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Fishing the Upper Reaches

By Andrew Schrodter

Hey team hope all is well,

Since writing my last article, geez have we had some turns of events! From drought to fires and then flooding, which all seemed to happen in a matter of weeks! These weather events have dramatically altered a lot of creek and river systems and they will be worth exploring when the weather settles. In this article I visited one of my local systems to see how it is fishing in the upper reaches.

Where might this be? Well any little creek in a system can be a Plan B or even a Plan A, where you can get away from the bad weather and target a wide variety of estuary species. This particular session was just before the flooding, so the upper reaches were still very salty and had fish feeding right up into them. When I say right up, I mean right up until I'm ducking under trees and the creek is no wider than the tinny.

Having a smaller tinny, I decided to push right up this local system, which is something that I haven't done since I was very young. I invited good mate Justin along for the adventure. I loaded my boat with a few setups, ranging from a heavy baitcast outfit (Okuma Komodo combo) to a light spin combo (Okuma LRF Rod and Okuma Epixor XT 40 reel), while Justin equipped himself with a few Okuma Cerros rod and Epixor XT reel combos, ranging from 2-4kg through to 5-12kg. We both had all scenarios covered and set off super early.

So, in my mind there was only really one fish that I was chasing... mangrove jack. We had a nice run out tide and a very still morning and my plan of attack was to throw surface early, then move onto plastics later in the session. Justin and I both rigged surface and started targeting the usual broken trees, mangrove edges and rock walls, along with little run off drains. I was using a Fish Inc. 80mm Fly Half Popper, which is a larger sized pop / 'walk the dog' type surface lure.

Cast after cast, in some awesome spots, didn't even get a look in from a jack, but I guess that's jack fishing! What we did have however was a heap of bream attacking the Fish Inc. Popper. Being persistent and always thinking that I'm only one cast away from a jack, I kept throwing surface and Justin keyed into putting fish in the boat. With a quick tactic change Justin was rolling and hopping plastics and in no time this started producing some really nice bream.

After half an hour or more of throwing surface and seeing Justin putting a handful of bream in the boat, that was it for me. I thought stuff the jack, I'm downsizing and putting some runs on the board. I guess when your mate is stating... 'Another one in the boat geez they're loving these plastics, while getting his boat tally way above yours, it gives you the feeling of okay I'll do what you're doing now. Back to the jacks another day.

So what plastics were doing the trick? The ever faithful ZMan 2.5" and 3" Slim SwimZ were catching and Justin dialed in and matched with a little special, the Ned Rig. The muddy banks of the creek were loaded with crabs with one large orange claw, so Justin selected a 1/10oz Orange TT Lures NedlockZ jighead, teamed it up with a natural coloured 2.5" TRD CrawZ or 2.75" TRD BugZ and it was dynamite. If it didn't get nailed on the drop, a couple of hops and the fish couldn't help themselves.

With these lures tied on we started to boat more and more bream very quickly, as we pushed further and further up the creek. With the Ned Rig and the way it's designed to sit on the bottom, with the TT Lures mushroom shaped NedlockZ, teamed up with the natural buoyancy of the TRD CrawZ and BugZ, the little nippers float up in the water column and the bream couldn't resist it!

I noticed that with this setup Justin would cast hard up against the bank, allow the plastic to sink to the bottom (if it got there!) and then just slowly hop it back to the boat. Even just jiggling it in the one place until he got the strike / hook up seemed to work. With the Slim SwimZ I was casting toward the bank, letting it sink and slow rolling it back to the boat. I also hopped it every tenth cast or so, especially if I noticed where the water was a bit deeper in spots.

So, while slow rolling I was picking up quite a few bream, however when I noticed a bit of a drop off in the water depth, I hopped the plastic back and to my surprise it got nailed by something more solid! Now, we were in pretty tight country that was no more than a few boat widths wide and with some broken timber on the bank my initial thought was 'yes a jack'... until the fight kept going longer than it should have. To my surprise I saw a nice silver flash and boated a near legal jewie. I think we were both surprised to see a half decent size jewfish (mulloway) in the upper reaches. One thing though that was prominent during this session was prawns jumping out all up through this system, which in turn brings in the larger predators to feed.

After pushing right up and boating a heap of bream, we decided to head back out toward the mouth of the river with what was left of the run out tide. The plan was to target a flathead for a friend of Justin's. Targeting the shallow sandy drop offs and shallow rubble patches did the trick and in no time Justin had a nice keeper in the boat. This fish was landed from really shallow water, slow rolling a ZMan 2.5" Slim SwimZ in Midnight Oil colour, rigged on a 1/4oz 1/0 DemonZ, a go-to bream and flathead presentation. I had a cracker flathead swim right up behind my lure and swipe it right beside the boat. It didn't find the hook but we both watched it happen which was really cool. Job was done and Justin's friend had a little feed.

So, there you go, get into the upper reaches of your local system and see how it has changed and also if the weather is playing up and you're still hanging for a fish, this could become your Plan A. Try checking out some of your local creeks and make the effort to explore right into the upper reaches of them. Key into what bait is present, match your lures to this and see how you go. Justin and I had jacks in mind, however having the lighter combos aboard gave us the opportunity to change things up and key into a really productive bream bite, along with a few other species and we had a ball!

Until next time...
Andrew

Gear List:

Okuma Komodo Baitcast Rods
Okuma LRF Spin Rods
Okuma Cerros Spin Rods

Okuma Komodo Baitcast Reels
Okuma Epixor XT Spinning Reels

Platypus Braided Fishing Lines

ZMan 2.5" Slim SwimZ
ZMan 3" Slim SwimZ
ZMan 2.5" TRD CrawZ
ZMan 2.75" TRD BugZ

TT Lures HeadlockZ Jigheads
TT Lures DemonZ Jigheads
TT Lures NedlockZ Jigheads