I woke up late (6am) on Sunday and decided the weather was too good to just lay about doing nothing so I started to prepare everything for a yak session in some of my usual spots. I was out on the water in my spot at 7:45 with the last couple of hours left in the run out tide. There was a light westerly blowing and the tide was running out east to west so I was being held in place nicely, no need to worry about anchors and such so I was free to concentrate on hitting my target with each cast. I was targeting a weed bed that had a nearby drop off. I had the usual 6lb braid, 8lb fluorocarbon leader 1/12th oz jighead on a fine gauge hook. The gulp 4inch curl tail grub in banana prawn seemed the most effective of late. I had fished the same spot twice the previous week after work and had really struggled to get fish consistently since we had a good downpour. Today turned out differently.
Second cast and I was on to a fish. Short tussle an in comes a 43cm flat one. Into the keeper net he went as I was out of fish and my young bloke is staying for school holidays and loves a feed of fish. A few minutes later and I was on again, this one 46cms.
This was followed by a procession of flattys in the low forties that I returned to the deep.
Then a nice 48cm model succumbed to my Gulp and he was deep hooked. I could feel the leader wearing on his gob as he put up a good fight in the shallows. He too went in the keep net as he was not going to fair well with me trying to remove it.
I continued to flick placcies about and scored more mid forties fish but had decided to let them all go. I had a sleeper rig out the back loaded with a 4inch Gulp minnow in smelt that started to loose line at a rate of knots. After a bit of fun a 51cm lizard hit the net. Another keeper. Looks like the boy and I will get a few feeds with 4 in the bag.
At the bottom of the tide I felt the familiar tic you get from a flatty bite, I paused and struck lost a little line as the fish ran then nothing…. Bugger…. But I am now in the habit of just stopping and leaving the placcy rest in the hope that the fish will return… I left it for about 15 seconds and went to lift my rod tip to see if I was on again when I see my line just flying back past me at an astonishing speed. The drag started whizzing and I lost about 20 meters of line quickly, then, nothing. I suspect what ever it was had grabbed to placcy by the tail.
When the tide turned so too did the wind with a northerly springing up. This shut everything down and I didn’t get another fish after that for the next 2 hours. A nice morning on the water with 14 flattys caught with 4 kept for the table.
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Originally Posted by Back In Black
