Up early this morning I arrived at the Petrie boat ramp at 5:45am only to find the ramp closed due to all the works on the new bridges. DOH!!!
Should have known! Oh well, plan B. Made my way to the south pine ramp at Bald Hills. On the water just after first light and trolling my new Koolie Minnow.
- First Light.
Only paddled 2 minutes and already had some hits and I'm thinking WOW this lure really is magic! A couple more minutes paddle and the lure gets a massive thump and the line goes slack. Fouled up, I think. I start to wind it in to find there is weight on it. A LOT of weight. Fish starts on some big runs and after a lengthy battle I finally see some leader when the mystery fish gives a headshake and he's gone. Easy come easy go I think! But I would have liked to have seen him!
I trolled out to the highway bridges with lots of hits and one little flattie picked up.
- Little Flatchap.
At this point I had a bit of a flick around the bridges and the snags leading up to it. I then turned back to home to troll the minnow back. Not long in the paddle back I felt the minnow get snagged. As per usual, I paddled back to it tried to lift it up to no avail. My brand new koolie minnow was well and truly snagged. I tried paddling way out to all sides of the snag and pulling but the lure wasn't budging. I haven't lost a hard-body lure since I started yakking but it looked like that streak was to be broken. Oh the despair. I just couldn't bring myself to snap the line! Thats $20 worth of fish catching magic attached to the end of that line!!!
That was when I decided to go Macgyver on this snag. I made myself a lure retriever out of some 20lb line, an evolution jighead, a sinker and a treble hook. I looped the wire jighead over my line and let it fall down to the snag. It took about 15 minutes of paddling against the current and jigging my lure retriever but I eventually hooked onto the snag and lo and behold, my lure came to the surface!!!! What was attached to it was about 2m of wire trace which was connected to god knows what.
- Macgyver! Improvised Lure Retriever.
Anyway, pleased as punch I then paddled back to the boat ramp with Koolie Minnow in tow. Being a bit more careful of the shallow ground I managed to pick up 4 more flatties with one of them being a PB (65cm) and a nice PB tailer (45cm). After getting my lure back I thought I'd thank the fishing gods and release all fishies to fight another day
- Flatchap!
- PB Tailer - 45cm
- Om nom nom.
- Another Flattie.
- Fat Flatchap.
Think he'll accept flat-head fillets when I catch more?