One particular weed bed on the gold coast has a large population of Mantis shrimp. The largest I have recorded, measured in at 22cm pulled from the belly of a 65cm Flathead. As a matter of fact all the Mantis shrimp I have seen came from the same location and was pulled from Flatties bellies. Nowhere else on the coast have I pulled a shrimp from inside a fish of any description.
I had an idea to catch Flatties in greater numbers, I could use huge prawn shaped softies, great in theory but just try and mimic a mantis shrimp with a prawn.
Mantis shrimp primarily live in holes, when they do come out of there holes they don’t swim they crawl more like a crab. The answer came to me in the flathead classic. To keep the weed off the lure a couple of jigs were required, followed by very light twitching gust getting the lure through the weed. The only lure available that resembled a Mantis shrimp in any way is a Gulp Shrimp.
This method worked on 5 Flathead in 8 casts including the same 59cm in 4 casts. First cast a 72cm followed by the 59, two casts later a 76 next cast the 59 again. Three casts later a 49, I pretty much cleaned up the fish in that spot, so it was time to move on.
I’ve drifted away from small lures in recent months both salt and fresh to the extreme of using ridiculously large lures and still having great success.
There was no particular point in writing this just something that caught my attention over the years.
Good fishing
Mitch Calcutt
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big isn't it........ I always view them as about the size of a prawn or a yabby & never heard of anywhere where they lived.
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