Around the Bay with Jim’s Bait and Tackle

In January Jim’s Bait and Tackle turned 30 but with moving shops, Christmas and the Easter fishing competition, it didn’t allow us to celebrate the fact.

Now we have been in the new shop for almost six months, we have sorted our stock and decided on our new stock range for the up-coming season and realise we have to make some room on the walls.

So to make room for new stock, celebrate the business’ 30th year, and us heading into our 17th, year we are having a sale.

There will be shop wide (excludes bait and berley) 30 per cent off the marked price of everything. There will be tables with selected clearance items, mono, braid, fishing shirts, winter beanies, aqua shoes, hooks, lures, snorkelling, boating, rods, and much more that will be 50 per cent off.

If you purchase a reel valued over $100 we will spool it with mono for free.

The sale will be on Saturday June 25, 8am to 5pm and Sunday June 26, 9am to 4pm.

There will be no holds or phone sales; first in best dressed and no lay-bys.

The discounts are genuine discounts off our current marked prices so maybe you are looking for a new snapper or gummy outfit or even a new Saragossa and a restock of the lure box for the tuna season.

Keep an eye on our Facebook page for updates.

This year you don’t need to look at the calendar to know it’s winter and a winter of old with wet, windy, cold weather settling in.

The last few years, winter has started very slowly and we have enjoyed mild conditions well into June and even into July.

Hopefully we will get this weather over and done with early and the end of winter and into spring is better than the last few years.

Not sure how much this has affected the fishing because hardly anyone has been out and about.

Being a long weekend there had been a few more out braving the cold and having some success.

Most of the fishing through winter is confined to the land naturally and many use this time of the year to gather bait for the up-coming season.

This year is shaping up, according to our diaries, to be one where you will want to be heading to the jetties or early season spots mid-August for that early snapper.

Those out bait collecting have been able to fish plenty of salmon on the beaches once the swell drops down and conditions improve.

From the reports you are going to have trouble with the weed washing in, but the reports are also telling us you can pick your time of the tide and get a reasonable session in.

One customer told us that he was just out for a lure flick on the surf and found the best thing to do was just walk the beach and watch for the cleaner spots where he managed six –  small but the fillets that will make good baits next time he is out in the boat for a gummy.

Reports from all of the open beaches were the same regarding the weed and even the fish size with no one reporting anything over the 1kg. Maybe once this weather settles the bigger fish will come to play.

Very few boats have ventured out over the last few weeks, but those who did brave the cool conditions were confined to some of the more sheltered areas looking for whiting or calamari.

While anybody that we spoke to said they were just happy to be able to get out, their reports weren’t anything too special.

None were disappointed with their catches because they bought something home for tea and said the conditions were so difficult to fish that they didn’t expect anything.

Weed and wind direction was the biggest complaint but the whiting or calamari that they reported were very respectable in size.

Hopefully once the weather settles and the water cleans up, we will start to see some better reports.

The better weather will also allow people to get to the gummy and snapper spots, but be patient. Fishing is always a little slower in the wintertime.

There have been a handful of calamari reports from off the land and again the area has changed because of the weather or the weed in the water.

The numbers are low and the size typical and just average for this time of the year but as one customer told me he managed four which was a good feed for the family and a very good start to his bait collection.

If you have nothing better to do, a wander down to the jetty for a squid fish over the change of tide could be well worth it.

We have had half a dozen reports over the last couple of weeks and it has just been a guess with jig colour.

The customer who caught the four told us he caught them on four different colours over the hours he was there.