Flathead - 30 and counting.

[Short Fuse]

Hi all.

Went for another flathead tagging session last Friday afternoon up Donnybrook way. After launching the boat, I ran up to one of the nearby "gutters", beached the boat and put on the waders before grabbing the spin rod. I slowly walked along the bank casting with a Zman 4" Curlytail in Motor Oil on a 1/4oz TT jig head. Immediately started to catch a few fish, and had to walk each one back to the boat before beaching it, and going through the tagging, measuring and taking a photo before releasing it, and then recording all the information for the tagging data base. There was quite a variety of sizes of flathead in the area.
http://i148.photobucket.com/albums/s25/Short_Fuse1/Smallfish_zps64ddf410.jpg (http://s148.photobucket.com/user/Short_Fuse1/media/Smallfish_zps64ddf410.jpg.html)

Small fish like this one were thick and I lost a few after hookup and while walking them back to the boat due to being just lip hooked. While I did not encounter any really large sized fish, there were plenty of medium sized ones to keep me interested.
http://i148.photobucket.com/albums/s25/Short_Fuse1/Medium_zps0fd642a0.jpg (http://s148.photobucket.com/user/Short_Fuse1/media/Medium_zps0fd642a0.jpg.html)

In case anyone is wondering why the tea towel is prominent in all these shots, I keep it wet and laid out on the carpet of the boat so as not to drop a fish on hot dry carpet. It helps to protect their slime coating and ensure that each fish is released with minimum handling damage. This 59cm fish was the best of the afternoon.
http://i148.photobucket.com/albums/s25/Short_Fuse1/Bigger_zpse70c99c7.jpg (http://s148.photobucket.com/user/Short_Fuse1/media/Bigger_zpse70c99c7.jpg.html)

Thought I would give another statistic on the fishing. The plastic and jig head in a couple of these photos has now taken 30 flathead over the past half a dozen trips and is still going strong. The hook point has blunted up slightly, and I missed a couple of hits on the last trip due to not striking hard enough to set the hook properly, so I may have to touch it up a bit, or else give the tail a new hook to assist it with racking up the numbers on future trips. It is a testament to just how tough the Zman product is, and I will be interested to see how many fish it does take before I retire it or lose it.

cheers

Jeff

[BeastMaster]

Hi Short Fuse ,
Good work with that motor oil Z Man - your certainly not wasting them.
Before reading the thread I thought you were going to say you'd reached the 1000 tagged excellence number -but see you still have a bit of a slog to go. 1000 is a whole lot of casts, but noticed your on the down hill stretch. Well done.
Regards
BeastMaster

[Funchy]

Great stuff mate!!!

[Short Fuse]

Thanks Beast. Reckon I have got around 200 or so to go to crack the 1000 flathead tagged. Have set myself a target to achieve it by the end of this year. See how I go.

Funchy. I reckon there are a few lizards and an odd jewie up your way that need to be carrying a bit of bling. Should give them a hit up in the near future as they should only get thicker over the next month or two.

cheers

Jeff

[alleycat]

Great work short fuse, I would love to get into tagging one day, and the populations must be healthy as I guess I would catch a couple of hundred flathead from march to November in that area and ive never caught one with a tag yet.

[Short Fuse]

Alleycat.

I think we seriously under estimate just how many flathead there are in some of those gutters. I went back this morning and tagged another 10 from the same area, and none of them had tags in them. Of the 10 I got this morning, 9 were on the Zman, so I should change the title to 39 and counting..... Got the last one trolling a micro mullet on the way back to the ramp. While the fish were there this morning, the wind made it a very miserable time on the water and I had to resort to anchoring off the bank and casting with the wind to make it fishable.

cheers

Jeff

[davo]

There are heaps of flathead around at the moment. I was fishing a gutter on Sunday and got either a fish, strike or dropped one on just about every cast for about a half an hour. There are loads of small ones also. I lost count of them.

[Funchy]

Thanks Beast. Reckon I have got around 200 or so to go to crack the 1000 flathead tagged. Have set myself a target to achieve it by the end of this year. See how I go.

Funchy. I reckon there are a few lizards and an odd jewie up your way that need to be carrying a bit of bling. Should give them a hit up in the near future as they should only get thicker over the next month or two.

cheers



Jeff

We'll get you up here soon and crack a few more out for sure mate. Lets aim for a couple of days before a new moon and pump them at low tide?

[Short Fuse]

Funchy. Sounds like a good plan to me. Will keep in touch and see if we can arrange a trip around a suitable tide.

Cheers

Jeff

[TheRealAndy]

Short Fuse, you are a true champ for tagging them all. We need more blokes like you.

Your flathead catching techniques sound like mine, but all my old haunts are green zones now. I used to use 3-4" dropshop minnows or shads and 1/4oz TT were my poison too, usually a 1/0 or bigger to weed out the babies. I figured out colour was not an issue in the end, but putting a lure of any shape or size in front of a flatty will ensure a hookup.

Alas, now I have sold my boat I am back to walking the shores. Once I have unpacked everything from the recent house move I think I will be doing a lot more shore based flathead fishing. I can see the water from my new place, and I see the flathead fishos out there all the time...