Woolooware Bay, on the south-west side of Botany Bay and adjacent to Taren Point, has a multitude of species to tempt the kayak fisho. Bream, flathead and whiting will be found over the relatively shallow bay and both bait and lures catch their fair share.

For the bait fisho's, nippers can be pumped on the flats next to Cooks Park at Sandringham and fished unweighted around the Captain Cook bridge pylons or on the drop-offs. Tide movement is a must and if needed, add just enough weight to reach the bottom.

For the lure brigade, Woolooware has boats and old Oyster Racks that are home to some spectacular bream. My best from the area is 41.5cm to the tip and I've been busted up by many more I'm sure were bigger than this.

The old racks work best on the last two hours of the run in and the first two hours of the run out. Cast parallel to the racks and slowly roll hard body lures like Halco Scorpions or Smak Rack Walkers back to the yak. At high tide, the shallow oyster-covered rocks of Pelican Point are great for surface lures like the East Coast Rack-Rat and nothing beats having a big bream smash one of your poppers with a huge spray of water and hearing the Zzzzzzzzz of your drag as he races off. Be warned, some fancy rod work will be necessary to stop some of these guys from keeping your lure as a souvenir.

Soft Plastics are great around the moored boats and as long as there is tide movement you should find some bream about. Berkley 6" Sandworms in Camo or Natural work well for me and a tip is to cut them in half before rigging on your jig head.

Flathead lurk around the weedbeds and drop-offs, so casting or trolling around these areas work best. Work hard bodies like the previously mentioned Halco Scorpion or Poltergeists with twitches and pauses added into the retrieve, with Pink or red/black colours working well.

But please remember, big flatties over 70cm's are probably breeding females so if possible, take a photo as a memento and let the girl go to do her job and make more flatties for the future.

By
Carl 'CID' Dubois