City Fishing Hints and Tips by Dave Magner

As our population grows and cities continue to expand, anglers need to be able to find fish in urban settings.

While we would all love to be able to head off to exotic fishing destinations, sadly the reality is that most of our fishing is undertaken in local waters. And as many anglers are forced to live and work in cities and larger regional centres, that means we need to be able to track down our quarry amid the hustle and bustle of increasingly urbanised waterways. For anglers, this type of artificially altered marine environment calls for a whole new range of fish finding skills and a whole new way of looking at the sorts of places which are likely to attract and hold fish.

City fishing is all about being able to find fish in suburban rivers, creeks and canals and then meeting the challenge of extracting them from their chosen stretch of waterfront real estate. To do this, you need to first critically look at the 'structure' and then decide on the best method of attack.

FINESSE FISHING

Let's start on the front foot and point out that successful urban anglers understand the need for finesse tactics, particularly when chasing cagey fish like the humble bream. Lures of choice include soft plastics and tiny hardbodies. Most of these are small, lightweight offerings and need to be fished on suitably light tackle.

In many ways, this makes city fishing one of the most challenging forms of angling there is. The fish are highly pressured and well educated, the currents are often gentle, allowing the fish plenty of time to inspect your offering and when the fish do decide to bite, they rarely have far to go to get back into their lair. When you factor in the need to use light tackle in order to get a hit in the first place, there is a lot of skill involved in the whole process, especially when there is always the chance of accidentally running into a mean old mangrove jack or tenacious trevally.