Shorncliffe pier is finally open, and worth the wait!

I visited my old haunt over the weekend and boy, it didn't disappoint. I headed out there on Easter Sunday with the family and while there were quite a few people there, I was surprised at the relative absence of fishing rods.  I headed back in the evening to try and find some of the old spots to see if they were still holding bream. They haven't moved the old pillar casings back under the pier yet, but even without those, the pier was absolutely swarming with young bream.

It took a while to figure out my depths again now that the benches are gone, and new lamp posts, plus figuring out the positions relative to the new pillars. Early on I was a bit shallow for my normal spots and pulling up 20-24cm fish almost constantly. Once I moved a bit deeper then the bigger fish started to appear. Overall though I only caught one fish close to 30cm so we'll see over the next few weeks if some of the old 35+ monsters still hang out around there.

Key notes:
- They seem to have really cleaned up the debris etc under the jetty or pumped sand over-top because I didn't once find any hint of a snag anywhere along the opening half of the pier.
- The lights and pillars are evenly spaced, so the easy  spots to target are ~1m past each light which will put you roughly between pillars.
- The pillars are quite a ways under the center-line so there's a lot more room to fight fish back. Frankly it takes away a good part of the challenge that I used to love about Shorncliffe.

I'll be doing up a bit of a diagram on where to set up on the pier and practical techniques for a fun time catching fish instead of soaking bait, which the vast majority of people I see there are resigned to do. Not sure what they think when they're sitting there for hours and I come along and pull up over a dozen fish on either side of them. :)

I plan to do a bit of a tutorial on fishing for Bream and flathead around structure using dough baits including the go-to spots on Shorncliffe and Hornibrook platforms to catch a feed.