Sydney Stickbait

Sydney Stickbait is a land-based fishing game. You stand on real ledges, flats and harbour walls around Sydney, work a lure or a bait the way you actually would, and try to stop whatever eats it from reaching the reef. There is no fuel to buy and no licence to renew — you fish, you land fish, you buy better gear, you go somewhere harder.

It runs entirely in your browser. Progress saves to the device you're playing on.

Stickbaiting — ten casts off the stones. Work the lure back on the rhythm it wants: poppers like short sharp bloops, big sinking stickbaits want long slow sweeps. The action meter tells you whether you're getting it right, and it drives how often something eats.

Livebaiting — buy a sabiki jig first. You spend the opening minute jigging a bait school as it sweeps past (berley holds it over your jig), and whatever you catch becomes your ammunition: yakkas, slimy mackerel, garfish, squid at dawn and dusk. Float one out under a balloon and wait. Fewer bites than a lure, much better fish, and it brings mulloway and sharks past the ledge that never look at a stickbait.

Flicking the flats — a light 2–4kg outfit and soft plastics in the sheltered estuaries. Hop the plastic along the bottom; the bite comes as it falls. You get one tick and about half a second to come up tight. Flathead, bream, whiting, trevally, and the occasional estuary jewfish.

Weightless pillies — a whole pilchard on ganged hooks with no sinker, off the harbour walls and wharves. Lob it gently, because hitting it too hard tears the bait off the gangs. Then feed line so it flutters down naturally through the berley. When something picks it up you have to wait and let him turn before you strike — the opposite of the flats.

Popping up north — giant trevally and dogtooth tuna off tropical reef edges. They follow the lure before they commit, so a wake appearing behind the popper means keep it moving, not stop. Once hooked, a coral fish runs straight for the bommie and the first ten seconds decide it.

Every day generates swell, wind, water temperature and a moon phase, and all of it matters. Around two metres of swell is the sweet spot off the rocks — dead flat is hard work and three metres closes the exposed ledges completely. Warm blue water pushing down the coast brings tuna, mackerel and the odd marlin; cold green water favours salmon, tailor and mulloway. A full moon is worth fishing for jewfish.

When the swell shuts the ledges, that's the day to fish the flats or the harbour. They're sheltered and they fish regardless.

Drag is the pressure you can put on a fish. Reels list a rated maximum and the drag you can realistically hold on a ledge — the second number is the one the fight uses, because nobody fishes a reel wound to its limit with a rod in their hands.

Line capacity matters more than people expect. When a big fish simply keeps going, it isn't drag that saves you, it's having enough line left. That's what the big reels and the overhead buy you.

Leader is a trade. Heavy leader survives being rubbed on rock and cuts down bust-offs; light leader gets you far more bites, especially in clear harbour water and on the flats.

Rod power decides how fast you can apply pressure. A soft rod is slow to lift, which is the difference between turning a kingfish and watching it reach the cunje.

Rock fishing is the most dangerous form of recreational fishing in Australia, and people die doing it every year. The game models it — a set can come over the ledge and wash you off, and wearing a lifejacket is the difference between a fright and something much worse.

In real life: wear a lifejacket, never fish a ledge alone, watch the water for a full fifteen minutes before you climb down, and know that no fish is worth standing somewhere the sea can reach you. Lifejackets are legally required on many Sydney rock platforms.

On a phone, turn it sideways — the picture more than doubles.