Scott Loghian and Ramon Carrera from Perth are up here chasing billfish and reds. While out fishing off the west side the boys thought they’d try dropping an Okta Jig down for a reef species and to their surprise hooked a sailfish! The fish jumped several times and jumped off, but the guys enjoyed it just the same. Meanwhile, others chasing billfish have been doing exceptionally well with the Blacksnacks chugging gar rigs. These are soft head pushers that are moulded to fit a garfish head, which makes trolling gardies for billfish even easier.
The waters were stirred up with the recent rains and there has been plenty of weed about in the gulf. The big tides through the full moon phase also contributed to the dirty water in and around the gulf. However, the west side has been cleaning up well and we’ve had reports of black spotted tusk fish off Hunters access road and spangled emperor off Mildura Wreck road. At Janz access there has been schools of hardy heads nervously swimming along the shoreline around high tide as predatory queenfish and trevally periodically thrash past and grab a feed.
Justin Rogers sent in a pic of a shovel nose shark he caught and released from the beach recently. There are many harmless sharks that swim inside the reef at Ningaloo and these are one of them. Quite often you can see then cruising the shallows with their dorsal fins out of the water. On the eastern side of the gulf there can be times when you can see hundreds of them in a day. They are a common shark in the Exmouth area.
Justin shovel nose shark
In the marina there has been plenty of bream lately according to some junior anglers in town. The bream respond well to prawn bait and although most are undersized, they are great to catch and release for the youngsters. There has also been some squid about in the marina and we expect the squid to pick up in the next week as the tides become better for squidding.
Did you know that the Exmouth Game Fishing Club has a Squid competition on the 5th June, which is a fun day planned for the members and visitors to Exmouth. Cost is $10 per boat and there are some fun sections to enter including the dirtiest angler! There is also the annual reef fishing competition called the Exmouth Classic on from June 17-19th. This is an easy competition for those who simply enjoy fishing. There will be plenty of prizes and Fisheries will be here doing research on species caught. Further information can be found at the clubhouse or on the website.