SPRING FLATHEAD IN THE ESTUARY

Each year I look forward to Spring rolling around and the temperature starting to warm up. It also signals the start of the breeding season for Big Dusky Flathead in the estuaries and a time when these cool fish become more active and more keen to take a swipe at soft plastics and lures. Live baits are also a great way to target flathead all year round and I have landed some great fish over the years on live mullet, yellowtail, garfish, and even squid.
My favourite way to target them however is on surface lures up on the flats and shallow water. On this day I headed out from Swallow Rock boat Ramp at Grays Point on the Hacking River. It was a windy day and the plan was to find a spot out of the wind but accessible to flathead in the shallows. I was using one rod set up with the OSP bent 130mm surface lure and the other with a 4" Rapala soft plastic. Ended up landing a few fish the biggest a 60cm that fell to the soft plastic in just over a metre of water. I also landed a very small flattie on the Bent lure and a Trevally on a Jackal Chubby deep lure.
I went out in my Hobie Lynx and was also very excited to be using my new Micro Power pole. I ordered one from Hunter water Sports (HWS) and was super happy to get it installed and on the water. Wow! How spoilt it is to have one of those on the back of your kayak for flats and shallow water fishing. Such a simple and effective system for anchoring you in position at a touch of a button. It also made it much easier to launch my drone for filming as when launching and retrieving I could just focus on that and not having to worry about the kayak moving around everywhere.
My DJI Mavic 2 Pro launched easily and enabled me to capture some footage in what was a very windy day on the water.
I use Shimano fishing rods and reels and fairly light lines in the 10lb braid and leader for this session.

Really looking forward to coming across a few more flatties in the coming weeks.