Colo Firing
The Colo is one of  the most pristine of the waterways in our region, and offers so much fishing you’d be hard pressed to fish all but a fraction of it in any given day.
The Colo has a four knot speed limit from the Bridge to Nowhere at the mouth, all the way upstream. This makes it jet ski and ski boat free which is always a welcome relief at this time of the year.
There’s so much likely bass habit in the Colo too, which is where it pays to use a variety of techniques. Soft plastics, spinnerbaits, hard bodied crankbaits, lipless crankbaits, surface lures and any other techniques you care to try will work in the Colo.

Some of the best fly fishing action is also found here, and foam poppers, Dahlbergs and cicada imitations are absolutely assured of getting some knee knocking happening.
There’s plenty of weedbeds, submerged rocks and timber and overhanging foliage to find. Even with the sun high overhead in the middle of the day, dark pockets of water can be found and this is where you can often find bass lurking.
If you’ve fished the Colo before, you may have noticed small crabs around some of the rocks. I found many years ago that if you fish these rocks with a dark coloured lure, you’ll pick up good numbers of bass. It means your lures take a beating  on the rocks, but if keeping your lures in pristine condition is more important than catching fish, you might want to fish elsewhere.
With bass being the obvious species about in the Colo, you can also end up with tailor getting it on the action, along with flathead at this time of the year. Flathead will take a range of lures meant for bass, including a spinnerbait.
One critter nobody wants to see in the Colo is sharks, which do make an appearance from time to time. A mate told me of sitting down enjoying the view and watching four ducks swimming about near the Putty Road bridge. Right in front of him, one duck disappeared behind a mist of spray, leaving three very startled ducks behind. Sharks have also been known to take fish being played back to the boat.

Hawkesbury Bonanza
Wisemans Ferry has been producing some good sized bream, tailor and jewfish of late. It’s always a bit of a lottery in this area, as flathead and estuary perch and bass all enjoy the same baits as each other. If your flicking lures and soft plastics around for EP’s or bass, you can always end up with a bit of a mixed bag at the end of a fishing session.
Lower Portland has seen smaller examples of bream, jewfish and flathead about, with the bream and flathead all taking a liking to live Hawkesbury prawns. Bass and EP’s are about as well in the area, with some good catches been taken.
Any submerged timber and weedbeds you can find is worth casting a spinnerbait. With less hooks than your standard treble armed lures, your more likely to get your lure back.
If you haven’t already done it, it’s worthwhile adding what’s known as a stinger hook. Adding a similar sized hook to that on the spinnerbait, is done by passing the tip of the spinnerbait hook through the eye of the stinger hook. Before doing this, cut off about four millimetres of some thin tube and place it either side of the hooks eye before passing it over the spinnerbaits hook. I find the aerator tube that you see in fish tanks is perfect for the job. The stinger hook make spinnerbaits more effective, as it helps catch fish that strike at the skirt of the spinnerbait.

Further upstream, estuary perch you’re likely to catch them using small soft plastics on 1/16 ounce jig heads, although I’ve seen photo’s of estuary perch around the forty centimetre mark being caught on seventy millimetre Jackall Masked Vibes. Sadly the resolution of the digital pics was too small to have then published in the magazine.
Big lilly pads should be about and these are worth targeting. This is were your casting abilities are put to the test. Cast your lures or plastics on to the surface of the lilly pad and slowly drag them into the water. This makes for a much more subtle by your lure, and not the atomic bomb type arrival. For fish that might be a little lure shy, a more subtle arrival looks more natural and more tempting to attack. 

Nepean Blues
It seems like the dreaded Salvinia is back as ferocious as ever. In the Devlins Lane area of the Nepean, the weed is so thick that paddling a canoe or kayak is near impossible in parts. While anywhere near a road leads the casual onlooker to believe that there is no weed problem, you can be assured that it isn’t.
On the fishing front, the Nepean has produced some stonker bass on soft plastics, but it will take some persistence in areas where anglers have worked an area heavily.

The Nepean in the Penrith area is at times very difficult to fish as the fish become educated very quickly as to what happens when some thing that doesn’t look like food can take you on a quick trip to the surface. The education starts early with bass in this area, as even small bass will eye a presentation off before deciding what to do. Small bass have always amazed anglers as to how they will hit a lure many times larger than themselves, but small bass have brains too.
If you happen to be fishing in an area that has seen heavy angling pressure, a good alternative to hard lures is to try soft plastics or a fly resembling local prey. Both of these act as if they are alive, look like they could be alive and when they are hit by a fish feel more like the real thing.
If you want to fish close by during the week, try somewhere like Wallacia or above where angling pressure is a lot less. Friday afternoons and the weekend is just too busy on the Nepean at Penrith for it to be worth the effort. The moron mentality makes it too dangerous at this time of the year, where daylight saving, the warmer weather and the potentially lethal use of alcohol, makes for some scary moments.
It seems the authorities don’t really care about making the area safer for everyone. Concerns raised by myself and others I know have fallen on deaf ears. It seems like the alleged fatality in January 2004 I was told about on the river at Penrith wasn’t enough for something to be done. 

Experimenting Can Be the Key
I’d be interesting to study the fishing of a hundred anglers over a period of years to see how much their approach to fishing had changed.
For those hardcore anglers, they’re always looking for something new and different which will be more successful than last year.
For others, it’d be pretty much the same approach year after year. The same type of lures, the same retrieve styles, the same casting technique and what they’ve pretty much done year after year.
A lot of the casting you see when you’re out fishing tends to be overhead casts. While it’s great for distance casting, for short range casting, which is what a lot of those targeting bass will be doing, it’s just not necessary. An underhand cast with a spinning outfit can makes lures cover good distances and the lure lands softly. Flipping a lure with a baitcaster also allows the lure to land gently and, like an underhand cast with a spinning outfit, looks much more natural. Both casting techniques are very accurate, and can put a lure into very small patches of water.
If you’re tired of watching others outfit you, watch what they’re doing or if they’re willing, they might even show you. A fishing club is a great place to learn if you’re short of fishing mates to ask. Hawkesbury Nepean Bass Anglers meet at 7.30pm on the third Tuesday of every month at Windsor Bowling Club, or Western Sydney Bream and Bass meet at Kingswood Sporting Club on the first Thursday of the month at 7.30pm 

A Legend is Born
There are many legendary lures that are famous bass takers but one recently has been introduced to Australia from Daiwa that is sure to gain legendary status.
I bought three of Daiwa’s new Live Cicadas a few months ago and have been very impressed. They’re a cleverly made lure, that has a jointed body, quality hooks and sits slightly butt down when left to sit still on the water.
At just forty millimetres long, it’s a realistic size for cicadas found locally. It weighs in at a delicate 3.2 grams which can be cast with a baitcaster but it can be done with the right baitcasting outfit.
At the time of writing, St Mary’s Tackle were the only retailers stocking this great little lure, and they were selling like hot cakes when I bought mine. Buy just one, and I’m sure you’ll be back to get a few more. 

A Word On Digital Pics
What is really sad is getting digital pics from readers of really impressive fish but in small file sizes. I’m sorry to say it folks, but they just don’t go well when they are put in the magazine, and as a result, they’ll never get published. If you want to brag to the world about your fish, take the pics in medium or high resolution and then sit back and wait for them to appear. Good pics deserve to be shown so do it right the first time and we’ll all enjoy your catch.