November | 2023 | Landangler's Blog

The weather warmed up and the flathead fishing was excellent in January, 2024. Everyone was catching them over the holidays and cardboard roast turkey, piles of ham and excessive Baileys consumption (more of a desert than a beverage – really) were soon only a faint memory.

We had a few storms and the swell stayed up. The northerly wind blew up most afternoons but the fishing was good in the Clarence River, as the water started to warm up. One morning wading in the shallows I came across what I assumed was a dead water dragon, floating in about waist deep water. It was completely rigid when I picked it up, but half way back to shore it leapt back into the water and swam away. It had done a good job of playing dead.

There were plenty of juvenile prawns around now and the small tailor and bream were smashing into them, everywhere. There were also still some small schools of big mullet roaming around.

The highlight of the flathead fishing was catching and releasing a monster flathead on a 3 inch Powerbait Rippleshad soft plastic lure. She was sitting behind some rocks as the last of the tide ran out in no more than 50 cm of water, less than 5 metres from shore. I only had my very light Samaki Zing Gen III SXL562 extra light rod and 12lb leader so I took the fight slowly and fortunately found a sandy spot to ease her ashore. I took a few pictures and measured her – approx. 86cm . She had a head like a shovel. I pushed her back in and she swam away – what a fish!

The swell was up and down again in December. I managed a few mornings fishing on the rocky headlands and caught quite a few juvenile jewfish on my favourite GULP Squid Vicious soft plastics. I can pretty much no longer find the lime tiger (green and orange) colour so I have switched to the nuclear chicken (red and green) colour. When the mulloway are hungry they don’t much seem to care which soft plastic you use, but I think the dangling legs of the squid pattern can tempt them out of hiding, when they are reluctant. I also believe the GULP scent makes a difference.

There were also a few tailor around, particularly at dawn and dusk. I caught them on the surface and with the soft plastics I had intended for mulloway. I found plenty of flathead, fishing the Clarence River around Iluka and Browns Rocks.

There was a hatch of prawns and when the jelly prawns were in the shallows close to the rocks, so were the flathead. I swapped through a few different Powerbait Shrimps and tried the Berkley Shimma Shrimp soft vibe. They both caught fish but so did any soft plastic minnow, worked slowly along the bottom, close to the bank.