CHASING UNICORNS
targeting BIG flathead in shallow water
St a rlo l ift s t he l id o n w ha t c ou ld w el l b e t he hot te st te c h n iq u e y et d ev elo p e d fo r c a t c hi n g ov e r - s i ze d d u sk y f la t he a d o n l u re s i n sk i n ny w a te r … I f y ou c ha s e b ig l i za rd s , o r y ou ’ d l ik e t o , y ou s i m ply c a n ’ t a ffo rd n ot t o re a d t hi s o n e !
CHASING UNICORNS By Steve ‘Starlo’ Starling
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lathead of one sort or another are consistently placed in any top five listing of Australia’s favourite recreational fishing targets. This is especially true along the eastern seaboard: from sub-tropical Queensland to Victoria’s South Gippsland.
While there are many species of flathead living in our waters, it’s the dusky (Platycephalus fuscus) that’s king along the east coast, and with good reason. Duskies are not only abundant and widespread, they’re also the largest members of the extensive flathead clan. In this feature, I plan to share with you every tiny detail and subtle nuance of the most effective method I have ever used for specifically targeting really big flathead on lures, especially in shallow water. I certainly don’t claim to have invented this technique. But I have adapted and refined it to suit the places where I fish, and the ways I most like to catch flatties. The system I’ve settled on—a system for consistently finding and hooking flathead over 75 cm in length—works incredibly well for me, and I believe it will also work for you!
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Make no mistake, big flathead are peak predators. Their behaviour is quite different to that of smaller fish.
CHASING UNICORNS — targeting BIG flathead in shallow water
THE BIGGEST FLATHEAD Compared with many fish species, dusky flathead grow reasonably quickly, typically reaching 30 cm and more after just a year or two of life. However, there’s a distinct difference in growth rates between males and females, especially following that first year (and no, they don’t change sex like some other fish). Put simply, female dusky flathead grow faster and live longer than males. Females dusky flathead up to at least 16 years of age have been recorded, while the longest-lived male yet to be scientifically aged was only around 11 years old. For this reason, males rarely exceed a length of 60 cm. In other words, all dusky flathead over 65 cm or so in length are definitely females. (If you’d like to read more on the science of dusky flathead biology, go here.
Dusky flathead are capable of topping a metre in length and weighing as much as 9 or even 10 kg. So, just how big can female dusky flathead potentially grow, given a long and food-rich life? This is a subject of much conjecture, myth and occasionally some rather fierce debate. What we know for certain is that dusky flathead are capable of topping a metre in length and weighing as much as 9 or even 10 kg. Just how far over that magic metre mark they might push is where things become a little foggy. Some of the scientific modeling indicates that they could, theoretically, attain lengths of 120 cm (1.2 m). There’s an awful lot of loose talk (especially on social media) about 1.3 to 1.5 m flatties… fish that are claimed to weigh 15 kg or more. But there’s precious little in the way of hard evidence to categorically prove the existence of such giants. Truth is, genuine metre-long flathead are far less abundant than some folks would have us believe. Consider this: the Gold Coast Flathead Classic has been staged every spring for a quarter of a century, with literally thousands of duskies caught, measured and released each September (5,669 of them in the CHASING UNICORNS — targeting BIG flathead in shallow water
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2017 event alone!). Yet, in all those years and across tens of thousands of flatties pulled from one of the more productive systems for the species by some of the country’s best flathead anglers, there has never been a single, genuine, metre-long flattie recorded in the event! Not one. Nada. Zilch. Zip. Zero. These days it usually takes a fish in excess of 90 cm to pick up the trophy for longest flathead at the annual Gold Coast Classic, and genuine crocodiles up to 98 cm have been measured in the past. But the metre mark remains unbroken after 25 years. Remember this bit of trivia next time your excitable mate starts mouthing off about all those “metrelong” flathead he’s seen, hooked or caught.
SO, HOW BIG IS “BIG”?
I’m certainly not saying that metre-long dusky flathead don’t exist. They do, and a handful are caught, properly measured and documented each year. But they’re about as common as unicorns. Not only that, but each centimetre over the magic metre mark makes an already rare critter just that much rarer. The very biggest flatties I’ve heard of being accurately measured (on a brag mat) in recent years (not guesstimated, or roughly measured against a rod, or along the side of a boat) were around 105 to 108 cm in length. Trust me, those are huge flathead. Most of us will never see a flattie of those dimensions in the flesh, let alone be lucky enough to find ourselves connected to one. By the way, as an interesting aside, it amazes me how many people confuse 102 cm with 1.2 m, or 104 cm with 1.4 m, especially when writing lengths down or posting them on-line. Obviously, those are very different things: 102 cm is 1.02 m, not 1.2 m, and 104 cm is 1.04 m, not 1.4 m. Pull out a tape measure and check the massive differences between the “real” measurements and the wrongly transcribed ones. I may be wrong, but I reckon this all-too-common typographic or mathematical error is probably behind a lot of the unsubstantiated reports of flathead big enough to eat small dogs and scare children out of the water. Anyway, let’s agree that one metre is the Holy Grail benchmark for dusky flathead… the pot of gold we all desire, but which very few of us will ever be fortunate enough to attain. It’s right up there alongside a 15 kg snapper, a 65 cm bass, or a 3 kg-plus bream… It’s a prize we rightly daydream about. And while most of us will probably never see, let alone land, a true metre-long lizard, the good news is that overall numbers of 75 to 95 cm
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CHASING UNICORNS — targeting BIG flathead in shallow water
Jo with a 90-plus unicorn pulled from 60 cm of water on an over-sized, un-weighted soft plastic.
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duskies appear to be on the rebound in many of our east coast estuaries (for reasons I’ll look at later). These are genuinely big flatties in my book, and there’s probably never been a better time in living memory to get out there and find a few, especially using the method I’m going to share with you in this feature!
One metre is the Holy Grail benchmark for dusky flathead…
CHASING UNICORNS — targeting BIG flathead in shallow water
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TO CATCH A UNICORN There are lots of ways to catch big flathead (and let’s agree that we’ll call anything over 75 or 80 cm “big”, for the sake of this exercise). A surprising amount of whopper flatties fall to a humble frozen prawn or pilchard bait being soaked by a casual, weekend angler. Even more big lizards succumb to live poddy mullet or similar offerings. On the lure fishing front, soft plastics, hard-bodies and vibes all produce their share of larger flathead, both casting and trolling. Interestingly, another surprisingly common source of monster flathead encounters occurs when one of these aquatic unicorns grabs a smaller fish that’s been hooked by an angler. This unintentional “bait” might be a whiting, a bream, or even another flathead. While a lot of these chance encounters are brief and brutal, with the attacking dusky coughing out its would-be meal before it can be landed, there’s a vital message in these incidents that we’ll return to shortly.
Weighted plastics on standard jig heads still have a place, especially in slightly deeper water.
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For many anglers, pinning a really big flattie is simply a welcome bonus that happens very occasionally while targeting average fish, be they smaller “eating-size” flathead, 6
CHASING UNICORNS — targeting BIG flathead in shallow water
bream, whiting, estuary perch, mulloway or whatever else. If you’re really lucky, you might happen to hook into a couple of larger flathead every year while you’re fishing for these “other” things. Just occasionally—perhaps once every few seasons— one of those bigger flatties might be a genuine unicorn in the 85 to 95 cm-plus range.
Flathead regularly leave their calling card in the form of a distinct mark or “lie”.
In my opinion, and based on years of careful observation, these rather sporadic and haphazard captures don’t truly reflect the relative (and growing) abundance of bigger flathead in many of our estuary systems. I believe that there are a lot more of these special fish out there than are being hooked. For me, the take-home message from this is the fact that really big flathead are a specialist target, just like mulloway. Anglers who deliberately set out to find and catch them, and who tailor their gear and techniques accordingly, will encounter a lot more big flathead than generalist, scattergun, “whatever-comes-along” fishos. So, how do we effectively target these bigger flathead?
They’re masters of camouflage CHASING UNICORNS — targeting BIG flathead in shallow water
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