Bay and its surrounding waterways I use to chase yellowfin bream, flathead and sand whiting with my dad.

Once we got a boat that could handle the conditions that you can experience on Botany Bay there was no holding me back when it came to chasing yellowtail kingfish. The only thing then was that the kingfish population was in its decline. This was due to the floating kingfish traps, but once the Minster for Fisheries, at the time, outlawed the use of these traps the kingfish population was on the rise again.

Since then you have had another change in Minsters who banned all commercial fishing from the 1st of May 2002 and believe me hasn’t this improved the fishing in the bay.

I get so many reports from anglers who have been out bait fishing for bream and trevally with light gear, only to be busted off by kingfish that have been swimming in their berley trails.

You will also find that the anglers who have been targeting flathead with soft plastics have also been getting their fair share of bust off’s from kingfish. Now to help you improve your chances of getting a few kingfish I have put together a few places that I fish for them, and I will also give you a few techniques that you could try. But, before that you will need to know what you are up against.

Habitat

In Australian waters kingies are distributed from North Reef in Queensland, around the southern coast to Trigg Island in Western Australia. They also occur off the east coast of Tasmania and around Lord Howe and Norfolk Islands.

They tend to live in inshore and continental shelf waters where they are associated reefs, jetties, marker buoys and pylons. Adult kingies can be a solitary fish or found in small schools near rocky foreshores, reefs and islands. Schools of juveniles are generally found in offshore waters, often near of close to the continental shelf. They seem to prefer water temperatures between 18 and 24 degrees Celsius, although they are occasionally found in cooler water.

Diagnostic features.

Mark Heffernan with his fish ever yellowtail kingfish. Mark caught this 64cm kingie while skipping an unweighted Sluggo beside an article structure.

Yellowtail kingfish have an elongated and moderately compressed bodies. Their head is longer than their body depth and they have 31 to 34 dorsal fin rays. They are generally a blue, bluish-green or purplish green above, and silvery white below. Yellowtail kingfish can also be distinguished by the forked yellow caudal fin and a golden strip on their mid sides.

Life History.

Little is known about the history of yellowtail kingfish in Australian waters. It has been suggested that populations off NSW have a protracted spawning period, which will vary between locations. Spawning occurs in July off Coffs Harbour, in October off Greenwell Point and in February off Narooma. Yellowtail kingfish appear to be pelagic spawners that move offshore to spawn.

Tagging studies have shown that yellowtail kingfish up to 60 cm will remain in an limited area for at least 12 months, with most of them recaptured within 50 km of their released point. Tagging has also shown that larger fish will travel further, with fished being tagged off NSW being recaptured off Victoria, Lord Howe Island and New Zealand.

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Length / weight / age ratio

The Shadow has returned. Mann’s lures are bringing the Shadow back into Australia, and Klauss Weiss reckons kingfish just love them.

Their eggs are pelagic and are about 1.4 mm in diameter. They hatch within 2 to 3 days and the larval kingfish average 4 mm in length. They are thought to spawn first at 2 years of age, when they have a (forked measured) length of 50 cm. Clive Firth caught an 88 pound kingfish at Bermagui way back in 1938, and it still stands as an Australian all tackle record. The largest fish most commonly caught are about one metre in length, but they do grow to at least 1.9 metres in length and can weight up to 70 kilos.

Now if you have ever caught a large yellowtail kingfish and released it because it may have been a breeding female, or you didn’t have any scales to weight it, but didn’t keep any record of the capture (photo). What you could have done with the aid of the table (Ref to fact box 1) supplied by the NSW Fisheries from Steffe et al. (1996) is to estimate the weight of it by just measuring the length of the kingfish.

Fact Box 1

Weight to length equation for Yellowtail kingfish.

Weight (grams) = 0.017234949 x Length (cm) to the power of 2.92134

Weather.

Due to the fact that the weather does play an important part on the times and places that we fish, you will need to build up your skills on how to determine what the changing conditions in the weather will do and how it affects the kingfish. You may choose to just watch the nightly weather forecast on the television, or read the daily newspaper, surf the net for weather forecast, watch the rise and fall of a barometer and temperature gauges or just plain look out the window. What ever you decide to do you will need to make sure that your skills on piecing all these facts together will enhance your fishing chances.

To understand how yellowtail kingfish eat, live and breathe in Botany Bay you will need to get to know your local climate and how the changes in the weather will affect it. For example, know from what direction the prevailing winds come during the summer, winter, autumn and the spring months. This will help you to determine where you will concentrate your fishing efforts. In Botany Bay, the summer weather patterns will usually have the winds blowing from a northerly aspect, restricting you to fish on the north side of the bay at places like Yarra Bay, the western side of the runway, Henry’s Head and Bare Island, but if a southerly change does come up you can always move over to the southern side and fish close into the shore at Kurnell and Towra Point.

What is a structure and how do you fish them?

In Botany Bay structures can come in many different shapes, sizes, forms and compositions. They can be formed naturally and made by man and are home to many different species of invertebrates, crustaceans, molluscs, prawns, squid, which inturn attract many different fish species like yellowtail, slimy mackerel, pike, mullet, garfish, which inturn will attract the yellowtail kingfish

Types.

The kingfish are on at the oil wharf. Make sure that you stay outside of the 100-metre exclusion zone around the wharf.

Breakwalls.

A Breakwall (Port Botany) is a barrier that is either naturally or man made. It usually extends out into open water of a sea, ocean or bay. It will provide a breaking point of the force of the waves and also create a calm water safe harbour. If you were to draw a line where the bottom of these rocks, boulders or pre-cast concrete sits in the sand or silt you will have found the fish highway. Dusky flathead will bury themselves into the sand or mud to lay in wait for some unsuspecting prey to come swimming past. Yellowfin bream will also call this home feeding and breeding in and around the crevices that have been formed by the retaining wall or groyne material. Kingfish just love to patrol up and down this highway, as it is like a drive in take away food shop to them.

Breakwalls can be effectively fished form either a boat or off the shore. To fish these structures you could either suspend a live bait underneath a bobby cork for the yellowtail kingfish, or put a large ball or bean sinker straight down onto a swivel and have a metre of leader. The live bait underneath the bobby cork should be about 7 to 10 metres from the back of your boat, while at the same time you would have the other rig suspended about two metres off the bottom. Both rods would be in the rod holders of your boat and the drag would need to be tightening up a fair bit.

Groynes.

On the other hand a Groyne (Kurnell) is a small man made wall that has been built out into the sea, river or bay in order to help prevent the erosion of a beach or bank. They will and can change the shape of the shoreline by interfering with longshore transporting of the sand.

I have found that the kingfish will sometimes patrol the edges of these groynes, especially when there is a southerly wind blowing. It is worth throwing poppers and plastics up towards the edge of the groynes and then working them back to your boat. You can also try trolling shallow running minnows past the ends of them.

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Fixed or floating navigation markers or buoys.

Yellowtail kingfish just love to hang around navigation buoys or markers (main shipping channel). This is mainly due to the fact that this is where yellowtail, slimy mackerel and other baitfish will hang out. If you are fishing from the shore you could always suspend a live bait under neath a bobby cork and with a well-directed cast you could place the live bait and the bobby cork right beside the marker. If there is a kingfish hanging around the marker, it won’t take long for it to go off.

If you prefer to use artificials rather than baits, you could always cast and retrieve a popper or plastics beside the marker in a fast skipping motion and if the kingfish don’t respond to the fast retrieve method, you could just cast your plastic at the base of the pole, allowing it to slowly sink down beside the marker. If the kingfish don’t take it on the way down you could start a slow and erratic retrieve back towards the boat.

When fishing from a boat you could either anchor upstream and float your baits back to the marker or you could use a paternoster rig or a running sinker rig with a live bait on it. Lower this rig down to the bottom and then wind it up so that it is suspend just off the bottom near the base of the marker. Put the reel in a locked drag setting and then put the outfit in the rod holder and just sit back and let it all happen.

Natural reefs.

Scott Lyons from Southern Sydney Fishing Tours can’t resist taking his clients to the Hot Water outlet at Kurnell.

Reefs (Watts, Bare Island, Henry’s Head, and Kurnell Point) come in all shapes, sizes and depths, making them one of the most sort after structures for the boat owner to find. These reef can be both natural or artificial and made up of a variety of materials. It doesn’t matter what depth of water the reef is in, all you need to do is either anchor near or on the reef and lay out a berley trail to bring the baitfish to the back of the boat. This inturn will hopefully bring the kingfish. The rigs used here can be the same as when fishing next to a breakwall, or you could also try the paternoster rig with one hook on it.

Due to the fact that most of the reefs that I have mentioned and influenced strongly by the currents you will need to concentrate you efforts an hour either side of the tide. It doesn’t seem to matter whether it’s the bottom or the top of the tide. Just as long as the water is not screaming past you boat.

Moored boats.

When targeting either yellowtail kingfish or bream with plastics, poppers or minnows around moored boats (Yarra Bay and off Foreshore Drive) the ideal situation is not to have too much wind. This will give you plenty of time to put out a few cast at each of the boats as you drift past them. Not only does the shadow of the boats themselves attract the fish, so do the mooring ropes and chains. It is the growth that forms on the ropes and chains that inturn will attract the baitfish, which in turn attracts the larger predators.

You can also anchor up near a group of moored boats and lay out a berley trail, while at the same time feed out lightly weighted baits to the underside of the boats and their moorings. The only problem that does occur is when the fish bust you off on the moorings.

Catching live bait.

The author with a 63cm kingfish caught while chucking fresh dead squid at one of the main shipping channel markers.

There are days when kingfish will take anything that is thrown at them, and then there are days when nothing will interest them. That’s fishing! What I have found when the fishing does shut down you will need to really concentrate your time and effort into catching live squid. I rate squid as the number only bait for kingfish in the bay and even if you spend three to fours hours catching only a couple of squid. In preference after squid come yellowtail, slimy mackerel, pink nippers, poddy mullet, very small silver trevally and then pike.

Places that are worth trying for live bait are as follows; Watts Reef, the end of the third runway, Bare Island, the western side of the oil wharf, the hot water outlet, weed patches at the end of Yarra Bay, the retaining wall at Port Botany and Henry’s Head.

Artificials.

Many anglers ask me the time old question, what is the best lure or plastic to buy to catch yellowtail kingfish? Now lures come in many different shapes and forms and I don’t think that any angler could state that any one particular lure or plastic would solely catch only one fish species.

For instance I have caught trout, golden and silver perch on a lure that I have also catch bream, flathead, tailor and Australian salmon. So what I will endeavour to do is give you a range of either lures or plastics to catch kingfish.

Lures Mann’s Stretch 5’s, 10’s, 15’s & 20’s
Rapalla CD Mag 7’s, 9’s, 11’s, 14’s & 18’s
Halco Laser Pro 160mm, & 190mm
RMG Scorpion 125mm & 150mm
Tilsan Minnow & Barra
Halco Tremblers
Storm Natural Fluor Orange 2, 3, 4 and 5 inch
Plastics Mann’s Dragin Finesse Worm 15cm
Mann’s Shadow 13cm
Mann’s George-N- Shad
Storm Wildeye Rippin Minnow
Storm Wildeye Finesse Minnow
Sluggos 10, 15, 20 & 25cm
Squidgy fish and shads

Well, there you have it. A small insight into the world of chasing yellowtail kingfish in Botany Bay. Now all you have to do is get out there and put some of these ideas and techniques into practice, and you too will get your rods, reels, lines and terminal put to the Max’s.