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Mixing it up on the Fraser Flats

By Sean (Skip) Thompson

Fraser Island is known as the mecca for beach fishing around Australia and for good reason. The winter tailor fishing can be phenomenal, plus there are occasional catches of mulloway as well as great catches of summer whiting, bream and dart. But that is not all, "slide baiting" is also becoming increasingly popular with catches of big Spanish mackerel, sharks, GT and the occasional snapper from the beach.

All of this fishing though is concentrated on the ocean beach or eastern side of Fraser. What few anglers realise is just how good the quality and variety of fishing can be on the western side of Fraser. 'Fraser's Flats' as I call them, are the calm waters on the Hervey Bay or Great Sandy Straits side of the island and include a mix of creeks and shallow sandflats, some of which are lined by mangroves or softer/sand and weed. Furthermore, in some spots the deep ledge that runs out from the island is accessible with a good cast at low tide, particularly around the full and new moon periods when we experience the lowest of the low tides.

Whiting are prevalent on Fraser's flats, particularly from June to September but these flats are also home to many other species, most of which are great lure targets! Over the years we have landed a great mix of species on soft plastics on the flats and this year was no exception, even adding another species to the list.

Our Trip

My mates and 3 brothers from our Ontour Fishing Australia crew had two trips to Fraser this year, about 6 weeks apart. This year represented our 22nd year fishing the island and as always this trip was filled with much the same anticipation as every other one has been. I always give each of our bigger 11 day trips a tour title, with the aim of providing some incentive for the tour. Our latest tour was titled the 'Fraser Island Personal Best (PB) Tour 2018'. The tour didn't disappoint with the lads scoring many new PBs, including one of the guys who was the last bait angler standing in the group, using soft plastics for the first time and scoring some fantastic flathead and a beautiful estuary cod on ZMans and TT jigheads.

While we spread our time fairly evenly between the eastern and western sides of the island, this article focusses on the western side of the island, using soft plastics as we wade the flats on foot.

So how did we go? Queenfish, estuary cod, grunter, giant trevally, silver trevally and golden trevally - are all fish associated with bay or offshore boat fishing, but these were just some of the species that we caught on our latest trip and all using plastics from the shore. Throw in our other more 'common' species captures of flathead, bream, tarwhine, dart, long tom and whiting on plastics and you can see the incredible variety on offer from Fraser's beaches and flats.

Target locations

'Fraser's Flats' can be described as the calmer, surf-free area on the western side of the island. Given the size of the island (123km in length and 22km at its widest point), your choice of spot is usually dictated by where you are staying on the island.

There are a bunch of locations to fish on the western side of Fraser including Wathumba, Awinya, Woralie and Deep Creeks, Kingfisher Bay and Ungowa. These areas have a myriad of features including creek mouths, drains, soft sand and silty mudflats, deep ledges and more.

The areas at the southern and northern most points of the island (Hook Point and Sandy Cape), also classify as estuary flats. These points have somewhat different features such as harder corrugated sand up towards Sandy Cape and areas of gently shelving clear water down the southern Hook Point end. These areas are better for whiting, dart and trevally than fish like flathead.

LOCATIONS & TIDES

FALLING TIDE

• Fish the drain and creek entrances for flathead (and bream) on plastics in the last 2-3hrs of run-out
• In very clear water, look for discoloured or even tea-tree stained water for protection for the fish
• Fish the deeper ledges/drop offs at low tide for species such as barred grunter and trevally

RISING TIDE

• Fish around coffee rock outcrops for flathead
• Throw plastics around the entrances of drains and creeks for the first 1-1.5hrs of run-in
• Fish around the mangroves and covered yabbie flats for flatties and bream on plastics a couple of hours either side of high tide

Apart from the variety of fish on offer, the western side of the island is a particularly good option when the surf is chopped up or full of weed, or the winds are against you. A good time to fish the western side of Fraser is in south-east or easterly winds due to protection from the island. Avoid strong westerlies or southerlies that come straight across or up the straight in winter or strong northerlies that come straight down the strait in summer.

Tackle

For many years now we have been big fans of the ZMan range of lures. We got in very early on these plastics before this brand was well known, for three key reasons. The first is their durability - their well-publicised '10X Tough Elaztech' design means very few chomped and broken lures. Second is their buoyancy - when you pause in your retrieve, the jighead will sit on the bottom but the tail will sit up enticingly and move around naturally in the current.? Check out the video on our Ontour Fishing Australia Facebook page to see what I mean. Finally, the range of ZMans is awesome, and in our view no plastics come close to the baitfish design of the Slim SwimZ range. They work and they work damn well!

So, as usual this year we targeting the entrances of drains, basins, sand patches amongst weed or drop-offs with lightly weighted TT Lures HeadlockZ Finesse (light gauge) jigheads, from 1/6 to 1/4oz and plastics such as ZMan Slim SwimZ, Curly TailZ and MinnowZ. While Motor Oil has been our favourite colour in clear water for many years, this year we tried the new Midnight Oil colour (which is the Motor Oil colour but with silver glitter). This lure really performed well in sunny bright conditions. Likewise, the new Coconut Ice Glow colour (a light pink and white) performed very well in slightly darker water and towards dusk.

Interestingly, only six weeks earlier the ZMan StreakZ Curly TailZ in Pink Glow colour and the ZMan MinnowZ in Green Lantern colour produced about 75% of our flathead over a 3 day period. This year, the colours mentioned in the paragraph above, plus Electric Chicken colour in the Slim SwimZ and StreakZ Curly TailZ range caught the majority of fish, so it always pays to have a variety of colours and tails depending on what the fish are targeting on a particular day.

The Action

In general, when we used a slow hop technique, we tended to catch more bottom dwellers like flathead. However, with a variation in speed to slightly quicker long lifts and drops, we picked up more variety like grunter, queenfish, trevally and bream.

All in all, we had another great trip to Fraser this year and enjoyed some fantastic fishing variety and quality on the western side of the island. I hope you get a chance to fish them yourself soon!

Sean (Skip) Thompson

Ontour Fishing Australia