North Coast Bassing

Prime North Coast bass habitat.

North Coast Bassing

Last night I returned home from the Copmanhurst Bass Invitational and after such an awesome weekend of fishing I felt encouraged to put finger to key board and try to inspire you all about just how great our NSW bass fishery really is. Copmanhurst is on the Clarence River to the West of Grafton, down stream it's still boat territory, whereas upstream it's more suited to canoes or small punts that can be man handled over sand or rock bars.

At this time of the year (Oct/Nov) the bass are, or have just moved through this brackish section of the river and are fast making their way upstream into the famous Clarence River Gorge country, where they'll join their summer room mate, the eastern cod. Over the weekend, with my fishing partner Mike Colless, we spent most of our time fishing the lower sections, down river from Copmanhurst, travelling as far down as Rogan's Bridge, as well as heading up into the Orara River. On the first day of fishing we found the fish very hard to pin down, sure there was the odd fish in usual places, but finding the big schools of travelling fish was a difficult proposition.

In the end we resorted to deep jigging with spinner baits and rattling jigs and after a fairly fishless first three hours of casting, we finally started to score consistent amounts of good fish to 44 cm, but still not in the concentrations or sort of numbers we felt were needed to do well in a competition situation. Interestingly it was during our lunch break that we started to pick the pattern as to where the fish were holding up. It seemed that although we were casting at all the best fish holding structure we could find, the majority of our successes, or near successes, had come on the bends in the river.

The sorts of bends that proved the most productive were usually deep on the outside and shallow on the inside and although in the past I've had success fishing deep spinner baits on the shallow banks, over the weekend nearly all our fish came from either the deeper corners, or the first 20 or so metres of straight, leading out from bends. In the final washup Mike and myself caught and released 47 bass to 44 cm in a day and a half of champagne fishing, the fish were caught on a mixture of spinner baits and shallow diving crank and stick baits, with green, yellow and white our most successful colour mixture.

The Author Phill Atkinson with a great North Coast Bass. This fish topped 50 centimeters in length, and was caught on a small diving minnow.

The North Coast of NSW is well renowned for its "big time" bass fisheries, rivers such as the Manning, Macleay and the mightiest of all, the Clarence; are legendary in bass fishing folklore. But in between these big delta systems are an amazing amount of smaller creeks and waterways, each with their own salt, brackish and freshwater zones; and all with enough access points for the enterprising small boat, or canoe based anglers to do some serious exploring. If you've never fished the North Coast of NSW for wild bass, then you've got some exciting times ahead of you, all those sub 35 cm specimens that are considered a good fish in parts further south, barely raise an eyelid on the North Coast, up here "perch" aren't worth mentioning until they're over 40cm!

When first fishing unfamiliar and often skinny water, one of the first things I attempt to find out is where the consistently freshwater section of the system starts. If the creek has an operating weir, then this area is usually easy to track down, without a weir the demarcation is not so obvious and in these cases looking for the use of irrigation pumps by farmers, is the next best tell tale sign of a consistently fresh section of river. Other indicators such as water lily, bull rush or freshwater weed growth, will also indicate bass habitats, but are only worthwhile indicators of brackish water and not the full fresh that bass feel most comfortable in during the height of summer.

Surface lures account for big bass.

When exploring I prefer to travel in a canoe rather than a punt, the canoe can be dragged over, or around weirs and other obstacles that may block your passage to upstream bass water. There's nothing more frustrating than not being able to access good water because the craft you're using is too big, many of the best bass streams we fish have some very constipated stretches, before opening up into a deep and fishy oasis.

The other thing to remember is that some of the biggest wild bass ever caught, some over 60 cm, have come from what on first appearances look like small and weed filled trickles.

As a rock fisherman I learnt very early on that the harder a ledge was to get into, the better and more enjoyable the fishing would be, the same applies to bass water. If you're not prepared to get your boat dirty and your prop choked up with weed and sand, then you're not ever going to see the best that the North Coast has to offer! Techniques that work on our wild bass streams vary to suit the tastes of fishermen; the bass up here are pretty cooperative when it comes to eating artificial's, nearly everything works! Over the weekend just past, we had fish hit and miss our floating crank baits as they landed, only to charge metres out from the snag and hit the lure again in clear, sun filled water. On one occasion Mike almost lost his rod, as a bass hit the lure when it was less than a metre from the tip! When using spinner baits in deep rocky territory there were several occasions when bass hit the lure when it was still on the drop, feeling the faster than usual exodus of line and quickly putting the reel into gear and striking, provided some powerful hookups on big fish, in deep, dark, and rocky water.

White spinner baits are my favourite

But to me the North Coast is the domain of the surface lure and although I don't tend to use them when I'm going for numbers of fish in competitions, they are my favourite recreational way of targetting big bass. I've got one particular Jitterbug in my tackle box that's had 12 years of service and has caught over 100 really big wild bass to 51 cm, it's even been used on late evenings on Glenbawn and lived to tell the tale! On days when surface fishing isn't working, or when comp fishing, I like to use smallish floating shallow divers. The Knolls 50 mm native is by far and away my favourite bass lure, it casts like a bullet, lands with a nice plop, and with the right rod work, can be worked like a surface lure and a diver, all in the same retrieve.

Not a lot is written about rod work on bass, I tend to use stiffer than normal rods with my lures, I've got two Loomis GL3 C662 blanks, one is an Ian Miller Boomer Bass rod, the other a standard off the rack Loomis. They're normally matched with an ABU 1500, Shimano Chronarch, or a Calcutta 100 if I'm fishing heavy tackle or there's a chance that there's a jack or two around. I like a stiffer and more powerful rod because it allows me to put more work into my lures, either by holding the rod high for surface tickles, or deep into the water for the run back to the boat.

Lure retrieve rate is a curious thing, over the weekend just past, Mike and myself were using identical lures, lines and leaders, the only difference in our systems was that Mike was using a slower Calcutta 50, while I was using the higher speed Chronarch. Yet every time we'd cast at the same snag, I'd invariably get the smaller fish, while Mike got the horse. The only difference( other than Mike's a better fisherman than me) we could put this pattern down to was, the bigger fish preferred the slower lure, certainly food for thought; out of the 47 bass for our boat I landed 26 and Mike 21, but his average size would have been far in excess of mine.

Beware the "red bass"!

Spinner baits and rattle jigs are also a good lure in many of our northern rivers, I tend to find them of most use on the bigger waterways, particularly in deep, rocky, or current filled areas. They are also deadly tools when fish are feeding on prawns or gudgeons along the shallower drop offs, or when fish are holding up during the day under willow trees, or between the vertical strands of brackish water rushes. When instructing someone whose using spinner baits for the first time, I'll often tell them to pretend they're fishing for flathead with lead headed plastics, always making sure the lure sinks on a loose line and hits the bottom between short rod lifts. If a fish hits the spinner bait, then a quick and positive hook set is usually needed, which is another reason why stiffer rods and gel spun line are an excellent combination. PS-Beware there's another species of bass up here called "red bass" it eats everything, particularly surface lures!

This Spring/Summer/Autumn I'll be organising bass, jack, and jew day trips on the North Coast, if you're after a day on the water or beach with me, send me an email and I'll see if I can fit you in-Phil Atkinson.

Back to Start