Under Pressure – By Nick Thompson

Do the miles and get the smiles they say and this is true for the most part. However, there can be some great fish being caught right under our noses. Take Rockhampton for example, yes you go downstream to Casuarina or Port Alma and catch some magnificent salmon and barra but sometimes we don’t always have the time available, so why spend up to 40 minutes in the car and at least 30 minutes by boat to get to these areas when you take the two minutes and drop your boat in town and catch the same fish? That being said, fishing in urban areas means that there’s a lot of people throwing lures and bait at these fish and sometimes we really need to think outside the box to get these fish to bite.

Downsizing the lure got the bites.

Baits are often easier when fishing urban areas as it doesn’t come any more real than the bait itself, however sometimes the fish will be finicky even when it comes to bait. As the fish would have most likely seen a lot of hooks and lines in front of their faces, the fish know the consequence of eating that bait. When fishing for your bread and butter species I like to run a really light fluorocarbon leader, fluorocarbon is a lot clearer making it harder for the fish to see and I go as light as I can for the fish species. If I’m fishing for whiting and bream on the flats for example, you can downgrade your leader down to a 10 (or below) pound leader. For flathead I go about 10 – 15lb and for fish like barra and king salmon I go down to 60lb. The only difference is with the barra and king salmon I stay with a monofilament leader as it has a high abrasion resistance and that is really useful when trying to stop big barra from running into the rocks. Another thing I do is use the lightest sinker possible, sometimes even going weightless when I can, as I find that smaller splash and slow fall to the bottom can really bring on those fish to bite, and also make a lighter tap easier to feel.

Having the ability to adapt is important.

Now fishing with lures is when it starts to get just a little bit more difficult as oftentimes it takes more than just a simple downgrade of a leader. The action and lure choice plays a much larger role. As usual, selecting a lure needs to be based on what bait is around and the fish you’re targeting. On a recent trip down to the Sunny Coast I really had to use some of these techniques to get the flathead to bite. Knowing the area I was fishing was very heavily fished, I started with a very light jig head around ⅛ of an ounce and I decided to go really natural to start off with, I rigged up a Zman 3 inch slim swimz in mood ring which imitates a small bait fish perfectly. After walking the flats I came across a deep hole with a great back eddy and ledge and it just screamed fish. After a couple of cast’s I picked up a small flathead. I kept fishing and decided I needed to make a change. I downgraded my profile to a 2.5 inch st grub now, although the actual length of the lure hasn’t changed much. I went from a long slender lure to a deep ribbed body. I wanted to keep the color relatively natural so I chose the laguna shrimp color which is pale pink with a white under belly which inmates a small prawn or yabby nearly perfectly. I kept the ⅛ jig head on as I wanted to keep close contact to the sandy bottom as the hole I was fishing dropped to nearly 2 meters deep. This simple and quick change brought on the fish and flathead were on the chew for the little grub and a mangrove jack even came along for a piece of the st grub.

The town reaches of Rockhampton receive lots of pressure, but still produces the goods.

Now, on the sunny coast, playing the natural game worked for me. However this isn’t always the case and sometimes you need to be different, in fact so different that fish have never seen the lure you’re throwing at them. Now this doesn’t mean throw crazy big or crazy small, it means find that good “different” sized lure and throw what I call creature baits. Creature baits don’t look like anything in particular and it is really up to the fish to decide what it is. Oftentimes they’ve got lots of appendages on them which tantalize the fish and can really get their attention when the fish aren’t biting. These lures are about creating vibrations, and movement throughout the water to attract a reaction bite. With the creature baits, I do generally use a ‘hop, hop’ action with a nice pause. This will allow those appendages to flutter in the current and then after a nice pause give some short sharp hops. On a trip up north a few years back, throwing a creature for a change in lure brought on the bite. I was fishing in a few ponds for barra and tarpon up in Rollingstone, and I couldn’t get these fish to bite a lure, whether it was paddle tails, prawns and curly tails, they didn’t want anything to do with them. Searching swiftly through my box I saw the turbo crawz by Zmam which has some large curly like claws and some legs and antenna and those claws just dance as the lure gets pulled through the water and after a few casts the barra and tarpon where on the chew.

The newly released lure “Mulletron” is something different for the fish to eat.

So that’s a few different ways to get those pressured fish to eat, like I said at the start. Yes, doing the miles will often get you those good fish and great sessions but sometimes those 2 hour sessions in local area creeks or rivers in the town are really worth it and can produce some great fish. What’s really interesting is sometimes the fish can be used to human activity and be attracted to people swimming and this can lead to people stirring up sand and different sorts of small crustaceans, plus people leave food scraps for fish and bait to eat, so it just comes to reading the current situation on the day as to whether stealth is needed or if we need think out of the box.