Fraser Island's Western Flats

By Sean 'Skip' Thompson

Changing it up when things get tough...

Another year, another Fraser trip. Okay, make that two trips. After 24 years of Fraser Island trips, you can't keep me away from the place!

The great thing about Fraser's diverse fishing options is that there are normally fish to be caught in most conditions. Not only that, but even after all these years I continue to learn what works and what doesn't in various conditions.

This trip wasn't one of our most productive trips by any means. Thick weed covering most of the eastern beach and several days of strong NW/SW winds on the western side (straight in our face) saw to that. But like with all challenges in life, it pays to think differently. Thinking about possible solutions and in this case, trying to think like a fish more than ever.

Preparation

Before I go into detail on what worked for us on Fraser's western side flats, I thought I'd share some of the preparation that I do before the trip, to get the most out of the trip. For the purposes of this article, I'll set aside my tailor and whiting tactics from the eastern beach and focus on our soft plastics fishing on the western side.

First things first. Going for 10 nights I always take two graphite rods, in the event of a possible tip breakage from transport across the island with a plethora of mates gear in the back of the 4WDs or trekking through mangroves or bush on occasions. My preferred rods are light high-modulus graphite 1-3kg rods, at least 7'6" in length. I always check the runners on the rods before a trip to ensure there are no missing guides or nicks or cuts on the guides. I will ensure I replace any that are damaged as damaged guides means damaged line and lost fish.

Next, I take two reels, again in the event of a dunking or seized reel I have a backup. It hasn't happened to me yet, but it has with mates, so I like to be prepared. What I do a couple of weeks out before my Fraser trip is either replace any well-worn braid or top up any undershot spools to a couple of millimetres from the spool lip. This is critical as it ensures maximum casting distance. I have mates who have thought 'she'll be right' on this issue, then watched on as my casts sail well past theirs, due to the resistance their line is getting as it comes off their 3/4 filled spools.

My mates and I use Platypus Pulse X8 Braid in 6lb. This line is a nice bright orange, which is great for spotting little pings or movement in the line that can indicate the fish has closed its mouth on the plastic. Having a quality graphite rod and cork butt can also help to transfer some of these hits down the rod and into the cork butt if you miss the visual signal. This Pulse X8 Braid is also super thin for its strength and so this means smaller connection knots to the leader as well.

I then pre-tie about 2.4m of fluorocarbon leader in about 10lb, with flathead being one of the main targets. Some mates prefer to go up to 15lb as insurance, however I find I get more variety of fish on 10lb and rarely have bite offs or breakage. The key to this is having smooth, quality drags and playing your fish with the rod down low and at right angles to you when the fish are in the shallow water. This reduces the angle of the line on the fish and helps prevent the thrashing of its head out of the water. This can be when a lot of good fish are lost.

In terms of reel, I go for a 1000-2000 in tradition size reels to match to my light rods. Apart from the rods and reels I then take along a sling or shoulder bag, with an assortment of colours and designs of ZMan soft plastics and TT Lures jigheads.

The Business End

When it comes to the business end of the line, on Fraser's flats I like to use the finesse range of TT Lures HeadlockZ jigheads. The reason for this is the HeadlockZ hook design has a grub keeper that helps to prevent your plastic from sliding down the hook and thus missing fish with a poor presentation.

The choice of the 'Finesse' range may seem a subtle difference, but to me this is key in terms of our performance on the flats. I use the Finesse range (rather than the HD - heavy duty hook range) solely in shallow water for two reasons.

The first is hook up rates. The HeadlockZ Finesse jighead is built on a Japanese Gamakatsu chemically sharpened hook, which gives maximum penetration on our light braid and light drag settings. Secondly, after studying the sink rate in my pool at home, the fine wire hooks have a somewhat slower, more natural sink rate in shallow water.

Finally, when it comes to lures, we tend to stick with two to three favourite styles on Fraser's flats. The Slim SwimZ and the 4 or 5" StreakZ Curly TailZ were the main weapons of choice this year. The bigger Curly TailZ have plenty of in-built action and so you only need a steady lift-lift-lift and drop action on these lures, to attract flatties to their fluttering tail on the drop. They also tend to attract bigger fish 'on average'.

That said, the ZMan Slim SwimZ, especially in the slightly bigger 3" style, still tend to catch a lot of big fish. Once again, they accounted for a whole bunch of high 60 and 70cm+ fish this trip. But the other huge advantage of this versatile little lure is the huge variety of fish it catches on the flats. Using this lure, we have caught flathead, grunter, bream, tarwhine, whiting, dart, estuary cod, mackerel, GTs, queenfish, long toms and evening remora in the shallows of Fraser's flats.

When I'm working shallow water with this lure for flathead, I use a pretty gentle lift, lift, lift, drop, method, like with bigger lures. If the water is very shallow, I do this with the rod down low and at right angles to my body, to keep the lure under the water.

However, and this is the trick, when casting over a drop off into slightly deeper water, knowing there is more chance of our highly prized grunter, I use a much quicker wrist action, lifting the rod from 45 degrees to about 10 o'clock or 150 degrees. This tends to fire a bunch of species up and you get smacked as soon as you begin to drop the lure back down. Make sure your drag is not tight as these hits from grunter and GT will soon bust you off if it is.

Finally, colour. Match the water is the key. On sunny days, I love Motor Oil and Midnight Oil. However, in discoloured water, Pearl and Pink are hard to beat.

Lessons

So, getting back to our trip and the challenges. With strong winds blowing in our face, we tried to position ourselves to cast with the wind for extra distance. Nothing particularly new there. The other lesson was that this sometimes meant you were casting over your fish, which are normally positioned facing the current. This means you are bringing the lure back over them, rather than towards them. This resulted in lighter leader tending to get more fish. Unfortunately, it was also resulting in some 'short strikes' as the lure went over the fish and landed in front of its mouth, giving it less reaction time. A change from a size 1/0 hook to a bigger size 2/0 hook in the Slim SwimZ saw much better hook up rates.

Like usual too, we adapted as the tide fell and wind continued to blow. While we might have been catching fish on Midnight Oil colour in the relatively clear water around two hours before low tide, as the tide dropped and the wind continued, the action slowed. A change to Pinks and Pearls saw us back onto fish, even if the numbers weren't quite as high as in calmer water conditions of other years.

All in all, another great trip. For more tips, tricks and reports, you can follow me on my Facebook page, Ontour Fishing Australia. Cheers Skip (Sean Thompson)

Gearing Up:
ZMan 2.5" Slim SwimZ
ZMan 3" Slim SwimZ
TT Lures HeadlockZ Finesse Jigheads
Platypus P8 Braid
Platypus Stealth FC Fluorocarbon Leader