Exploring and plastics pays off

[dambuster]

Being sic and and tired of waiting for that magical point where free time and good weather occur simultaniously I decided that this weekend I was heading out regardless of the weather. Saturday came around and it was overcast with scattered drizzley rain and wind blowing from the south west. None the less I stuck to my guns and hooked the boat up. By 730 I had picked up my mate Sulcsy and we where putting the boat in at River Heads. Having never really had to much to do with soft plastics the plan was to try and stick with them and see how we go while we explored a bit of ground to the south.

First stop was some mud flats where we were hoping to have a crack at some flatties on the last of the run out. We started throwing some of our SPs but it became pretty clear that with the wind that was blowing, our light jig heads weren't going to do the job so we switched to the ever reliable banana bomber. It wasnt long before we got some interest from a wolf herring. Not what we were after but it was encouraging to see some activity. It took another 45 mins before we got another strike this time by a nice little flattie quickly followed by another next cast.



All was quiet after that so we decided that we would troll the rest of the flat while we had a bite to eat. Just as we were getting stuck in to our breaky Sulcsy's rod went off and he was hooked onto his first fish of the day. Unfortunately he only managed to get it half way back to the boat before the hooks pulled. It had only been a couple of minutes before another fish liked the look of our lures and this time it was my turn. After a nice initial hit and a couple of tail thumping bursts later a little cod hit the deck.



After a couple of happy snaps we were back to trying to have our breaky. Breaky was short lived once again as my rod bent over and braid was slowly being pulled off my reel. It looked like a snag so I turned off the electric and opened the bail in an attempt to get my lure to float away from the snag. As I went to wind up some of the slack the line came tight and then stated to peel off again but this time with a couple of strong tail beats and it swam off the flat and into the channel where it anchored up. My light gear could barely budge it and another head shake saw the hooks being dislodged and the fish swam free. Losing those big fish has got to be the worst feeling ever!!!

Spot two was a small creek and was fairly quiet from the get go. We had a few missed hits on poppers at the mouth but nothing to serious. We made the move to go up the creek, switched back to plastics and found some tiny cod and a small trev.



Nothing was happenig there and the tide was getting up so we decided to keep on pushing south to the next creek. I'd never fished this creek but had heard some good things about it so expectations were high. The plan was to try an see as much of this creek as we could before Sulcsy had to be back in an hour or so. The first couple of stops were fruitless and we decided that with our limited time we should just got for a quick look up the creek to get an idea for next time. On the way back out I thought that one bank looked pretty good so we positioned ourselves to fish our way along it heading down stream. We fished the first 200m for zilch and were just about to head back when some boils in the water caught our eye. I fired a stick bait into the area we saw the boils and 2 twitches later I had fish fighting to climb all over it. For the next half hour we caught trev after trev on surface. Only small but still great fun on light gear and surface lures.



It wasn't till they died down that we realised that we were already late, so at that point Sulcsy decided that it wasn't worth heading in anyway. With the trevally slowing down we switched back to plastics and started to fish a bit deeper. This decision payed off as we started to tangle with some bigger and more dirty fighting fish. We managed another couple of cod, tailor, grunter, and even a tarpon from the one little honey hole. There were quite a few losses though with some larger models knitting us up in the snags below.











All in all it was a pretty good day getting to explore some ground, giving plastics a decent go and hooking into a few fish regardless of their size.

[ActiveAngler]

Awesome days Kev...Did you give the prongs a go or were you using something else?

[dambuster]

I was using the Prongs at the start until my mate started out fishing me on Wrigglers so I ended up changing. Tried some atomic Bug Ants too but they didnt get any interest at all.

[Kleyny]

Sounds like a great session.
Gotta love those plastics.

The big fish may have been a stingray. Well if it me fishing it would have been, I seem to catch allot of stingrays on plastics and they seem to put up a abnormal fight for a ray.

neil

[adidaspeteman]

A good day on the water hey, I'm keen to catch one of them grunter after seeing you qld mob getting into them. I know Nath and my mate Ben got some here in WA up at Exmouth but in the smaller size. I'll target them my next trip up and see if I can get a big one...

[dambuster]

Kleyny - Yeah a stingray is quite possible. Especially considering the area we were fishing. This is the part that sucks though because I'll never know!

Pete - I'm sure if there is smaller ones around there will be big ones too. They go alright for their size. Especially when they get over 60cm

[adidaspeteman]

and they taste good too i hear.....

[Kleyny]

[QUOTE=dambuster;47719]Kleyny - Yeah a stingray is quite possible. Especially considering the area we were fishing. This is the part that sucks though because I'll never know!

Yep got to keep fighting to the death or to you see it as it could be the fish of a life time.

This is what keeps us coming back for more isn't it? Thinking it could have been the fish of all fish.

neil

[dambuster]

Ha ha yeah true. If it we never lost a fish or there was no challenge getting them in the boat where would the fun be?

[Beevor]

Ripper report DB and a sweet looking mixed bag!