Author: Greg Finney
Photography: Greg Finney, Peter Goadby

An old, white DeHaviland Hercules lurches to a halt in the middle of a cold and wind-ruffled sea.

Bobbing about among 20 other boats, the occupants drop live yellowtail down deep on 15kg jig sticks, ceasing their descent a couple of metres from the bottom. A paper sounder whirs away on a corroded aluminium dash, highlighting columns of baitfish and larger predators beneath the battered aluminium hull. In an area the size of a football field, several other boats are hooked up, their occupants getting dragged around as they struggle to control powerful fish down deep. Numerous other boats have drifted away - re-rigging and tying on new leaders, or checking their shredded mono lines. Most are shaking their heads in amazement.

Not far away, my yellowtail lasts all of 10 seconds before it's eaten and 15kg mono crackles off my old Penn International. The only problem is that the run is straight down, and within seconds I'm winding 30m of line back - the last 10m of it shredded beyond use. The other guy in the boat with me, John Rattenbury, suffers the same fate just a few minutes later. Welcome to The Sir John Young Banks, I think to myself...

These are memories of a disastrous fishing session that was part of a St George Sportfishing Club trip to Currarong in 1979. It was my first exposure to the fabled reef structure situated off Greenwell Point on the NSW south coast. Several anglers in our club, including BlueWater contributor John Ashley, had been fishing The Banks for the past 12 months and usually came back to Sydney with tales of marlin, yellowfin and huge kingfish. They caught some good fish but, fishing from small boats with fairly crude tackle, they often left Currarong with tales of spooled reels, fish that just couldn't be stopped, or big fish that were lost after monumental battles that had lasted for hours.

The Banks itself has seen some transformational changes over the past 30 years, and I consider myself a very lucky angler to have fished this area over much of that time. I've witnessed some spectacular sessions on yellowfin, marlin and kingfish but I've also seen the marked decline of some species that were prolific on The Banks not too many years ago.

SOME HISTORY
The Sir John Young Banks are actually named after the botanist and naturalist Joseph Banks who lived from 1743 until 1820 and was a member of Capt Cook's 1768 expedition to Tahiti. The Endeavor visited South America, Tahiti and New Zealand before reaching the east coast of Australia. They traveled up the NSW south coast, recording landmarks and underwater structure before sailing into Botany Bay in April 1770. Aged 25, Banks must have been a busy young man, taking samples and recording information during the epic journey. He was rewarded with a genus of Australian plants (Banksia) being named after him, and at one stage there was even talk of the new land they found being called Banksia. That never eventuated, but one small part of the new land that they discovered - an underwater seamount the size of several football fields, was named in his honour.

I first read about The Banks in a Peter Goadby article penned for Modern Fishing back in the early 1970s. (Yes, on the 200th anniversary of their discovery). I don't remember the boats or other anglers mentioned in that piece, but Peter had been fishing for yellowfin from various gameboats and was catching some solid fish on livebaits. Back then it was groundbreaking gamefishing. Yellowfin were being caught off Sydney at The Peak and, further south, Bermagui already had a reputation for producing big yellowfin. In this period Greenwell Point was lagging a little behind as a significant gamefishing port, but with the advances in fast offshore trailerboats, and The Banks waiting just 10 miles due east, it didn't take long for this area to start building its own reputation as a reliable producer of various gamefish. Many years ago, a trip to The Banks in a small boat was a big undertaking, but these days the average boat is much better suited to fishing 10 miles offshore. By the late 70s and early 80s, The Banks was well known in gamefishing circles as a location that was easy to access and that produced exceptional fishing. Over summer it was nothing to see massive, rippling shoals of baitfish and small tuna, and to hook wahoo, yellowfin, kingfish and black marlin all in the same day.

A GOLD RUSH HITS THE BANKS
During the 60s and 70s there were no bag limits or quotas, and there were significantly fewer anglers and substantially more fish around. Some boats made a lot of money lead-lining kingfish, handlining snapper and even poling striped tuna out around The Banks. Spring and autumn were when the kingfish were at their best, and fish to 25 and 30kg were quite commonly taken by commercial operators. Throughout summer The Banks area was littered with schools of striped tuna, and boats working with spray bars and poles were taking hauls that were counted in tonnes. Most of those skipjack went through the now closed Eden cannery and the going price was $1 per kilogram. Some boats made a lot of money back then, catching up to 10 tonnes each day. If you do the sums, that's $10,000 per day for weeks on end - back in the late 70s and early 80s!

During the mid 80s, the sashimi phenomenon hit and many commercial operators up and down the NSW coast decided to get in on the act, targeting the valuable yellowfin tuna stocks. Some went the whole hog and set up long-lining vessels, while many on limited budgets worked with stand-up game rods and reels from smaller boats. The Banks became an obvious target for many of these professional rod and reel crews, and during the mid-80s there were anything up to a dozen boats working out of Greenwell Point and Currarong. They ran six to 10m boats, many of which were old commercial vessels, and they used to anchor-up at the Banks and cube with pilchards. Some of their tackle was very agricultural - typically old Everol's and Penn Internationals on Butterworth JS980 rods with 120lb Jinkai line crimped straight to a 6/0 Seamaster forged hook. They hooked some enormous yellowfin over several years, with fish to 90kg being quite common. A couple of yellowfin weighed over 120kg, and every angler had tales to tell of huge fish being fought for hours and lost after epic battles when lines wore out or hooks pulled right at the boat. Even though they caught a lot of fish, these guys weren't the ones who destroyed our east coast yellowfin fishery. It was the longliners and purse seiners - working further offshore and on a massive scale - who, in a few short years, carried out the decimation.

STILL EXCEPTIONAL FOR MARLIN
Despite the loss of the coastal yellowfin stocks, The Banks these days is still a very productive fishing location. From January through to March some exceptional black marlin fishing can be experienced by slow trolling or drifting with live slimey mackerel around the structure. The fish average 70 to 90kg and will be found on hotspots within the reef complex such as the north-east corner of the area known as the Main Hump; inside The Banks towards another ground known as The Mud; and out to a nearby but separate reef known as The Block. Bait schools can usually be found around the Main Hump and The Mud, and it's worth working this area if you are after a black. The summer water temps range from 21 to 24 degrees Celsius.

Autumn produces colder water and by this time the black marlin are usually long gone, however this is the time when the kingfish are often at their best. You'll get fish on deep fished livebaits rigged with sinkers, but downrigging slimey mackerel is far more productive and usually a lot easier as you can slow troll and maintain your position on the edge of a drop-off, or use the sounder to find fish. A lot of anglers also jig the Main Hump or The Block with good results in autumn. Winter can produce some good kings at The Banks, but they have been a bit patchy in recent years.

Yellowfin are just about non-existent in the area these days despite being a viable commercial species only 20 years ago. These days you normally have to travel to the shelf to have much hope of finding yellowfin in any numbers. Last spring, however, a few fish to 20kg were taken by boats cubing at The Banks.

Who knows whether this may be the start of a semi-reliable fishery over the next few years?

As the longline fleet becomes increasingly unviable we can at least hope for a resurgence in the stocks. I was lucky enough to experience The Banks when it was producing jumbo yellowfin, and to see 80 and 90kg fish zapping through a cube trail at the stern of the boat really is something you will never forget.
To see them blasting sauris and jumping out of the water while you anchored up was absolutely mind blowing!

AJAX

Ajax uses water pumped through 'spray bar' tubes to spray water around the hull, and they berley (chum) with livebait to attract the kings to the surface so they can be poled. The water sprays disturb the oceans surface next to the boat so fish feeding in the berley can't actually see the anglers in poling cages at the back and sides of the boat. If the fish won't come up to the live berley they fish deep with weighted 150lb handlines with livebaits on a 100lb leader. The lighter leader is to allow the livebait to swim and look natural instead of dragging a heavy mono leader around. Their biggest kingfish from The Banks is 43.6kg or 96lbs, but they've caught a heap of 30 to 35kg fish over the years. They've also caught a lot of big yellowfin by putting a livebait out when a yellowfin swims into the berley. Most of the time, these fish were taken on heavy handlines - and they've caught yellowfin to 80 and 90kg!

Many people will tell you that the kings at The Banks recognize the sound of Ajax's motors, and know they get a feed of livies when the boat turns up. That may be the case, but Bill will tell you that outboard motors put the fish down. They've seen numerous times when the kings were right up under Ajax feeding on live berley when an idiot in an outboard boat has roared past too close. Every time this happens the fish panic and disperse, and it takes some time to get them back up with live berley and in feed mode again. They've also had big yellowfin and marlin swim through and spook schools of smaller tuna, bonito and kingfish right next to the boat. Bill told me of a time when he was poling stripies and had a big yellowfin grab the jig as it flipped across the surface. He lost his balance and went over the side in gum boots and waterproof pants. It's an unwritten rule that you never let go of the pole so he was probably lucky the jig came out of the fish's mouth before he was drowned. That day, Ajax turned around, picked him up and they kept on fishing!