flathead

Jacks also respond to a wide variety of lures and techniques. Casting surface poppers tight and parallel to structure works well, as does casting soft plastics and hard-bodied minnows tight to structure. Trolling hard-bodied minnows along the rock walls and broken reef areas of the rivers also entices plenty of jacks and allows you to cover a lot of quality ground. When …

Bassman Spinnerbaits is a family owned and run business, with Glen and Sue putting in many hours a week to keep up with the demand for this great product. Bassman also offers custom-made spinnerbaits and I have seen many fishers order their own colours. I have even called Sue requesting colours I want to try. When I fished the Flathead Classic …

4. Fish along the wall on the slack of the tide for luderick, bream, jacks and jew. It is deep water so don’t be scared to use big baits. 5. Right along the wall near the hospital you’ll find bream, flathead, jew and jacks. The wall is fairly easily traversed, so if fishing with kids it is pretty safe. Fish the slack of …

The Coomera River has been hot and cold with regards to whiting and we’ve had to try a number of places before getting onto the fish. Even then the bites haven’t been steady throughout the session because there’s often a mad flurry of activity and hooked fish followed by long periods of no action whatsoever. The kids have been pretty good during …

I don’t mind fishing this location with the kids because often they’ll be preoccupied with building sand castles anyway. It’s also great because I don’t have to worry about dingoes or four-wheel-drives on the beach. When land-based fishing you sometimes really have to put in the hard yards and try several areas, but it’s a great way to while away the …

However we needed to find more fish. We checked a few different areas but the water clarity was fairly ordinary. And being the Gold Coast on a Saturday, the boat traffic was thick too. Eventually we found an area where the traffic wasn’t too bad and the water clarity was reasonable. We started trolling with small hard-bodies and it wasn’t long before …

Using the Lowrance HDS-12 on my boat was a big part of our success. Insight Genesis mapping helped us locate and pinpoint the top and bottom of ledges as well as holes. It also helped us position the boat to either drift the right line or hold and cast to isolated structure. Using the Lowrance’s side imaging to locate bait schools was …

FOR only the third time since our daughter was born four and a half years ago, Robert and I managed a day on the water together without kids. It was another big flathead and this time Kord managed a great net shot with the handle extended first time. At 92cm it was Rob’s fourth-largest flathead and we were all fairly happy, …

In the rivers  The Noosa River has seen great numbers of bigeye trevally, GTs, cale cale trevally, bream, flathead and whiting. Big predatory fish are hanging around the bait schools coming in and out on the tides at the mouth. The best time to fish this particular spot is during the tide changes. Soft plastic lures cast out on light graphite outfits are …

I always try to set my lures about 20m behind the boat and my trolling speed is a slow idle. It is difficult to put an accurate speed to this technique but I always imagine that my boat is moving at a good walking pace. Another vital link in the chain is to remember that when you commence trolling, you …