Yamba August 2013

[kingcray]

gday all

Would like to share with you a little of our trip down to one of my favourite places in the world, Yamba on the mighty Clarence River.
We arrived at our holiday rental on the canals on saturday last week with the plan to spend the week getting the kids onto some fish, do some sight seeing, have a few at the tavern and of course a meal or 2 at Toms Chinese
We had a great week with fantastic weather other than a little annoying bloody westerly blowing about 10 knots most of the week at the best times of the tides which made it tough to get the kids out and about too much.
We visited some local areas Iluka, Angourie, Wooloweyah, Grafton (missus has loads of family there) and even went to Coffs one day, where the kids had a ball at the big banana and i had a ball at a certain fishing tackle store...

The forecast from the Yamba locals and the local fishing reports was not great ... after reading report after report and chatting to some locals i know, the word was there 'bugger all jew this season' and 'all the flathead are upstream of Harwood and the broadwater,.. still loads of bream around etc.. since i didnt feel like fishing for bream and hardly felt like taking the tinny that far up river i persisted around my usual haunts being the Middle wall, a few of the islands and Browns Rocks.

Normally we visit Yamba / Iluka in the warmer months so fishing in August was totally new to me down this way... and for the first time in the last 5 or 6 years of coming down this way found it really tough!
Visibility on the Middle Wall on the best days was 5mtrs + so tried the deeper side as it gets to around 12 metres in parts. Headed up there on one of the better days and i dont have a leccy so need little or no breeze to fish the wall with any effect. Well i threw plastics and blades until my wrists could take no more for 1 good hit and run then bust off. Tried another spot near the wall where ive had some success, nada here too, not a touch.

Started thinking upstream is the go so headed back up to a nice little yabby bank near our canal estate. Pumped up loads of yabbies and took to kids up to a rock wall. At least we had some fun here pulling bream after bream all around 25-30cm. All released.. but at least the kids had a bit of fun. Head back over to the yabby banks with the other half and set her up a plastic ... im thinking here we go, i wil give her 5 casts before she packs it in.. turns out she only needed 2 and lands her first flatty and legal size in nsw at 38cm! not a bad first dig on 4lb nano and 6lb leader. so in the bucket of water she goes in case we get another we have tea.
I cast out my little slider paddle tail flick flick bang! decent flatty on here and takes lots of line... im thinking bugger only have 6lb leader on this one too... after a good 5 or so minutes of to and fro i see a good 60+ flatty come sliding toward the bank, i bend down to grab the leader and she inhales the placcy right in front of me headshakes and gets away !!
Thats fishing, and at least we have found a nice little bank with a few lizards on it.
We visited this little bank on the low tide every chance we got and caught flatties every time but nothing of notably size all between 30 and 50cm. One of the other things i wanted to do was get my young fella Bailey (5) onto a flatty as he loves them and he tries really hard with the plastics ... he mustve casted a thousand times over the week and in the end he was rewarded when he hooks up and thinks hes snagged. I loosen the drag a bit and it starts to run,, so he starts to wind and not too long later we drag up the beach a cracker 48cm flatty .... he needed a little help to get her up the bank but he did all the hard work himself. This one makes a nice feed with the one from the other day

Friday comes and i have car troubles, day before we are to head home. Couldnt get part until yesterday or today which meant we were stuck there for an extra 3 days. We spent these days visiting rellies and took the kids to Coffs but still managed to get one more fish in. Monday afternoon, cracker of a day wind had turned slightly NE which meant it wasnt so cool so we loaded up with the plastics rods and headed over the Browns Rocks to see if we could find and decent lizards ... was pretty slow here too, spent most of the time retying jigheads and all my deckies were getting snagged every cast lol .. but managed a couple more and a few bream too on the good ol squidgy wrigglers.

Overall we had caught some nice fish, managed a few feeds and made the most of a tough time to fish. Also happy to get the missus into soft plastic fishing
Over the week we saw loads of dolphins and even a very big shark in the shallows terrorising baitfish , this was a great sight for Bailey as he is absolutely bloody obsessed with sharks

Left Yamba this morning and fought our way through the endless amount of roadworks between there and the Tweed.
There seems to be roadworks all the way down from the Tweed area to Coffs at the moment.
We had a great holiday and will be back in November to try our luck again.
Thanks for reading

Will upload some pics soon once i work out how to resize as they are huge files.