Fishing Reports

 

The Fruits Of Spring: It has been an excellent couple of months for northern flyfishers. Late winter and early spring is not considered a wonderful weather time of the year but it does produce good saltwater fishing for those that like to flick a fly. Trevally, kahawai, and gurnard are at their best close in during August and September, with the trevally and kahawai continuing to fish well right through to Xmas, as the snapper and kings start to appear. During one 'hot' session off the local rocks I succeeded in taking good trevally up to three kilos on fly with jack mackerel being the only other species caught. I was using large white glo-bugs with fat stumpy crystal flash tails in lemon yellow. The glo-bugs are cast out and fished dead drift on either a floating or intermediate line. You can use an indicator on a floater or simply try to maintain good straight line contact with your fly. Whatever way you chose to fish them they are the numero uno method for taking big trevally and big snapper on a fly. I have personally searched for years for an excellent 'snapper on fly' technique and this dead drift white glo-bug technique seems to be the way to go. Upon discovering it I caught several snapper over two kilos on fly from the shore - a significant improvement on past landbased captures. As any flyfisher will tell you- snapper on fly are always a prize. My only great difficulty with the technique is that I have been 'wasted' by big fish on almost every outing. Possibly I'm losing big snapper. A move to heavier 12wt gear this spring should sort out a few of these 'unstoppables'. The best hook to tie these flies on is the Gamakatsu SC15. These have a re-curve shape to the shank, which allows you to build up a large glo-bug body. Don't be scared to use fairly large size hooks. Most of my salty glo-bugs are now tied on 2/0's. This creates a frighteningly large glo-bug but that is what takes the most fish. Even small six inch snapper still completely consume glo-bugs of this size. I would suggest tying up a range of glo-bugs in SC15 hooks from 1/0 through to 4/0. The largest bugs are for use in dirty water (when a addition of red to the tail helps them stand out). In clear water use the smaller bugs and fish them on long leaders of Seaguar Fluorocarbon. The Gamakatsu SC15 also is useful for tying small deceivers with which to toss at springtime kahawai hanging around the river mouths. I've been having a lot of fun with these fish - stalking surface feeders over mangroved sand flats, as whitebait and small mullet try to make their way up-stream. The beauty of the SC15 is that the gape of the hook is displaced slightly downwards from the hackles of the fly. With a little drop of epoxy at the base of the tail hackles this stops the fly tail wrapping - an annoying feature of most deceiver type flies when tied on standard shape hooks. Hook-ups are not hindered in any way and fishing confidence is enhanced by a fly that holds its proper shape when placed in front of the target. Small white and blue crystal flash deceivers with large eyes and silver heads have been deadly - just that little bit of extra sparkle to stand out in the murkier estuarine waters. Now all I'm waiting for is the kingfish to show up in the same water. The popper flies are ready!!

 

From Craig Worthington

Report type: Saltwater

Report date: 09 October 01