DAVE RAE
86 | fishingworld.com.au | February 2015
MY teenage years were spent enjoying a
sizeable estuary system on the Central Coast
of NSW called Brisbane Water. We lived on
the shoreline at a place known as Point Clare
and our 12-foot tinnie lived between two
white posts out on the water. At high tide I’d
wade out with my oars and chase all the usual
estuary suspects, while at low tide she’d be
high and dry.
My high school was in Gosford and the
shortcut home was a hike through the bush, a
bolt across the rail bridge and then nearly all
the way home along the shoreline. It was a
cracker of a run or a great bike ride.
I learnt to catch massive bream around the
pylons of that bridge by sitting on the top of
the concrete and lowering a lightly weighted
live black crab into the eddy. I managed a
stack of 1-1.3kg fish and also landed one
anorexic monster.
The bream went nuts when the water went
brown after heavy rain, but the sharks were also
in abundance. They’d hit mullet on the surface
in explosive strikes or they’d leave big swirls that
were heard before they were seen.I used to become more nervous than usual
when climbing down onto the pylon when the
swirls were happening, and yet it never ever
occurred to me that I should be seeing big fins
as the “sharks” attacked the hapless baitfish.
I stuck at my bream fishing until I got my
driver’s licence when spinning from the ocean
rocks took precedence over estuary fishing,from which time the bream were replaced by
bonito, kingfish and tuna. Oddly enough, all
the shark sightings from the rock ledges always
involved spotting fins.
It wasn’t until the mid 1980s that word
filtered out; one of my old mates was
catching jewfish under the rail bridge
during f loods. Yep, the finless sharks I was
seeing were in actual fact mulloway and this
little duck watched it all happen and
remained clueless! I could have been 10
years ahead of the pack ... except I wouldn’t
have been able to keep my mouth shut!If only I’d known ...
NSW Central Coast anglers are no strangers
to f lood fishing for mulloway. Back in the
day, they were right up there with the
Clarence River crew and the mighty South
Australians. When the Hawkesbury River
f looded, a select crew of hard-core anglers
would appear on the rocks to the north of
Broken Bay, casting feathers and then
homemade timber plugs (with lead infills),
across shallow, crag-filled reef, landing
numbers of big jew in the process.
Names like Hurst, Ashton, Lund and
Whitehead featured in the catches, and most
fish were 18kg or more.
Another of my mulloway heart-breakers
involved my commerce teacher, Mike Hurst.
I’d been casting for a few hours when Mike
walked up, had a cast and said,“There’s a
fish there.” Next cast he hooked and landed
it; a 26kg thumper. Afterwards, he looked
me in the eye and said, “You were winding
too fast, you need to slow down” ... if only
I’d known that!
The bloke who first turned on to the jew on
lure thing in that area told me that he got the idea
from watching an Aboriginal man catch cod in
the Murray with a handline and a lure that he’d
made by folding a tobacco tin lid around a
handful of white chook feathers and a hook.
My old mate reckoned that the dirty water
reminded him of coastal f loodwater, so in thenext f lood he cast a white feather lure and
caught jews. He worked hard to keep the
secret, making his own track into the spot,
staying away from it unless it was f looding
and he’d even hide his old truck or would
leave in the dark. His best day involved 13 big
jews; but only a few were landed. The terrain
was – and doubtless still is – extremely rugged
and snaggy.
Another case of “if only ...” It makes me
want to experiment and explore, though.
How about you?If Only ...
The benefit of hindsight leaves Dave regretting
his youthful ignorance concerning big jewies masquerading
as finless sharks and the opportunities offered by flood events.
BY DAVE R AEhe finless sharks I was
seeing were mulloway and
this little duck watched it
all happen and remained
clueless! I could have been 10
years ahead of the pack ... ”
T
A fresh-faced Mr Rae from 1992 with a 24.6kg
jewie. A few years prior to this, an even younger
Dave missed out on plent y of monster jew
because he thought they were sharks!