July on the water: what the data showed

The sea off Newcastle read 19.0 degrees on 11 July. On 31 July it read 18.6. Four tenths of a degree across three weeks, and that is the entire story of the water temperature this month.

Fish Newy has been scoring these spots all year. What is three weeks old is the log. Back on 11 July I started writing one line a day into a file: sea temp, rain, swell, wind, pressure, and the best window the site found in each area. Partly to make the ratings better, because you cannot improve a forecast you never wrote down. Mostly so that when I tell you the water is doing something, I can go back and check whether it actually did.

This is the first month of that, and it is 21 days rather than a full July. Everything below is what those days recorded.

The short version:

• Sea temp barely moved. 19.0 down to 18.6, never once outside that range, averaging 18.8.
• The wind stayed down all month. Three to eleven knots, every single day, averaging about seven. Nine of the 21 days blew north-west.
• Swell averaged 1.1 metres, between 0.5 and 2.1.
• One wet stretch, 16 to 20 July, peaking at 14.3mm in the 48 hours to the 17th. Ten of the 21 days had no rain behind them at all.
• 11 of the 21 days threw a golden read. More than half. I think that is too many, and I will come back to it.
• 12 and 14 July tied at the top, both of them Croudace Bay, both for yellowfin bream.

Croudace Bay did the heavy lifting

Across the month there were 14 golden reads, counting each area separately. Five of them landed on the western drop-off at Croudace Bay, all for yellowfin bream. Nothing else came close to that. Swansea Channel Training Walls and Merewether Beach took two apiece, for luderick and Australian salmon, and the rest were one-offs scattered across Nobbys, Stockton, Wangi, Pulbah and Carrington.

The two best days of the month, 12 and 14 July, were both Croudace Bay. If you fished the lake's western shore on a light north-westerly this month you were in the right place, and you probably worked that out without me.

Too many golden days

Eleven golden days out of 21 is the number I am least happy with.

A golden day is supposed to be rare. The whole point of the alert is that it stays quiet for weeks and then tells you something. If it fires on better than half the days, it is not picking standouts, it is describing a calm winter fortnight. And that is roughly what July was: light wind almost every day, moderate swell, water temperature that refused to move.

So either July genuinely was that good, or the bar was set too low. Twenty-one days cannot separate those, but half a month is not rare by anyone's reading, so I have raised the bar. Fewer days will come back golden from here. I would rather miss a decent day than keep calling half the month special.

What I am watching in August

Nothing changes in the species calendar. The same six that peak in July peak again through August: mulloway, yellowfin bream, snapper, luderick, Australian salmon and silver trevally. Tailor sit just under, in their good months rather than their peak ones. The turn comes in September, when squid arrive and most of that winter list drops away.

So August is a test of the numbers rather than the fish. Does the water keep sliding or does it flatten out under 18.6. Does the wind stay this quiet, or was a month of three to eleven knots just a run of luck. And with the bar where it now sits, how many days does August still call golden.

If you fished Newcastle or the lake in July and it did not match what is above, I would genuinely like to know. The log only sees the water. It does not see whether anything was biting.