Flat out dusky flathead fishing

Brett Geddes b.geddes@bigpond.com

There’s plenty to report on as the lakes finally drain the remaining floodwaters of the last two years. The big flathead are now slowly moving further upstream towards the rivers, with their size and numbers growing. There have been plenty of exceptional bream caught, with goodsized tailor and salmon pushing up into the lakes.

With so many bream comps on recently, anglers have been searching far and wide, with many commenting on how plentiful the big flathead were. Owen Pierce told me he and Stevie Wheeler had to abandon some areas after hooking too many thumping duskies. It was bad news in a bream comp, resulting in lost time and breaking off $25 lures on 4lb leaders. I loved Owen’s comment when he said, “Some shallow areas around Raymond Island were polluted with them”.

We quickly spooked a few big fish in the shallows, so we knew how deep to start searching. We cast for a few hours without a result, and sadly just spooked big flathead where we had cast four of them, with the biggest going 69cm. My mate hooked three and landed one at 56cm. We covered a lot of water that session, and by lunchtime the fish were fairly shut down, with many is that the Gippy Lakes is starting to rival Lake Tyers as the ‘Big Dusky Capital’ of East Gippsland. As we drive into Lakes Entrance, maybe we should have a massive statue of a big flathead!

As mentioned, the Gippy Lakes has been host to a few bream comps recently, and the results were truly breathtaking. So many bags of five big bream at 5-6kg hit the scales, with a lot of individual bream going 1.4-1.8kg. The stand-out feature was the amount of big fish caught in fairly shallow water in Lake King between the Mitchell Flats and Paynesville.

The most effective lures, as reported by a lot of competitors, were the Hurricane Twitch 40 and 50 sized hardbody lures. That’s rather fitting, given that they were designed, developed and initially road tested in those exact same waters.

The deeper areas around jetty pylons also produced some real trucks and the Muss lure or black blades were the go.

super-fast flowing water and deep, thick snags.

Of interest to me is that Mario now uses 8lb leaders in the area, having dropped down from 12lb and 10lb in years gone by. All I can say is, he’s a braver angler than me!

A 75cm flathead caught and released by Brodie Metherell in the eastern end of the Gippy Lakes.

The boys also said the flatties were all big fish, around 60-75cm and maybe bigger.

It was time to investigate.

On a stunning calm day, a good buddy joined me with our target being big flathead, hopefully 70cm and bigger.

multiple lures over those same fish.

I then put a much bigger soft plastic on, and immediately got results.

Over the next two hours I hooked six big duskies, all 55cm and bigger. I landed refusing our lures. I’ll return for another look soon. The lesson I learned that day is to always use big lures to get those large duskies to bite, and also get on the water at first light.

I’ve been saying this for a while, but what I’ve seen with my own eyes now

Special mention to Mario Vukic, who won the ABT event with a bag of 12.5kg. It was a well-deserved win for the good-natured bloke, who also happens to be a gun big bream tamer. He really knows how to get the best out of Hollands Landing and Seacombe, which can be a nightmare to fish, with

It’s very hard to talk about bream these days without mentioning the Kohte brothers. This time, Justin got a turn. Once again, he stalked his local jetties, and his best day produced a stunning bag of fish. On that occasion he landed 20-odd bream ranging from 30-44cm. Five of the fish were 44cm, three were 43cm, and one was 40cm. Adjusting those fish back to fork length, and then using the current ABT weight-to-length table, that would give Justin a bag of bream going at least 6.5kg. Justin generally runs 6-10lb leaders, and does well to keep nasty bream from wrapping him around the structure – although I think a few battles end in disaster for sure! While actually fishing on the jetties themselves, fishing light makes the battle fraught with danger by pulling the bream into structure, unlike from a boat where you can haul them away from linebreaking timber.