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Lures & soft plastics retrieves

Lures and reviews
Gear and set ups - Barramundi
Soft plastics (up to 12 inches long for barra)

Split knot for heavy mono

Mustard heavy line knot

FG Knot

FG Knot

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Techniques
Bottom bashing

I do very little lure or soft plastic fishing except for under two circumstances:

• I have found it useful to dabble on the dark side from time to time in order to understand why lures and soft plastics work so well and when I can identify what I can do to flies to emulate those successful elements
• From time to time I fish with friends that only lure or soft plastic fish. On those days because it's so hard having a fly fisher and a lure caster fishing from the same boat I use the same techniques that they opt for.

This summer’s weather in central Queensland has been dominated by wind and has got me thinking more about increasing my fishing on the dark side. For the last 2 or 3 months almost every day the winds have been in the range 18 km/h to 30 km/h and on some days much stronger than that. In terms of coping with the summer temperatures which have hovered in the range 28 C to 33 C the wind has been a blessing but from a fly fishing perspective it has been a real problem and in my case a game changer … let me explain.

I don’t think there has been a day for over a month where the wind speed after 10am has been below 15 km/h so whilst I have been getting up at 3:30am to 4am by the time I get to where I want to fish its typically between 6am and 7am leaving a fishing session of just 3 or 4 hours and that has been on the good days.

All of my fly fishing is done from boats. I occasionally do some shore based fly fishing but to be fair the area has a lot of snakes and whilst I have only seen one croc it would be a foolish to assume that one croc had seen me … so the boat it is.

Tidal differentials up here generally between 3 m and 4m around the new and full moons and that means that a lot of water is moving about in the rivers and the harbour. Those tidal runs in themselves are difficult to handle and by far the easiest time to fish is the neap of the tides … less than an hour on each tide. The other side of the tide equation is that most of my target species up here love big fast tides and if you want to catch them then you have to put a lot of effort in to line management. In those bigger tidal runs unfortunately, the tide quickly impacts on the fly line and sweeps the line away mitigating the opportunity to work the fly as intended and quickly putting a big loop in the fly line and swinging the fly to the surface. … that happens very quickly even with heavily weighted flies.
When you add wind to that problem that exacerbates the difficulty of properly fishing your fly because the wind changes the drift of the boat and far too often takes your casting position off target. Add to that that the ease of casting a fly line has an inverse relationship with wind speed you can quickly be in trouble. Twice this year whilst I have been trying to manage my boat in the wind, and fishing at the same time, I have broken my fly line off, well up from the tip of the fly line itself, after getting snagged up. Yep one moment everything was coacher and the next thing the drift of the boat was changed by either tidal movement or wind and the fly line, leader and fly I was managing within seconds was snagged up 20 meters away from the boat. You would think you could just motor back up to the snag and release the fly or at least break it off at the leader but on the two occasions I broke lines, what had happened was that the wind and tide had combined to make the boat drift erratically and it was my fly line itself that was snagged around bottom structure.

I should mention that Lake Awonga in one of my regular fishing destinations and whilst obviously we do not have tidal runs there it is surprising how much water movements caused by surface wind and underlying wind surge, and the topography exists. Add to that that I typically fish amongst standing timber so getting of course due to the wind up there is not without its consequences.

There is an increasing number of fisho’s up here fishing the fly but in every discussion I have had with those people I have been surprised to hear that they share their sports fishing time between fly and the dark side … I am now beginning to understand why.

As you may have already seen a lot of the flies that I have developed for targeting Central Queensland species such as barra, mangrove jack, queenfish and GT’s have been influenced by lures. I am expecting that as I become more adept with lure fishing I will find elements of lures and how they are fished into my fly fishing.

The single big advantage of fishing lures on modern tackle is that braided line is typically less than 10% of the thickness of a #10 weight fly line. Those thin lines coupled with a weighted lure on fluorocarbon leader of say one or two meters are easy to cast even in the wind and when they are in the water that suffer only 10% or less of the effect of the tie or wind on the line … it is simple physics.
Fly fishing is first and foremost my happy place and will remain that way but with the above in mind in order to increase my fishing time, to learn more about catching fish in CQ and to be able to take up more fishing invitations I have set myself up with a couple of spin rods and associated gear.
I am looking forward to that past of my fishing journey which will now include some fishing on the dark side and intend to add articles to this post relating to:

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