FROM LITTLE THINGS By Steve ‘Starlo’ Starling.
Soft plastics often out-fish baits on snapper — a fact that relatively few Tasmanian anglers have yet twigged to!
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s well as being a hit at the time of its release, Paul Kelly’s 1991 protest song “From Little Things Big Things Grow” has gone on to become an iconic Aussie tune, even being picked up by advertisers to sell superannuation funds. But it’s core message has applications in fishing, too. Because little things truly can make a huge difference in our sport. Little things regularly influence our fishing results. Things like dropping your leader or tippet diameter by a few fractions of a millimetre, changing you hook or fly size, or varying your boat speed while trolling. On occasions, these seemingly small shifts can spell the difference between outstanding success and abject failure: between the dreaded donut day and an absolute blinder you’ll be talking about for years to come. And
sometimes, even very subtle variations in the way we work or present a lure or fly once it’s in the water can radically improve our catch rate. I know there aren’t any golden perch or yellowbelly in Tasmania (or at least, there shouldn’t be!), but please bear with me while I tell you a quick story about these mainland freshwater natives, as it’s applicable to many Tasmanian species as well: I’ll never forget my very first experiences with golden perch in dams during the early 1980s. I was fishing with lure maker Rob Smith, chasing yellas on the edge by casting-and-cranking hard-bodied deep divers. We were doing reasonably well, but Rob was kicking my butt… until I accidentally discovered a subtle retrieve trick that turned it around for me. Those lures dove deeper and deeper as we pulled them away from the bank until they reached an area directly under the boat. Here they would actually swim past a point where the line was perpendicular before turning and suddenly climbing out of the depths. A lot of our strikes were coming at that moment, when the lure turned back on itself and began to rise. However, on one retrieve — just a few cranks before my lure reached that critical flip-around point — a fly managed to crawl in behind the lens of my sunglasses. I stopped cranking and raised my hand to deal with the sticky little intruder… and the rod There aren’t any yellowbelly in Tasmania, but the lesson they’ve was almost ripped from my grasp by a fired-up golden perch! taught Starlo about subtle variations in lure presentation are
certainly applicable in the Island State’s waters.
From that moment, I began incorporating a deliberate pause into every retrieve, just prior to the lure’s turn-around point, and that’s exactly how, when and where I hooked most of my fish for the rest of that trip. Interestingly, it has also been yellowbelly that have prompted my latest ponderings on the impact of subtle variations in lure retrieves. I’ve been fishing Lake Windamere in central western NSW for this species since 1989, and the invitational tournament I kicked off there in 1992 is still going strong as it approaches its 30th year. It’s amazing to look back and observe the changes in tackle, tactics, techniques and lures across those three decades. Today, you’re not seriously in the game at Windamere unless your either grubbing the trees with a curly-tailed soft plastic or chucking a metal blade like an Ecogear ZX or a soft vibe such as a Jackall Mask, a Transam or a Zerek Fish Trap: ideally a black one fitted with small, sticky-sharp assist hooks. For several years, the go-to method for working these sinking vibration lures consisted of short hops off the bottom, interspersed with brief pauses. I hate to think how many goldens have been brought undone by that exact retrieve. By the way, it’s also a deadly presentation for Tassie bream, silver trevally and even trout! However, most fish eventually seem to “wise up” to specific lures and popular, predictable presentations. Just as surely, switched-on anglers are constantly looking for new twists to boost their strike rates. For the past few seasons savvy golden perch anglers have been adapting and mixing up their presentations of these go-to lures, often producing results on days when everyone else is struggling doing the same old things as they did in the past.
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Fishing News - Page 31
