South West Rocks

the fish coming up which is 91 in the water looks bigger because the head looks massive i caught one with

mark with tubby taylor one time filming a real action show at southwest rocks and was with my wayne gordon and i remember tubby netted it for me mark taylor and i caught this thing it was on a berkeley it's 88 wasn't it paddle shed yeah it was 88 centimeters but it was on a berkeley paddle shed and i remember talking to the cameraman afterwards saying he's got a lot of massive flathead in And he's

probably seen more than most underwater.

And he does a lot of diving.

90% of them are on the East Coast, right? So if you're gonna fish this competition and you stand at a park, good on you.

I suggest doing that because there's a big prize pool for that.

We can start to go, okay, In all these systems, Guesty, from Lake Macquarie through to Southwest Rocks, to the Bellinger, through to Ballina, all those.

All the way to the north.

I was fucking cooked.

And I was like driving back from bloody Southwest Rocks or something to Sydney.

And I was like, I need something to keep my brain going here.

So I put on this beat and I just started freestyling as I was going home and it became Nerdy Bruh.

No.

Then South West Rocks gets a bite and that can last a bit longer for some, like obviously the Jail sticks out a bit, must Eddie there or something.

Um, but yeah, the South Coast, everything just seems to flush through.

Sydney gets a good bite.

It was, it was amazing.

We're just logging so many hours, and then did a trip down to Southwest Rocks on sort of halfway between Sydney and Gold Coast.

Um, it was an event down there, um, sort of proning and foil driving.

So yeah, uh, yeah, so get around Australia a fair bit, but n- I've never been to Adelaide, so I'm, I'm definitely an Adelaide virgin, for sure.

So, um, I guess first and foremost, thank you to everyone out there, all the rec anglers, all the spear fishers, and also, uh, two charter operators.

So we've got Jase Bettles from Wildside Sport Fishing in South West Rocks, and Craig McGill out of Sydney Harbour with Fish About.

So without everyone donating fish to this project, um, we wouldn't be here today.

So thanks to everyone for that.

That was a great trip, that one.

It was, it was, and it's always nice, and we're going to talk... spotted mackerel today which you live in the home of the spotted mackerel well that's probably not a fair thing to say because they're you know they range right up through queensland everywhere but when they when they move south every year with the warm currents they turn up at a place called southwest rocks which is where you live that's right yep and and along with spanish mackerel spotted mackerel are probably the baseline mackerel that everyone catches they're very good eating we'll get into all that in a minute Spanish mackerel is seen as a premium fish above that because they grow bigger.

But pound for pound, man, they are so much fun to catch.

They go like an absolute rocket and they turn, they attract so much money to this town.

Yeah.

And what we call trial

bay, so just for a bit of a... geography lesson with where we are here so it's a it's a super easterly part of the australian coastline really and it has this big scallop that comes out and if you look north towards coughs harbour sort of sort of this big scallop comes out down past nambucca heads past scott's head and then into what we call trial bay which is where southwest rocks is And then it scoots out and it's got the famous big jail on the headland.

But what all that does is it traps this amazing EAC, this downward current that