Stickbaiting jewies by Darren Borg

In my back yard, the mighty Clarence River, we have had the opportunity to experience some magic daytime jewfish action over the past two years, mainly due to those experimenting with soft plastic lures. The average size of the fish taken in the river during the day is generally between 3kg and 8kg and these fish previously were caught only by those using live bait.

Fishos chasing bream on soft plastic lures took these jew as a by-catch at the time but now they target them with great success.

There are three main types of areas in the river system that can hold jew. The first is one that most fishos recognise - any bridge that holds bait and has reasonably deep water. The second type of jewie-holding area is along any of the rock walls that run into deep water. These walls usually hold large bait fish like mullet and therefore regularly produce larger fish through the Winter.

The third type of zone, the one we are most interested in, are the deep holes. When I say deep, I mean 10 to 25 metres.