From the time I was a five-year-old fishing from the banks of the Tweed River in Murwillumbah, the importance of having fresh bait was stressed. Live bait was even better. Dad had one of his friends make a scoop net for me out of flymesh, mounted on the rim of a bicycle wheel, attached to a handle about 4 feet long. With this I was assured of always having access to live juvenile school prawns, which were plentiful around the banks of the river whenever it was not in fresh.
Everyone knew that live worms were better than dead ones and dead yabbies were next to useless. Starting with these ‘givens’, I was to progressively appreciate some of the finer benefits of truly fresh bait.
Over my many years of fishing my perception of the importance of fresh bait has matured. Experience has honed it to the point that I now accept that extremely fresh bait can be, in the right circumstances, hugely more effective than fresh bait, but that effectiveness does vary with the species and circumstance.
I have assumed that there is general acceptance that the fresher the bait, the better it is. Live bait is almost always better than dead bait. Even the ‘liveliness’ of live bait can be a factor (chapter 9). Here, I provide just a couple of examples of observations that support the assertion that extremely fresh bait is likely to produce catches that are not only bigger but can also be remarkably different to those taken with bait that was as good as you could normally expect to buy.
In 1962 Dad was driving me from Coolangatta to Kingscliff via Frank Dunn’s bait shop at the mouth of the Tweed River in the hope that we might be able to buy some garfish. There was not much chance as they rarely had garfish, even if they were the only ones who had them for sale. Garfish had become accepted to be the tailor bait. They sold out very quickly when anybody did have them. But they were such a prize that it was worth a try.
We arrived at the shop at about 11 a.m. to have the lack of garfish confirmed. But while we were still discussing the possibility that garfish might become available later in the week, Frank Dunn himself pulled up outside the shop. He had a trailer behind his truck and it was filled with large anchovies (froggies) that had just been netted on Duranbah Beach, about half a mile away. Frank and his crew immediately set about processing them with very liberal quantities of coarse salt.
Dad had always had a serious disregard for froggies as bait. He was of the opinion that they were too soft to stay on the hook. Fish did not really like them anyway. Besides, he thought they were usually too big for bream but too small for tailor. But I was reasonably confident he had never used them. He was merely repeating a popular and accepted fisherman’s myth.
I raised Dad’s concerns with Frank and he immediately handed me a froggie and asked me if it was soft. It was almost alive and as firm as a small pelagic fish can be. He assured me it would remain so if I put some coarse salt on it. I succumbed to the advice and bought 2 pounds of froggies with coarse salt on them for 9d (8 cents) a pound. This was less than a quarter of the going price for garfish.
I was fishing off the Kingscliff rocks about an hour later. I had been subjected to too much negativity about froggies from everybody who professed to know, to have any confidence in them. So, the first thing I did was catch about a dozen crabs for bait. I had also brought a couple of dozen white pillies that had been salted for at least a couple of weeks. They were not great but about as good as you could buy at that time. Frozen white pillies were not yet produced commercially. Ray Lederhose had not yet developed Tweed Bait.
The Alley looked fantastic. It was deep and covered with consistent creamy foam, and the water was a beautiful blue. But two hours of soaking crabs and alternatively white pillies had produced only a couple of bream of a little over a pound each, the normal size for autumn around the Kingscliff rocks. The Alley looked so good that I could not accept that there were no better fish in it. I had had enough fishing experience to know that with good water you had a good chance, with excellent water you were virtually a certainty. What was wrong? As a last resort I decided to try a froggie.
I had very quickly made up three rigs before leaving home. I laid out sets of three 2/0s and ascertained that they were perfect for these large froggies. The froggies were in fact so big I thought it best to change to my tailor rod and 15-pound line.
My first cast landed close to where I had aimed, about 5 or 6 feet from the right edge of The Alley, two thirds of the way down. The waves break across The Alley from right to left, with the strength of the pressure being determined by the size of the sea and the tide. The lower the tide, the less drag across it. As I took up the slack from the first cast, the first wave pulled my line tight and I felt the 2-ounce sinker shift a couple of feet. I had learnt to allow the rod to drop ten or fifteen degrees with each swell to soften the pull and help prevent the rig sweeping across too quickly. The second wave was a little bigger and the pull a little stronger, so I allowed my rod to drop a little lower. As I went to lift it back to the vertical, the pull continued. I struck, and connected. A beautiful bream of well over 2 pounds was hardly a challenge on a 15-pound line, but it did make me feel I had salvaged the day.
The second throw was in the water for even less time when the sharp and rattily bite of a tailor got my attention. This was also a nice fish; about 3 pounds. The third throw I missed another good bite I thought was a tailor. The fourth or fifth induced a terrific heavy straight pull that produced a good fight and a 5-pound GT. The fishing was quickly getting better; then I hit the jackpot. The next throw resulted in a lovely schoolie of about 7 pounds. Even though I was to catch lots of big jewies in The Alley, schoolies were not common. I cannot remember ever catching one there smaller than 5 pounds. Over the years I caught big quantities of schoolies from 2 to 5 pounds at Hastings Point, and to a lesser extent at Fingal, but never at Kingscliff.
I finished the afternoon with three more bream—each more than twice as big as the ones I had caught on crabs or old white pillies—two or three tailor, a couple of GTs and two schoolies. I had more than one of each of the four species I could realistically expect to catch in The Alley on a fish bait. They had demonstrated how much each of the species liked the bait. I was hooked on fresh froggies. I have remained so all my life. There were only two problems: how would I break the news about they good they are to Dad? And how could I possibly secure a supply of what was a very rare commodity, which was never sold frozen?
A year or two later I was standing next to Basil Smith as we fished The Alley for bream in the middle of the day. We had caught one or two each. They were typical daytime autumn bream for The Alley, a fraction over a pound in weight. I remember I was using salted white pilchards, which I knew were not great, but I had caught a lot of bream on them on other occasions, particularly at night. Our attention was demanded by a shower of small fish only 5 or 10 yards in front of us. They continued jumping their way towards us at speed. Twenty or thirty were so desperate they jumped onto the rock we were standing on. A lot more continued on up a crevice. They were smallish froggies. Basil grabbed one before the next wave took the others off our rock. I charged up the rock above the crevice to see if I could surround a few more. I got about six. By the time I got back to Basil he was just about to cast his one new bait down The Alley.
I had noticed that these froggies looked a little different; they were a little more torpedo shaped and a more spectacular blue colour than the froggies I was used to. But as Basil quickly became connected to a significant fish, my pursuit of fish biology was quickly replaced by the need to get one of these creatures on a hook and in the water.
Basil landed a beautiful bream of almost 3 pounds. I quickly caught two that were not quite as big, but still beautiful fish. All three were of a totally different class of fish to the ones we had caught earlier. I then got bitten off by tailor a couple of times. I kept one froggie to take home and have a good look at. We had run out of our very fresh bait and returned to our salted white pillies. As well as I can remember, we did not catch another decent fish. I remember clearly how starkly different the results from the two types of bait had been.
All I could establish at the time about the froggie I took home was that it was ‘a bit different’, but the huge extendable mouth confirmed it was clearly an anchovy, and therefore a ‘froggie’. Ten years later, while working on tuna baitfish in Papua New Guinea I became very familiar with the tropical anchovy, Stolephorus buccaneeri. It is smaller and more streamlined than the more temperate species, Engraulis australis, which is the common froggie in NSW. Both have the extremely large mouths from which the name ‘frog-mouth’, or ‘froggie’, was derived. The mystery of the slightly different froggies Basil and I had encountered was solved; I am certain they were S. buccaneeri. I ever only saw them once more at Kingscliff and that was as a very small component of a haul of predominantly white pillies that was taken in front of the Surf Club.
In the twelve years I fished the Kingscliff rocks intensively I had about a dozen encounters with extremely fresh white pillies. On calm nights, schools of whites would occasionally come in extremely close to the rocks. Some years they would be around the rocks for several weeks. Presumably as a consequence of being chased, they would occasionally get stranded at night in relatively large numbers in some of the holes in the rocks. In the good old days there was one particularly large hole not far inshore from Round Rock where a lot would often got trapped as the tide fell. On one occasion I remember Bill Wright and I collected about 100 pounds of whites, many of which were still alive, from this hole on low tide at daybreak one morning.
One night I had been fishing The Alley on the dropping tide for bream without a great deal of success. As I walked up the rocks to go home I found a pool full of beautiful whites. If you are a true addict the sight and touch of truly fresh pilchards provokes a fishing frenzy. So I collected a couple of dozen and immediately returned to The Alley. I finished the evening with I think, nineteen beautiful bream and a schoolie. I collected the rest of the pillies and headed home.
The next day I could not wait for night to come so I could get back to The Alley with my beautiful fresh bait; I had bagged and frozen my haul of pillies from the previous night. I was to be extremely disappointed as two hours of fishing The Alley produced only two or three average-size bream. I assumed they simply were not there. Had they only been there the previous night because they could smell the pillies?
As I headed off home, I passed a hole in the rocks that was full of live white pillies; obviously the stranding of the previous evening had been repeated. I almost didn’t bother as I had already been using pillies that were as good as any I had ever taken anywhere to fish. But I had to see if extremely fresh bait could possibly make a difference. It did. In the next two hours or so I caught more than a dozen lovely bream.
In the next fifty years or more I have had many experiences where truly fresh bait has resulted in me catching fish that I would otherwise simply have assumed were not there. But the above experience remains with me as the most dramatic demonstration of the difference extremely fresh bait can make, particularly if it is of the same type as what is in the water at the time.
Fly-fishermen have plenty of experience with the impact of ‘matching the hatch’. I acknowledge that this is a sight-based phenomenon rather than a bait-based one, but the principle of fish being extremely selective in some circumstances and ignoring what they would eat in others, is the same. I am reminded of the five days in about 2001 that I spent fishing one of New Zealand’s most famous trout streams, the Ahuriri River. After two days I had had only one take, even though conditions were perfect and I could see lots of beautiful trout, predominantly browns. I had tried almost every type of fly in my very extensive collection. On the morning of the third day I finally tried a cicada pattern fly (New Zealand cicadas occupy tall grass habitats, so frequently get blown into streams. They are small and very light, almost white, in colour). Success was instantaneous, and continuous. I caught and released seventy-two trout of between 2 and 6 pounds in the next two and a half days. At lunchtime on day three I gave it away because it was simply too easy. You see a trout, you cast a cicada fly somewhere near it and it eats it. No finesse necessary. The first day when they bit had been fantastic fishing and it had solved my dilemma of how to get these trout to bite. But by the third day catching one virtually every throw was not really what fly-fishing is about!
Following my experiences with very fresh froggies and extremely fresh white pillies, I stored away any evidence I could access on the effectiveness of different types of bait. None of it was compiled in structured scientific experiments. This was not possible for me in the good old days as very fresh baits such as pilchards and garfish were rare occurrences. But unstructured though my data gathering was, I still found the results compelling.
On the very few occasions that I was able to get very fresh blue pilchards or froggies I found the results bordering on extraordinary. Tailor had definite preferences, although they were a little more forgiving, but with jewfish it was ‘chalk and cheese’. Almost every time I managed to be present when blue pilchards were hauled, or chased ashore by predators (only twice from memory), I would catch jewies, mostly that night, but on at least two memorable occasions in the middle of the day: one haul of seven big schoolies (up to about 15 pounds) from The Alley between 9 and 11 a.m. I will never forget; my fresh blue pillies were so prized I had only taken ten with me.
I was able to collect enough evidence to convince me beyond doubt that local blue pilchards were better bait for all fish than either Western Australian or South Australian pilchards, which progressively dominated the sales of bait in northern NSW. I had no doubt jewfish preferred local pilchards to the extent that I believed fresh (never frozen), they represented one of the very best baits. I remain convinced that a big pile of fresh anchovies on a 7/0 hook (as many as you can fit on the hook, or a little way up the line, by threading them through the eye) is the best bait there is for schoolies. The technique also constitutes ‘self-burleying’ as the hooked fish invariably spits out what it had eaten and the head shakes make sure that any that were still on the hook were spread around. I remember well one particular night when fishing for schoolies alongside Georgy Williams off the front of the Hastings Point rocks. He was using the tried and proven bait of live worms that he threaded two feet up his line and also wound around his hook. I was using big bunches of froggies that had been caught the day before. I had also thrown a few hands-full into the water as burley before Georgy arrived. We chatted for a while, but Georgy became progressively quiet. When I landed my fifth good schoolie, about 7 pounds, and he had not had a bite, he simply went home.
I accept that worms are normally a fantastic bait for jewfish. I caught many on them myself, including some very big ones. But if fish become keyed into something more attractive, or even dominant, at the time, then the rules change! My belief is that smell is the principal determinant, particularly with very fresh bait and probably even for live bait.
A related incident occurred when I was having trouble getting jewfish to feed. It was in 1993, I think. We were holding jewfish in captivity at the NSW Fisheries Research Institute in Cronulla. We could not get them to eat anything. I had caught eight or ten large (between 12- and 50-pound) jewfish at night over about three weeks at Garie Beach south of Sydney. I had transported them from the beach in an aerated tank in the back of a truck and then released them into our specially built aquaculture facility. They were to be the brood-stock for the jewfish breeding program we were establishing (the program continues to this day). They survived the trip and the unloading extremely well, but they would not eat, even after a couple of weeks, or more, in captivity.
Through the portals in the big circular tank we could observe their behaviour in detail. The food we tried to get them to eat included very fresh calamari, pilchards and even frozen froggies that looked good, and a few live yellowtail and whiting. Their continued refusal frustrated me considerably. I was supposed to know what jewfish would eat! Mostly they would not even look at the food we offered. In frustration I ventured to Wanda Beach and caught about a dozen very large beach worms that I kept alive in a bucket. (As an aside, I have found really big worms to be quite rare on Wanda Beach in recent years.) Such was my faith in worms as jewfish food that I hoped they may be able to elicit a response that even reasonable froggies had failed to do.
The first worm I threw into the big tank was almost 3 feet long. As it swivelled and spiralled its way through the water towards the bottom of the tank, in characteristic worm swimming style, it attracted the casual attention of one of the jewies. This fish slowly sauntered over to have a look. It sniffed around the worm with its nose only inches away from it. It observed it in great detail for a minute or so. Then it swam away. But it only went about 10 feet when it slowly turned and came back for another look. With its nose almost on the worm it suddenly sprung open its enormous mouth and gills; the whole worm disappeared instantly. It had been inhaled in classical jewfish style. I quickly threw the next worm in. It met almost exactly the same fate, but this time a second jewie came to have a look before the first one ate it. Three or four worms later and half the mob was interested in food. It was not what could be called a feeding frenzy, but it was a huge improvement on the last few weeks. The last of my worms was eaten before it got halfway to the bottom. Half an hour later not only had all the worms been eaten but so had a whole pack of thawed pilchards. All of the jewfish were feeding, some more voraciously than others. They continued to feed without reservation for at least the next several years. They proved to be extremely successful brood-stock. Under the loving care of David Barker and encouragement to breed from Bill Talbot, they produced numerous batches of juveniles that were stocked into selected NSW estuaries. They and their progeny dominated the brood-stock of the NSW jewfish breeding program for years.
Back to Kingscliff. The time that pilchards had been frozen was clearly another variable that clouded assessment of the value of the species as bait, but on several occasions, I noted even tailor demonstrating obvious preference for the local variety over their western counterparts. I was involved in several sessions when big tailor would take a local pilchard but not frozen garfish, and one occasion when they completely refused WA pillies but not local ones. I suspect they would have eaten the WA variety if the local ones had not been on offer first. It was not until 2012 that I was first given a scientific reason to support my observations: the pilchards taken off NSW have a fat content that is much higher than those from the west. East-coast pilchards have a fat level that peaks at about 13 per cent, but for most of the year runs at 5–7 per cent. West-coast pilchards peak at about 7 per cent fat, but most of the year are around 1.5–3 per cent.1 As all passionate sashimi eaters are aware, fat content is a primary driver of the desirability index for raw fish. If humans can tell the difference, imagine what it would mean to a fish that eats little else and has a far superior sense of smell, and probably taste!
Even the apparent desirability of cut baits can vary enormously. The time taken for jewfish to swallow a cut bait certainly can vary with both the conditions and the quality of the bait. From my experience, in rough weather bites were consistently more aggressive and a higher percentage of fish swallowed the hook. Of course, the species of the bait and its freshness were also factors. My experience was that the very dark-fleshed tunas, mackerel tuna and skipjack, were particularly favoured by jewfish. I definitely had more bites when I could get one of these two tuna for bait. While I have no doubt jewfish like to eat them, I always suspected that the greater number of bites I got was because they could smell them much further away. Very fresh calamari were not far behind. They do not smell particularly strongly to me, but as is obvious, fish have a much better and more particular sense of smell.
I also rather early in my jewfish fishing career began to suspect that jewfish preferred big baits. I began the compilation of significant data that left me in no doubt that the size of the cut bait was a major influence on its attractiveness to jewfish. One set of experiences I shall never forget.
One of the Murwillumbah men who fished the rocks area regularly was a little older than most of Dad’s friends. He was commonly regarded by these friends to be the best fishermen of the old brigade that still fished. He went by the name Bunny. I always enjoyed talking to him as we fished. He had many stories of his good old days. He was a rather opinionated chap and was famous also for colourful language, coupled with the odd dose of ‘poetic licence’, or exaggeration as it is less politely called. Whenever we chatted, the catching of jewfish would invariably drift into the conversation. It was never far from my mind, so this suited me.
Bunny regarded himself as a very good jewfish fisherman. His colleagues endorsed this opinion. As far as I could tell this was only true if relativity with his mates from Murwillumbah was the primary criterion. These fishermen caught few jewfish in the 1950s and 60s. I never saw Bunny actually catch a jewfish. One summer evening two years after I started to catch jewies off The South End, we were having a polite disagreement about what size bait and hook was best for jewfish. Bunny was adamant that a cut of horse mackerel (bonito) that just covered a 6/0 was more than big enough. He was completely dismissive of anything bigger; it was a waste of good bait. I was strongly of the opinion that much bigger baits were better. I was beginning to regard myself as being more than a novice at catching jewies. In the previous summer I counted and weighed mine and the total was thirty-one that averaged 28 pounds (4 or 5 pounds smaller than my long-term average, for as I got more experienced fewer of the big ones got away). When I used these figures to suggest that maybe I had some evidence to support my point of view Bunny replied rather bluntly. He stated, somewhat aggressively, his belief that he had caught more jewfish than I would ever see in my lifetime. And he never used big baits. He did not even own a hook bigger than 6/0 and nobody should need one. As he was becoming increasingly agitated on the topic it was a good time for me to shut up, which on this occasion I had the good sense to do.
A few days later there was a reasonable sea running and there was uncommonly good water for jewies in front of Round Rock. Bunny and I were fishing side by side, me with my 9/0 hook and big slab of tailor I had just caught, and Bunny with his much smaller piece of ‘horsie’ that he had bought the day before. I had the first bite and duly landed a nice fish of around 25 pounds. Just as I was landing it, another fisherman I had never seen before arrived on The Rock. He was, not surprisingly, impressed with this fish and asked me what I had caught it on. In answering that I was using a big slab of very fresh tailor, I made sure Bunny heard. When I caught the next one of almost exactly the same size, our visitor recommenced his questioning. Bunny remained silent.
Bunny had still not had a bite when I landed my third. He was clearly not amused. I was aware of his discontent but not demonstrably sympathetic. Our visitor expanded his questions to ask me what bait you could use if you were in his position and not able to catch a fresh tailor. It appeared that Bunny was even less impressed now that he had been effectively shut out of the discussion on what bait you might use for jewfish. He was after all the seasoned expert and I was only a kid. I believed that my three fish had demonstrably resolved the issue of what size bait was best. The questions I had been asked had given me the chance to warm to my task. I was too insensitive to realise the extent of Bunny’s discomfort. So in response to our new friend’s question, I pontificated that tailor was one of the best baits, but jewies would eat practically anything provided it was big and really fresh. Bunny immediately cut into the conversation rather loudly, ‘How about a big really fresh turd?’
It may have been a somewhat vulgar way of delivering a message, but it was effective. I was certainly taken aback. I remember every word and the exact circumstances of its delivery. Its message was unmistakable. I learnt a valuable lesson.
1 Denis Brown, pilchard fisherman, personal communication, 15 May 2012.