Luderick on fly

Chunky, strong, good-looking – and they take a fly well. Steve asks, what’s not to like?

Over twenty years ago I tried to catch a luderick on fly. I gave up, swore off them for life, and had to replace my fly-line. A mate had taken me to an ocean rock platform on the NSW south coast near Jervis Bay, which he swore was loaded with these fish. There was a rolling swell, with surges boiling between treacherous-looking rock gutters which seemed to eat my fly-line on every cast. I had no control, I didn’t feel for one moment as if I was going to catch anything, and after dragging the line back in a tangle for the third time, I packed up my bat and ball and sulked as my host demonstrated his mastery of the centrepin reel – something I still consider to be a dark art!

More recently, I was persuaded to have another go at luderick when Editor Weigall and I returned for a winter fish on Sydney Harbour. Now, ripping big flies over submerged wrecks and beneath buoys for kingfish and bonito is fun, as is chasing kingfish and salmon bust-ups. But when you need a break from the exhausting rock and roll of exposed water, not to mention the bitterly cold wind (the chill was record-breaking) a quiet session for luderick sounds like just the thing.

Our host, Stephen Gaynor on Flyboat, surfed us through the multiple wakes of Harbour watercraft, and with some pre-procured sand and weed burley in a bucket, we set about the mission. Comfortably out of the maelstrom, we spot-locked the Minn Kota near a marina pontoon – much to the fascination of nearby boat owners and workers. Under our boat was four metres of water. Stephen started to berley, and we started to cast our weed flies, set at about two metres beneath a small foam indicator. It didn’t take long to get some interest.

The humble but extremely effective weed fly.

A bit about the luderick

The humble luderick, or blackfish, is not the first fish you think of when considering either a hard-fighting fish, or a good-eating fish. Well, let me put you straight… but first, a bit about the fish and its name.

If someone had asked me, “Do you fish for parore”? well, luderick (scientific name Girella tricuspidata) wouldn’t have been my first thought. However, this fish was indeed first described and named in the modern literature as ‘parore’. The two men responsible were Joseph Paul Gaimard and Jean René Constant Quoy. According to the National Portrait Gallery’s biography of Gaimard, both he and Quoy were naturalists investigating the South Pacific Ocean aboard the 44-gun French frigate L’Uranie, on a three year voyage to circumnavigate the globe. Apparently, the fish they described came from Shark Bay, in Western Australia. However, ‘Sea Fishes of Southern Australia’ describes its Australian distribution as being limited to NSW, Victoria and Tasmania, and occasionally South Australia.

Whilst called luderick in Australia (likely derived from an aboriginal name many thousands of years old) parore is still the common name used in New Zealand, where the species is a traditional Māori food.

A handsome fish.

In NSW, luderick are a very popular recreational species; and also a minor commercial fishing target, plus a bycatch species. Commercially, luderick only have a limited market, with an unfounded reputation for a bitter taste if not fresh and treated well. It’s not a fish many people hunt out to serve up at a barbeque, and you certainly won’t find it in Coles or Woollies. The annual NSW commercial catch is currently a modest 200 tonnes a year, although it used to be around 700 tonnes in the early 1990s, before significant commercial fishery closures on many estuaries in central NSW.

The technique

Luderick are interesting fish. Even before adding the sand and weed berley, we could polaroid them in the clear water like fast-moving wraiths. They were usually in small schools, moving to and from deep to shallow water, and past the marina pylons and other structure. They blended in so well, you almost wondered if their vague shapes were just figments of an excitable angler’s imagination.

Although the berley no doubt helped, we caught them before the berley was added, then after the supply was exhausted, and in areas where there wasn’t any berley. So I’m confident luderick can be caught without berley (as many flyfishers already do), and if I didn’t have any berley myself, I’d still gladly have a go.

We didn’t cast much further than 7 or 8 metres. The fly was allowed to settle to a depth where the foam indicator was barely floating, and we started the process of watch and respond. Eats were often not easy to spot. The faintest wobble on the indicator showed there was interest. However, in stark contrast to trout fishing with an indicator where a hair trigger strike is key, Stephen’s advice at this point would be, “Don’t strike yet.” Sure, an aggressive plunge down of the indicator occasionally resulted in lifting into a fish. However, the guide’s loud “Strike now!” came most often when the indicator just slowly moved off.

The Editor, with the result of well-timed (or lucky?) strike.

The weed fly we used has a lot of dubbing (see pic at the start of this article), and the indicator wobbles are probably the hovering fish having a nibble: you get the slightest tension on the lift but then the fly pulls free before the hook grips. Likewise, an aggressive down was usually a grab, but with nothing there when you struck. The indicator slowly moving away was far more likely to be a good eat.

Luderick are dirty fighters. Their natural habitat is rocky shorelines, but they are right at home around man-made jetties, pontoons and marinas. In all cases, they head straight for structure when hooked. Pound for pound, they fight about as hard and long as trout, although they don’t go aerial. The size limit in NSW is 27cm (23cm in Victoria) and the bag limit is 10, although we released all ours, which, over a couple of days of a few hours per session, probably tripled that number.

When we hooked the occasional 35cm biggun’, it was sobering to reflect that luderick can grow to 70 centimetres and 4 kilograms. Now that would be a battle royal.

Tackle

Our 6 weight trout rods and floating lines were perfect. However, saltwater is just awful on fishing gear so unless you’re regularly able to dunk it in freshwater, or you’re fishing in the rain, stick it all in the bath when you get home and dry it thoroughly. Then wash and dry it again before storing it. The salt will literally eat your gear if you don’t do this.

Our leaders were 4 metres (give or take), and tippet was 2X or 3X, which didn’t seem to worry the fish. We used small pinch-on single use foam indicators, although I would have preferred to use an extra small Oros indicator, mainly because they’re not throw away, but I also think they would offer less resistance given the spherical shape. (Just a cautionary note with screw-on indicators like the Oros, don’t use them on the tapered part of your leader because they come loose.)

Whatever your choice, the key is that the indicator should offer only minimal resistance: it must follow the fish even on a gentle eat. We also used a small split shot about 100 mm up from the fly to keep it at the depth we wanted.

The weed fly in the field.

The fly is a weed pattern. They’re readily available and a friend tells me they’re being used by bait anglers because they don’t have to rebait the hook with weed all the time. I nominate the fly as the simplest tie of all time. A saltwater hook, something like an Ahrex NS122 size 10, and some Tiewell weed fly dubbing.

If you’re going to use berley, you will need to get some of the filamentous green algae often found near storm drains running into estuaries or the ocean. Look at low tide, but check if weed collecting is permitted in that area.

Where to fish for luderick

I spoke to Jim Harnwell about flyfishing for luderick. Jim is a NSW DPI fisheries manager, former editor of Fishing World, and good mate and fishing buddy of Sydney’s luderick fishing legend John Newbery – if you want to know more about luderick fishing in general and especially using those damned centrepins, Google John. A day later, Jim sent me a picture of luderick he’d just caught on a NSW south coast rock wall. No berley, just two flies under a small indicator.

Luderick action on the NSW South Coast. (Pic courtesy of Jim Harnwell.)

These fish are very abundant. As well as NSW, they’re also reasonably common on the Victorian coast and in a surprising number of estuaries there too – and they love structure, for both food and shelter. They are especially common in estuaries in winter when they come in to spawn. If you check with a local tackle shop, they should be able to point you in the right direction – especially if you buy their weed flies of course!

The wrap

I could have sat in that nice wind-free sunny spot fishing for luderick all day and studiously ignored the kingfish – it was so much fun.

I could do this for ages!

As already mentioned, we didn’t keep any of our fish, although many people do, and they are excellent eating. The first time I ate luderick was as a trainee Fisheries Officer on a habitat management course at Port Stephens. Roy Mills, the Regional Manager, bought a box of luderick from the co-op, knocked off the fillets and wrapped them in foil with some oil and herbs. They were amazing.

If you are going to eat the luderick you catch, you need to treat them well. Bleed them, gut them, and clean the black gut cavity in saltwater. Keep them on ice, and fillet them if you’re going to freeze them.

When handling luderick, be wary of their possible revenge thanks to an arsenal of weaponry. Tricuspidata in the scientific name is a reference to their three cusped teeth used to chop weed off the rocks; and they also have very sharp spikes on the dorsal and anal fins.

One last thing, a very rare occurrence is catching a bluefish, a close relative. They are rare in NSW but common on Lord Howe Island and in New Zealand. You can’t legally fish for or keep a bluefish in NSW. Fortunately, they’re easy to recognise. Although quite like luderick in shape, they’re bright blue and with gold spots – as opposed to grey with black stripes.