Beginners advice for soft plastic flatties?

[Stottles]

Yo!

planning on hittin the SP's pretty hard this summer, and goin to target flatties as the local lake has more then enough and thier relatively easy to target compared to bream, bass etc

For starters I have a nice little 6' graphite spin rod (managed to pick it up for $16 brand new at the annual bass comp i attend), a shimano 2500 spooled with 6lb mono. My mate owns a decent 12' tinny and im located smack bang on the tuggerah lakes system. Lake Maq's only about a 15-20min drive north depending on what part we wanna fish.

Just after some advice/tips/tactics on anything and everything when it comes to SP'in for flatties. where to cast, what to look for, lure brands/colours/sizes/shapes, weight of jiggs, retreval techniques anything that mite be usefull.

Cheers
Stottles

[BaitThrower]

Try pink coloured plastics. Flatties seem to like those. I've also had good success with small squidgy shads in the darker colors. Basically for flatties, you want to let the lure drop to the floor, let it sit for a second or two, then quickly twitch the rod up so it pulls up a cloud of sand/mud etc. This gets their attention and they often bite quick. Just repeat that process every 4-5 seconds with a slow retrieve.

As for weight of jigs, just whatever will get you down and keep you down on the bottom, but has to also be light enough to provide a good whipping motion on the lure as it leaves the bottom to stir it up.

Hope that helps.

[moorie86]

Hey,
BaitThrower has pretty much nailed it. Do a search for flathead and sp and you will find loads of info. This question pops up about once a month.

Cheers, Cam

[Cammy]

Squidgey Pro range will put u onto the flattys for sure! I cant exacly remember the size, but the bloodworm squidgey always did the damage for me, dont be afraid to go big they have big mouths and eat anything and everything.

Pretty much find a small creek or shallow flats and find a gutter,weed beds or somthing that dips in the sand, they usually hide in wait for prey to come past. As stated above just lift and wind, you can also jerk it 3 to 4 times for a bit of variety when lifting and winding then let it go slack and then BAM! flatty on! good luck.

Camy

[Seth]

Mate as the boys said slow retrieve. I perfer the squidgy wriglers and gulp swimming mullet, but flatties will hit anything they are the best species to get started on with sp. i always look for weed beds and good drop offs fish the shallows on an incoming tide drop offs on an outgoing tide. I dont know were you are but crab island in the broadwater gold coast is a great spot for flatties on sp a mate an i have caught over 40 there in one session mostly little ones but still good fun.

good luck and remember slow long pauses between jigs

[Stottles]

thanks for help guys, very much appreciated!

im located on the central coast, right between sydney and newcasle

[Mossy247]

Another good one for the flatties is the pumkinseed 3' minnows and the watermelon....... Good luck and make sure you have a good leader on there don't want to loose it last minute. :)
Cheers

[FISHAWN]

On top of all this i'd highly reccomend ditching ya mono stretcho and putting braid on. You will get bigger casts, better control and responses.

[Fly Fisher]

Hi Stottles,

Here is my 2 cents worth:
* Definitely invest in braid - you'll never go back to mono. I use 4 lb.
* While flatties aren't too fussy, a general rule I use is to fish bright colours (e.g. pink) in murky water and natural colours in clearer water.
* My favourite lure at the moment for flatties is the Gulp pumkinseed grub - 2 inch I think. Use as light a jig head as possible, but make sure you are hitting the bottom.
* Don't rush your retrieve. Pause a lot.
* Make your lure work in the same direction as baitfish are swimming.
* Use a decent leader if there are big fish around - I use 10lb.
* Fish around structure, where flatties are likely to be hiding.

I've attached a pic of a nice 55cm fish I caught a few weeks ago using this method...

Good luck!

[Saltdoggy]

In the past month or so i've really started to pull in some quality flathead from the rivers around my area, before then i never really caught them, cause i couldn't, the things i do are
- like the other guys said - Use softies with bright colours, esp. pink, best softie i've found are berkley 5 inch curried chicken minnows with a 1/4 jig head work awesome

- And fish banks and drop offs, if there's structure nearby, like a rock wall, weed bed or even a sand bar your definately going to be getting some knocks!

It's not much advice but You'll definately increase your catch rate fishing those areas! Good luck mate

[Kleyny]

I'm no expert but I've been hooked for the past 2 years on the plastics.
As said above but i also like to cast forward of the drift. this way your not spooking the fish with the shadow of your boat. spooked way too many good fish before i learnt that trick.
Target structure, any structure will do weed beds, clumps of mangrove roots, fallen trees.
Another thing to target is gutters when the tide is dropping. flatties wait in the deeper water for the bait fish to swim out of the shallowing gutters.

i like the colour pumkinseed colours and the natural colours. never had any luck with the pinks. but allot of my water is farely clean.

dont be scared to throw the plastic up on the bank and retreive back into the water allot of good flatties i have caught have been around 1m off the bank.

good luck

neil