Meadowbank morning

[Little_Flatty]

Headed down to my local at Meadowbank again this morning. I've come off four donut sessions in a row lately, mostly due to experimental mucking around.

Got an undersized flatty in one of the eddies near the railway bridge, and right at the end of the session came a 42cm model, which was released:

The lure that did the damage was a 3 inch Berkeley Gotam shad in perch, rigged weedless on an EWG hook, with a 1/8 oz TT Snakelockz head.

I had a question for my fellow raiders: recently I've seen a few of the regulars get good bream and flathead off the ferry wharf, on pieces of locally caught herring. I normally avoid the locations they fish, mainly because the current really races through there and I struggle to get my lures down without an absolute lump of weight (1/2 oz and up). Does anyone have any tips for fishing these locations with lures? I did think a blade or a soft vibe might do the trick, but for some reason, any real success has eluded me on these styles of lures. Would be interested in any suggestions.

Edited December 21, 2021 by Little_Flatty

[Green Hornet]

Nice flatty there. Do you find you miss more hooksets with the weedless rigged lures? I certainly do and only go weedless when absolutely necessary.

Regarding your bream query, try googling Docklands bream and see what you come up with. Guys get them down there on small, black and mother of pearl coloured blades and vibes dropped down along the pylons. The idea is to imitate a mussel dislodged from the timber. Though they're not fishing particularly strong currents, I don't see why it wouldn't work in the flow.

One guy on another forum has even developed a vibe that looks like a whole mussel and appears to be getting impressive results. If you want to PM me, I'll send you a link.

 

[Little_Flatty]

Thanks @Green Hornet I'm going to look into these.

Regarding weedless, let's just say I won't foul hook an undersized tailor or catch a whiting like I might with a traditional jighead or a hardbody with trebles. However, with any decent hit, I tend to hook up. That said, I don't absolutely bury the hook like they do in the states. All I do is expose the hookpoint, then pull the plastic up and cover up the tip of the point (this is with a 4-inch bass minnow and a 2/0 EWG hook). See how the tip of the point is buried:

I think this is how most Australian fishos using weedless do it (it's on the Australian Berkeley and Z-man videos). This is enough to prevent most snags where I fish, but the hook point exposes itself if a fish takes it. I do miss some hits, but I also miss them using normal jigheads as well.

All this said, I do this out of necessity. My local spots are particularly snaggy and losing 3 or more jigheads in a session was the norm for me, before I started doing this. So it's weedless plastics or hardbodies for me. When I'm fishing the flats I'll revert to a normal jighead setup.

[Rebel]

Nice Flattie well done.

Cheers.

[Yowie]

Nice specimen, something for your efforts. Cannot help you much with the plastic enquiry, as the couple of times I tried a weedless plastic prawn, I had flattie hits but no hookups.