Fishing Mangrove Lined Creek with HARDBODY LURES.

Well, Ive officially found a new favourite creek in the local area and hit the pinnacle of my fishing career. Haha, nah but seriously this was a really fun day snag bashing, chasing Mangrove Jacks with the missus, just the Jacks didn't wanna play the game... but at the end of the day it was non stop fish and plenty of laughs so an all round good time.

I got a new PB Mudskipper (the pinnacle of estuary lure fishing), a small Barra, heaps of Pikeys, a cod and even a steely jumped on when I was trying to stop my boat from crashing into the bank. I kinda felt sorry for Elen as she struggled to catch anything from the back of the boat but I think it was a good character building exercise for her. (She does get it done in the end though..)

The rod I'm using is a Dobyns Champion Extreme 702C, this has a nice soft tip for casting smaller lures but for a 6-12lb rod it has a lot of power down low to control fish during a fight and keep them away from structure. I have this matched to a Calcutta Conquest 100HG which is small, comfortable to use and it has the speed to regain line and control the fight when fish are swimming at you. This is spooled with Sunline Castaway in 30lb, which is super strong and very abrasion resistant due to its coating process, but also thinner than most other braids of the same breaking strain. This allows the line to cut through the water better with less drag resulting in better feel without sacrificing strength, for leader I'm using Sunline FC Rock in 40lb, attached to my mainline with a hand tied PR knot (see how to video here    • THE FG KNOT SUCKS!!! - Learn to tie t...  ). Im not a huge fan of flurocarbon leaders as the advantages don't usually outweigh the disadvantages for my style of fishing, but in situations like this with clean water and cagey fish I'm happy to make exceptions. For this video Elen and I were both using the Lucky Craft Pointer 78XD, this lure is a perfect snack sized offering, the XD bib gets the lure down in the zone quick and provides a super tight action which irritates predatory fish. These lures come rigged with decent hardware but I choose to upgrade the hooks to a BKK Fang 663 (#6 front, #8 rear) which helps to pin fish when they short strike due to the sticky design of the BKK points, they are a light gauge hook which won't mess up the lures action and are capable of handling both Mangrove Jack and Barra while fishing smaller Japanese lures. The best part is that with a #3 BKK split ring they slowly float in the salt which helps you to be able to reverse the lure out of tricky situations when you cast it into the timber.

For this kind of fishing it pays to have a polished casting technique, both forehand and backhand, to help put your lure right in the zone regardless of boat position and other obstacles. The only way to get this is practise and I think its actually fun casting at small objects in the backyard having challenges with a mate and these skills come in handy when accuracy is essential. You don't want to spend half your day retrieving lures from trees and snags, because there is a fine line between getting your lure in the zone and having to drive in spooking the fish to retrieve your lures, there is very little room for error!

Anyway, I know there's no real trophy species here but it was really fun to produce this video, and fishing is about having fun right.
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Peace!