Videos
Think Pink
- Category: Equipment, rigging & preparation
- Published on Monday, 23 May 2011 21:38
- Written by Jay "Jewfisher" Penfold
This winter, as Jewie season begins, I'm embarking on an experiment. The Brunswick river is constantly recieving bouts of fresh water, Huey has been dumping the wet stuff all over the place, resulting in a pretty murky looking upper estuary. So instead of fishing lures in traditional natural colours, I'm going for the brightest and gaudiest, noisiest things around. So far, the Hot Pink 2" Micro Mullet from Lively Lures has been a great success. I've had a couple of good Jew and trevalley captures, not to mention the flathead smash 'em. Even the odd bream has tangoed to make another date later. The lure has some most excellent battle scars, I want to retire it to a glass frame with a photo of a nice big fish I've caught with it before I lose it to stupidity, a snag, or a fish that outclasses (or outsmarts) me. Dunebuggy gave it to me at the KFT, it has done so very well, but it's time to think pink in another way.
Matching the hatch or standing out from the crowd? The river is full of bait at the moment, great amounts of it. I theorise if I try to mimic the baitfish in the system now the fish will have a hard time picking a needle in a haystack. So pink is the new pilchard. I'm on the hunt now for more pink lures, 2" and 3" profiles to match the size of the baitfish around. High on my list are the Rapala Shad Rap SR05 and SR07 in Pink Clown. (It's not available in Australia yet, and my Ebay (USA) bids are looking good at this point) and the Storm Thundercrank in Pinko. They both dive a lot deeper than the Micro Mullet (dives about 1.3m the way I troll it), and the holes I am prospecting at the moment are 3.5 + deep. I'm finding that the Jew don't like to rise too far in the water column to take lures, so I'm switching to a deeper running hardbody that hugs the bottom a bit better to see if that makes a difference.
I am also ditching the 8lb braid in favour of 7-8kg mono. I'm spending most of my time slow trolling these days and switching lures out to match the water depth, (braid is a waste of money to troll estuaries I figure!). This way I get to enjoy the diverse birdlife of the upper Brunswick river and cover more ground in search of a feed. Mono also offers the benefit of just one knot, so much less to go wrong. Last summer saw so many very solid trophy fish lost due to fishing too light a braid (one little nick in it on snag housing a jack and its curtains). That all too familiar zzzzzzzzzzzzz...PING! I hope to avoid. Stories about ones that got away are by far less interesting than the "actually didn't get away and here's the photos" stories. My main targets these days are Jew and Trevalley and flathead, not bream, so less finesse is required and far heavier line can be used. In fact, not catching bream would be a plus, it means more time can be devoted to table quality fish instead of pulling bream off lures, kissing 'em and tossin' 'em back. I have upgraded jigheads to 1/8th oz TT HD (Heavy Duty) wire to avoid losing fish to straightened hooks also. The future is looking up. Now if only Huey would take a week or two off...
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