Tasmanian Fishing Report - 2 February 2023

by Spot On Fishing Hobart 2 Feb 2023 13:20 UTC

A nice king from NW Bay © Samuel Pshelley

Summer Fishing Report

We hope you have had a wonderful Christmas break. The fishing has been red hot across both the salt and fresh water over the last month.

The big news has been the kingfish arriving in good numbers.

We would love to hear your reports and see photos of your catches to help fellow anglers. Please email or send them to our Facebook/Instagram Page.

Freshwater

Lake Crescent
A good number of large fish continue to be caught here with fish being super active early morning and late evening. Spinning galaxias imitations is proving most effective.
Bronte Lagoon
Fishing has been a little tough with trout focusing mostly on eating damsel flies from the air. Slow stripped damsel nymph patterns and fast stripped loc style flies like dabblers have been very productive. Lure fisherman have been finding it tough.
Arthurs Lake
Fish have been hanging deep due to high water temps, people fishing deep over weed beds with soft plastics and slow trolling deep diving minnows are doing well.
Little Pine Lagoon
Fish are rising well to dries but continue to be on the smaller side and condition has been poor on a lot of the fish.
Penstock
Fishing has been patchy with a lot of the better fishing has been fish rising to spent spinners very late in the day.
Lake Burbury
Burbury has been very good when the weather is right. Still warm mornings followed by light northerly's has been producing some excellent wind land fishing with feisty rainbows on the surface crunching down midge. Trollers also doing well in these conditions trolling anything pink.
Great Lake
Early morning and late evening midge feeders have been fantastic on great lake lately. Both fly fisherman and lure fisherman reporting good bags of fish and seeing large numbers of fish rising to midge around the lake. Calm days are key for successful fishing.

Saltwater

Australian Salmon
Large numbers of good size fish have been wide spread around Tas up to 3kg, small silver lurers slow trolled or spun are proving really effective.
Squid
Both arrow and calamari are being caught down the East Coast and southern bays. Large numbers of arrows are currently being caught around Maria with anglers complaining its hard to get a lure in the water to chase anything else without the arrow squid attacking it.
Bream
The Derwent has been fishing well with fish feeding on most flats throughout the river and some anglers reporting some of the best bream fishing they've ever encountered. The Huon and East Coast have been fairly good too. Bait Junkie 2.5" grubs and presso 6F lures are working extremely well.
Bluefin
School fish have been caught in a few odds spots of late such as Blackmans Bay and around the lighthouse of Triabunna. Eaglehawk Neck has seen the odd fish but nothing reliable as of yet. Further south has been a little better with larger fish getting caught around Pedra and the south coast. The NW coast has also been fishing well with reasonable numbers caught if schools of fish are found.
Albacore
Small fish have arrived from around the 100m depth and out towards the shelf. The fish have been in large numbers in the smaller school size around 5-10kg. Let's hope some big chooks arrive soon.
Snapper
Some good models starting to appear in Frederick Henry Bay and Storm Bay recently. With large number of pinkies around the 30-35cm size appearing all over the place. Snapper have been a little patchy this year but seem to be picking up a lot recently and should continue to improve over the coming months. Fresh baits have proven most popular with pilchards and blue bait being the most popular choices.
Striped Trumpeter
Have been a bit quite with very few reports coming in. A few people have done well fishing in deeper water but with the fishing a bit slow most are venturing further a field to the shelf where the bottom fish are really firing.
Mako
Good numbers have been caught this year with most targeting them managing to burley in multiple fish per trip. Fish from 70kg to 200kg have been caught with bigger models sited.
King Fish
This year has been red hot with the kings making an appearance early, East coast, Derwent, Port Arthur and North West Bay have been the most reliable spots. Anglers have been catching on a wide array of tackle from bait to trolling lures like a Halco Laser Pro 120 and Small Meridian Mini D lures.