Tropical Shallow Water Spinning

[happygilmour]

Hi All,

Thought i would share my latest fishing trip adventures. As posted by Dipster, yesterday Dipster fishing with mate, my brother BJ fishing and me, headed out to new fishing grounds in the form of Rattlesnake island. Rattlesnake Island is about 18km straight out from nothern tvl shores. There is 2 islands, Rattlesnake and Herald is.

Never fishing there before decided to use Google earth and pick some goog looking country from space ( if you have never used it give it a go, its free!)I picked some great looking shallow reef fridges that extended out from both islands. First stop in the morning was at Herald and a drift was started. Bj started on a popper for a queenie or trev and i started on a 35g Bumba bar.

Conditions were great and positioning the boat in 8ft started to cast.Concentrating on fan casting to cover more water it was not long before our first fishy action. On a fouled bunba bar I had a solid agressive coral trout scream up to the boat and grab the fouled jig and scream back to the bottom before letting go

A few more casts and I come up tight. Feeling line start to rub on the bottom i crank up the electric to get over to the fish. Slowly I start to win and a lovely coral trout pops up and into the net. When using metal slices in the shallows you dont need to rip in the lure at warp speed. I was using a medium speed which allowed the lure to sit 2-3ft below the surface and give the trout time to see it.Trout are ferousous fish and very territorial and dont seem fusy on what lures are used.

During this time both Bj and i were catching plenty of juvinile cod which kept us intested. I swapped the metal to a plastic. Plastic of choice was a new gulp 7" crub in newpenny colour. I matched it to a homemade 1/2oz 5/0 hook jig head.

I proceeded to cast and slow roll the plastic back. Using a larger plastic slowed down the cod catches but was a very appetizing for the coral trout. When we moved into slightly deeper water I would change to a 5/8oz head to keep the plastic in the strike zone during a slow roll(steady winding in).In the next few hours we both caught more trout. Bj kept with a smaller 5" atomic fat grub and also got cod,trout as well as some small red throat emporer. As Dipster said, he came over and I gave him some plastics and also caught a trout

Tip: Using curl tail plastics give us more hits and hookups. Standard T tails and shads did catch fish but the action of the curl tail when slow rolled was too much for the fish and shone on the day.

Cast forward of your drift to have the ability to catch fish not spooked to your boat. Use stealth where possiable, limit outboards and use electric and wind to you advantage.

Adjust jig head weight to depth 3/8- 1/2oz worked well in depths upto 10ft and 1/2- 5/8oz in depths 10+ft.

40lb leader was great, thick enought to survive the reef and teeth of the cod but slight enough not to impeed the plastics action or spook fish.

Colour wasnt a issue, if a trout saw it, it ate it!!!

All in all a great day trying new grounds and targeting shallow water fish. We caught 9 trout for the day as well as alot of cod as well some moses perch and emporer.

Travel out to Phillips reef, a few more k out and bait fished for a while with slow action before decided to move and sound out the reef. Found some great showings of fish and anchored up. Bj had bait and I a plastic. I hooked immediately on a cod and bj followed with undersize red throat emporer. We spent the next hour catching mixed reef fish until the winds picked up and time to head back and look for Dipster.

Had a great day with plenty of double hook ups on cod.The trout wernt huge but managed 2 keepers and the rest to terrorizethe reef to come. Enjoy the pics

[happygilmour]

Here is another pic of the prettiest tusk fish I have seen. Unsure what its name is, maybe someone here knows but it came from the fish shown on the below sounder pic.

Aaron

[Roo]

sweet trip mate. 2 more weeks and i'll be on my way to the solomons for a bit of this action. Your handy tips on tackle and technique will come in handy as I've never fished this type of environment before. I hope i can be as successful.
What was the rest of your rig? rod, reel & mainline?
Cheers Roo.

[virty]

Top stuff Happy - The third shot is great those color's are unreel....What are they like to eat ?

[ActiveAngler]

Hi Aaron,

Just had my lunch and what a great read.

With the Coral Trout - did you find a certain way of working your plastic, that resulted in more hits / captures, or was it just drop down and smash and grab?

Nice report and awesome photos buddy.

Cheers - Ben

[Mak579]

Great Stuff Aaron,

My mate just handed me over the keys to his new fisher so we'll have to take it for a spin once this rain stops!

Matt C

[happygilmour]

Thanks for the replies and questions.

Love questions as we all get to learn more from everyone

Roo, you will have a ball in the solies, used to love watching bluefin trevally cruze the reef fringes.As for my rod reel combo's used, mine was raider 3-5kg spin matched to a shimano sahara 2500 with 16lb braid. Bjs was using my other spin combo, gilmour custom 4kg rod matched to sahara 2500 also with 16lb braid. I also had a gilmour custom loomis 665 GL2 baitcast with a shimano scorpion 1000 baitcaster with 30lb braid.

Any nice 6-7ft 4-6kg spin rod matched to a 2000-3000 sized spin reel will suit or 4-6kg baitcast outfit. Foe the solies a 6kg spin and a 10kg spin for the bigger fish will cover most scenario's. Take a range of slices,poppers, med diving hardbodies and some plastics.


Virty, mate 1 of the best eating fish in the sea, top shelf for sure!!!

Ben, Just a steady roll back to the boat, no twitches or pauses unless we got hits and failed to hookup. Kepping the plastic above the snaggy bottom but below the top few feet of the water was the key.The hardest thing when casting 30m in front of the boat was that generally the trout hooked up nearly immediately and dragging them back over the bommies and coraly bottom was the fun part with out them reefing you

Cheers

Aaron

[obi_wan]

G'Day Aaron,
Great report and pictures mate, those trout look bloody awesome. The last three of the six years of my wanderings up to Prossie i have intended to have a few days out around the Repulse Islands but unfortunately i have been blocked by the consistent South Easters, can't wait to finally get out there one day.

Cheers,
John.

[adidaspeteman]

Top stuff, I am yet to taste a coral trout.

[Roo]

Any nice 6-7ft 4-6kg spin rod matched to a 2000-3000 sized spin reel will suit or 4-6kg baitcast outfit. Foe the solies a 6kg spin and a 10kg spin for the bigger fish will cover most scenario's. Take a range of slices,poppers, med diving hardbodies and some plastics.

Cheers Mate. I'd love to take my S4 Egrell over but I'm really paranoid about having an airline baggage disaster so I'm taking a 2 piece 6-8kg Catana and a 2500R Certate. also have a 7'6" 2 pce Excell weapon (pre production model about 4-6kg) and a 4000 Symetre as a spare.
I'm still packing all the gear still, I have my 2 surfboards packed up with all that gear weighing in @ 14kg so that leaves 16kg for fishing gear!!! Plus the missus is coming so theres another 30kg of .......stuff.
Cheers for the tips.
Roo