Forecasting catch is a central goal in fisheries science. In southeast Australia (i.e., NSW), it has long been hypothesized that coastal winds may be useful to forecast future estuarine catch rates for coastally-spawned taxa, since onshore winds promote larval retention near the coast and may thus enhance recruitment. In addition, estuarine flow may enhance primary and secondary production in coastal waters, and act as a cue facilitating navigation towards estuarine habitats. In this study, we sought to develop models that encode these hypotheses about recruitment for a variety of fish (7), crab (2) and prawn (2) species. We assessed their performance in forecasting estuarine catch up to two years in advance (to match the typical decision-making time horizon). We also evaluated the performance of these models when compared to those that included fishing effort and found cases where recruitment-related covariates (e.g., coastal winds, flow) resulted in higher forecast accuracy. Overall, we demonstrate how relatively simple (yet flexible) models may be useful as decision-support tools for fisheries management.