Townsville

TOWNSVILLE Dave Hodge

Despite all the turmoil in the world, one thing that stays true is that the fish will still bite, so there’s something to take our minds off it all. Fishing truly is an environment that helps our minds process life’s challenges more clearly. gear. Usually a 60lb leader does the trick.

Sitting in that reasonable casting distance from the reef edge is an exciting way to come in contact with some incredible reef species, including the monstrous trout that are being reported.

The one big change that’s come about in recent months has been the red-throat emperor (also called trickies and red-throat sweetlip); incredible. The trickies are definitely full-on at present.

CREEKS AND RIVERS

In the estuaries it’s been quite a mixed bag. At the time of writing, many of the barra are still waiting for some serious rain, and they’re sitting out wider and quite deep. After a couple of smaller rain events, it hasn’t been enough to bring them all into the bay and rivers.

The flats leading up to mangrove lines has been a pretty reliable spot to target the barra, but your timing has to be spot-on if you’re to have a go at this risky technique. Whenever we do this, we use the electric as a guide to know when to bail, and as soon as that blade starts to rub the bottom, we head for deeper water. Surface lures work well, as do the shallow divers. However, in the thicker stuff, weedless plastics are really the only option. The young fella and I have been stalking the brackish stuff of late, and while there are unpredictable dead days, we’re often hitting some decent fish to keep us going.

The Halco Roosta Popper 80mm has been very effective for us in getting strikes, and the hook-up ratio is very good as they sit tail-down at rest or in between the bloops. Nothing wakes you up like a surface

Britney caught her first lure-caught jack skipping plastics into some thick cover. On neap tides, the sections closer to the mouth of systems work well.

The rivers and creeks have been a bit of a doubleedged sword, with the barra showing up at the right time, but the commercial nets pulling them out as quickly as they can congregate. One of my favourite creeks was netted almost daily for the two months leading up to closed season, to the point where no one could find a legal-sized barra. Not just the lure chuckers like us, but the live baiters and even the locals were bewildered at how defeated the system was. Smaller species like bream and were there, but anything that wouldn’t fit through that mesh of death was gone. How long it will be before local governments recognise how valuable the rec sector is to the economy?

Anyway, on with the report.

At the time of writing this, the mackerel fishing hasn’t shown any sign of slowing down, with most anglers targeting the macks finding success relatively easily. Lures such as the Laser Pro 190mm deep have been a reliable option, with wolf herring being another traditional technique that’s working well. Reef edges are also providing some jacks for those trolling lures deeper for trout and the like. Pretty standard tackle is 50lb braid on either a spin or overhead they’ve just come out of nowhere in massive schools that have been seeing anglers bag out in no time. All of normal gear works on them, from soft plastics, to bait to vibes to jigs and anything else you can think of to throw at them. The screen shots and images we’ve seen of the sounders have been truly strike from a barra, and it’s what every angler dreams of. Soft plastics are an obvious choice in shaggy locations, and larger models (e.g. 6” Paddle Prawns) are our go-to lures for the bigger fish. Even though you do get the odd rat, bigger fish love lures like these.

My favourite way to rig them is on an EWG Atomic Seeker jighead in the 7/0 size in 1/4oz weight very specifically, as the lead on the heavier models comes up the hook’s gape a bit too far for the rigs I’m using. If I need more weight, I’ll add in a small ball sinker to the loop knot, which helps to sink the lure more nose-down. This allows it to reach the desired depth more easily.

One more alteration to the rig that helps me to rig a compact, well presented plastic is to remove the spring that comes with the hooks and rig them as follows. First of all, slide the point of the hook into the nose of the Paddle Prawn and bring it out through the belly about 20mm from where you insert it. Push your fingers hard up behind the plastic and bunch it up so that the nose slips up over the existing weight (this doesn’t damage the lure because it’s made from that super-stretchy RST material). Roll the lure’s body over as it hits the ‘R’ bend so that the belly is now facing downwards. Measure where the hook’s bend lines up with the plastic’s body and insert the hook point at 90° to the body, and bring it out in the middle of the back. If it all sits straight you’re laughing.

Now we come to the tricky part of the rig. Cut the point of the leader into a needle point and then insert it through the plastic, then the eye of the hook and then out of the other side of the plastic where you can finish your loop knot as per normal. This rig is compact, skips well, and has a pretty good hook-up ratio. If you have trouble rigging it or understanding the way I’ve described it, jump onto our YouTube channel at ‘Hodgie the Barefoot Fisherman’ for a detailed video on how to do it.

For a little while the

jacks were hard to come by, but there has been a bit of a shift in that lately. If you’re an early riser then the surface stuff has definitely been worth a go, along with shallow water plastics on the push-in tide. Additionally, thinking anglers are getting good results on smaller hardbodies. If you’re getting flashes of colour but not getting the bent rod result, the fish may just need a smaller profile to get them to follow through. It’s been a tactical variation used by barra and jack fishers for a long time now, and that’s because it can be a game-changer.

We’ll have to see what happens weather-wise over the next two or three weeks, but it definitely feels like it’s building for something, and all fishers will be sweating on it arriving soon.

Cheers and good luck.

The way this Paddle Prawn is rigged is compact, presents well and has a good hook-up ratio. Barra love to smash poppers.

A double header caught on 80mm Roosta Poppers.