Australia’s top 4 fishing spots

24 Mar 2015

There’s nothing like kicking back, sailing down a river and enjoying a day of fishing. We chat to Andrew Hart, presenter of Hook, Line and Sinker about his favourite fishing spots around Australia.

Anywhere in Tasmania

“I’m Tasmanian born and bred and it would be high on my list of my favourite fishing spots. The beauty of Tasmania is it’s quite a small island, which lends itself very well to driving around the entire island. It has the best trout and bream fishing in Australia and arguably the best tuna fishing. All of those things are within a few hours of each other. However, I’d give Tasmania a big miss in winter. The best months are February, March and April when the winds are at their calmest and the fish are at their most active.”

Corroboree Billabong, NT

“This is a couple of hours’ drive away from the CBD and it feels like you’re in the middle of nowhere. In the rainy season, the billabong still has a lot of water in it. It’s that iconic Northern Territory scene – big lilypads, lots of birds, buffaloes, heaps of crocodiles and plenty of fish as well.”

“We shot an episode on board a houseboat once. We caught plenty of fish from the boat and a tinny and we saw the largest crocodile any of us had ever encountered. It was more than six metres long, big, black and angry and about 150 metres downstream from where we set camp for the night. He was probably checking us out that night.”

Exmouth, WA

“This town is about a 12-hour drive from Perth, but the fishing here is good because it’s so close to the coast. There’s Ningaloo Reef, where you can fish in the lagoon and find lots of different species. You don’t need a big boat to go outside of the reef and once you're there, you can catch all sorts of things. Some of the highlights are the billfish, marlin and sailfish. When we turned up for the first time, we put our lures in the water and, around three minutes later, we hooked up to a very big, angry lit-up sailfish.”

Bermagui, NSW

“This is primarily a big game fishing port around the waters of Montague Island, which is famous in game fishing history. There are also plenty of estuaries, lakes and beaches where you can fish and catch a variety of tasty fish like whiting, flathead and bream.

“It’s probably one of the spots we’ve visited the most while making our show, just because the fishing off-shore is so good, and during most of the year, you have a realistic chance of finding big fish. I guess a highlight would be the yellowtail king fish around Montague Island.”