Tackle Tactics » Tips-Techniques » Sweetwater-Impoundments-Brackish » Sooty Grunter

Sooty Grunter

Justin Willmer

Over the years I have been lucky enough to catch a stack of different species but one that I had never had the opportunity to target was the sooty grunter. I had read plenty of stories about their aggression and power, the magic environments where they can be located and when the opportunity to chase a few arose, I was champing at the bit.

Sooty grunter are a solidly built freshwater fish that are distributed from around Bundaberg, a few hour's drive north of Brisbane, through to the tip of Queensland and the Northern Territory, into the top section of WA. Their coloration varies from a pale brownish grey through to a deep black colour, depending on the environment in which they reside.

Plans were locked and loaded, bass gear packed and we hit the road in search of sooties, as they are affectionately known. My wife Sheri and I were fishing from kayaks, while our friends Robbie and Sue had their Kingfisher canoe loaded for our river adventure. The plan was to visit a few different rivers on our travels, working some areas Robbie and Sue had fished previously and prospecting some new country.

I tied on a ZMan ChatterBait Mini 1/4oz in Green Pumpkin / Black colour, while Sheri opted for a TT 1/4oz 1/0 HeadlockZ HD jighead, #2 TT Jig Spinner in Gold and a ZMan 2.5" GrubZ in Pumpkin. Both of these lure options are favourites of ours for bass, so we were confident in terms of action, retrieve and fish appeal.

A couple of casts and I was hooked up... but not to a sooty. The fish ran fast, jumped and I couldn't be disappointed with a nice 65cm toga, even if it wasn't our target species. A few photos, a release and it was back in search of sooties.

Casting close to an edge with plenty of overhanging vegetation and submerged timber, my ChatterBait was receiving plenty of attention, with continual taps on the retrieve. Next cast I mixed it up, adding a few pauses and was soon hook up to a feisty little sooty. A few more followed before the ChatterBait was lost to a solid fish in heavy structure.

I opted for the same rig as Sheri and found that most fish came from overhanging vegetation, laydown timber and the 'V' created where submerged timber intersected one another. Land a cast in the 'V', commence a slow retrieve and hang on. The beauty of fishing the soft plastic with a Jig Spinner is that it creates subtle flash and vibration that draws the fish to the lure, while also reducing the chance of the plastic snagging.

Robbie and Sue had also landed sooties and toga, with the ZMan 3" MinnowZ and TT Lures Vortex spinnerbaits doing the job for them. I was stoked with my 8 or so sooties I had landed for the session, although I hadn't really stopped to just look at one and appreciate their colouration and strength, so I was looking forward to another day on the water. Sheri had plenty of action and dropped a few, but her first sooty had eluded her, so tomorrow would hopefully be her time.

We enjoyed a good feed, a couple of coldies and plenty of yarns in our comfortable camp that night. I am always pretty fanatical about the camping checklist and making sure we have everything for our trip, so let's just say that when we curled up to sleep that night without our airbed I wasn't very popular... won't live that down for a while.

The Jig Spinner rigged 2.5" GrubZ did the job again on day two, with Pumpkinseed and Black being our go-to colours. Sheri made a few pinpoint casts and was rewarded with some quality sooties, including a couple of 40cm models that had her dragged into the trees within a couple of seconds of hooking up. There is no doubt that these balls of muscle can pull and I found the audibles flowing as the taps turned to hook sets and solid runs into the structure.

Paddling toward a massive snag pile and casting across the submerged crisscross of fallen trees, deposited by earlier floods, I managed 7 sooties in 7 casts from what was one of the most impressive pieces of structure I had ever encountered. Allowing the lure to bump the timber as it was retrieved seemed to fire the fish up more, attracting multiple sooties to the lure and encouraging aggressive strikes. To wrap up the session I landed another toga around the 65cm mark, this time on the Jig Spinner rigged GrubZ. Robbie and Sue also got stuck into the fish and we were all left smiling at the end of a great couple of days.

Tackle wise, rods of around 7' 2-4kg, fitted with 2500 size reels and spooled with 8lb braid and 10lb leader were adequate for the bulk of the fish. A small net and lip grips made landing and handling the fish easy. Lure of choice was definitely the ZMan 2.5" GrubZ, rigged on a TT 1/4oz 1/0 HeadlockZ HD jighead, with a #2 Gold Jig Spinner attached, and I even managed to vertically jig a few fish on this combo from deep within structure piles.

Sheri and I were both pumped to land our first sooty grunter. They truly are a ball of muscle and they feed aggressively, fight hard and handle well. With a new year just around the corner it's time to pencil in on the calendar a few trips to target some more new species. Bring it on!