Fabulous Flathead

One afternoon at Lammermoor beach in Yeppoon I decided I would trial a few new lures. The minnow type hard bodied lures had no success neither did any soft plastic. Before I decided to leave I changed over to a pink panther Tassie Devil lure. On the third cast off the rocks on the mangrove side of the beach I used a faster retrieve resulting in a nice little GT patrolling over the rocky bottom. Latter I hooked up on a rock cod that stuck to the bottom like a suction cup darting between rocks. I waded out to a rocky platform where I flicked the lure out in every direction.  I decided to work the lure across the bottom at a very slow speed next to the platform rock. In a flash a huge lizard drew it’s camouflaged head out of the sand and crunched down on the fluttering lure. The 60cm flathead was only 2 meters away from where I was standing but took me five minutes to land. From that moment on I have had great respect for my Tassie Devil lures and they are highly valued amongst my lure collection.

By Rhett Thorne (Friend & valued co-fisherman of Clayton)

The Elusive Flathead

some 40 odd cm duskies

Wether you are trying to catch lizard on live bait or soft plastics the one thing you must have is a heavy leader as flathead live on the bottom of the water with the snags and rocks and various other structures. When chasing flathead on lures you cant beat a 3-4 inch curl tailed grub in more vibrant colours like pink, fluro greens and yellows work well too. The grub can be matched to a 1/16 ounce (roughly 2 gram) jighead head with a size one or two hook. When using bait small whiting hooked through the lower jaw will work extremely well and little mullet hooked through the tail will also send you drag spinning. brightly coloured shallow diving minnows and jerk shads are also magic on dusky and sand flathead, just match the water depth with the diving size so you can get the hard body lure as close to the bottom as possible. Flathead should be targeted on half tides and leading out from a high tide. the flatties will normally rest in the small channels on the flats or in the drop offs just before them, on low tide it pays to walk around the flats and see all the sink holes from where they were resting. if you have any queries about flathead or any other fish feal free to email me at clay94_fishing@live.com.au

pesky little catches on bait can annoy
you when you have a specific fish in mind



the recent exploration

My friend and I hiked around a saltwater lake ( the causeway for those who know it). We were equipped with a bag full of lures and various other things, such as wallets and phones and chips, can’t forget them. My friend was using and okuma graphite travel and I had a Rovex airstrike bc with a Rovex oberon bc reel. The first fish caught was a ‘long tom’ just off the base bridge on a silver, gold and black popper. It was caught by my mate by using a normal blooping retrieve. With very limited success we decided to hike around the outside waters casting out yabby soft plastics as we went along the mangrove banks. Every now and then we switched to different lures like suspending, shallow diving, x-raps and other vibrant coloured minnows. More luck was achieved when a 'bloody ripper' Tassie Devil. When it was quickly retrieved and a barracuda or another high speed predator smashed it and literally disabled the lure before I could even hook it. We kept on moving around the inside of the lake to more pristine waters but mainly stuck to the shallow clear waters in fear of stone fish. with the sun blazing on our backs no fish were out to play so we hiked back to the beach side of the lake on the other side of the 'bridge' where it was a slow flowing low tide. We  put on the yabby soft plastics and used a double twitch retrieve, letting them sink between the twitches. This way they aggressively dart up through the water columns then flutter down to the bottom. This worked like magic hooking up to heaps of pike and the occasional flathead. I would have to say that pike were the most fun to catch because of they’re large size and fast predatory skills.

Thanks to all who read my first blog and i will be updating it at least weekly with fishing tips and stories and other adventures.