After five seasons of mud, debris and floodwater hammering the Hawkesbury, Western Sydney's bass anglers have finally been handed a clean run — and Windsor Bait & Tackle is calling it the best opening to a bass season the local system has produced in half a decade.
The video, framed as a beginner-level lure walkthrough, was filmed two months into the season on a small back-creek so close to suburban Sydney that one of the first things on the audio is a property dispute.
"Hey mate, you and your yappy mate with the bait. Go away," a neighbour shouts from across the bush.
It is the kind of micro-water that turns suburban bass fishing into a stealth game, but the fish are responding to the conditions. The first cast — a beetle spin worked into a rock-bound pocket — produced a clean Aussie bass straight up.
"Beautiful little Aussie bass, mate," Windsor Bait & Tackle's host says. "They get a lot bigger than this, but if you catch one this size, you're going to have a lot of fun."
The broader read on the Hawkesbury system was the headline takeaway.
"It's exceptionally warm this spring and we've had what — three, four, five years of heavy rain, floods. We're finally getting a very dry, hot spring and the fish are moving in," he said. "This has probably been the best start to a bass season on the Hawkesbury for the last five years. The water's clean as it's been."
"As long as these bass keep swimming up these creeks, they're like the canaries of the river. It's a good thing when there's bass in your system. It's a good thing."
The lure progression — deliberately pitched at first-timers — stepped through three categories on the same hole. The beetle spin produced two bass on the first few casts. He defended the unfashionable choice on principle.
"Years ago, a young gun fisherman I knew said to me, 'I don't use them. I'm above that.' And I'm like, well, I'm still yet to master everything. I'm still learning tricks with this. Wouldn't you want to know all its tricks?"
He then switched to a small slow-sinking diver — surface-to-subsurface coverage with sonic vibrations and short rip-pause retrieves — before dropping back to a basic rigged Atomic paddle-T plastic on a small ball sinker and straight-shaft hook.
The paddle-T cracked another bass first cast.
"I ran half a dozen diving lures across this hole before I switched and they definitely got educated on the beetle spin. But then straight away just hit the water and I had a big bass on. So it's three fish in that little hole."
The central technical lesson was about how quickly small water gets burned out.
"Working out how to retrick these fish — if I come down tomorrow, that fish is here. He's not that stupid. He probably won't take this spinner again. But I'm sure he'll take something. A couple more flicks and we'll go for a little wander."
Alongside the bass technique, the video carried real on-the-ground bushcraft — spotting skinks as snake indicators, watching turtles slide through the same lies the bass were holding in, and deliberately walking each angler away from a fish before releasing it so the next angler down the bank wasn't fishing a spooked pool.
With El Niño conditions parking warm, dry weather over the Greater Sydney basin and the Hawkesbury running at its clearest in years, the message from Windsor Bait & Tackle is that suburban bass fishing has not just survived the flood era — it's the best it has been in half a decade, and it is a $20 lure box and a stealthy walk away from anyone with a Western Sydney postcode.