[alpha]

Soft plastics fishing for flatheads is new to me and I would like to know what an appropriate size flathead soft plastic is.
All the fish I' have caught on them have been small(undersize or barley leagal)
The lures I've been using 3'' berkley power minnows & 80mm softies rack gliders
Any assistance would be appreciated.

 

[Peril]

3" power minnows will catch a lot of flathead and some of decent size - upwards of 50cm. If you want to catch fewer but bigger flathead, try the Berkley 5" Jerk Shads - either gulp or powerbait. Just need to drag them along the bottom where the big ones lie in wait for a passing meal. A weedless presentation will help in some areas. You will also get some small ones this way - flathead aren't smart.

 

[Scott]

Goodaye mate. I used 2" to 6". This is more dependent on what jighead size I need to use to to current and depth when using jigheads rather than expected quarry size. When dropshotting I generally use a lip hooked 3" bass minnow and a 6" Storm shad as the dropshot weight.

A smallish flathead will still grab the 6 inch lure and by the same token you will get a good fish on the small one. Flathead are a great although opportunistic predator that will nail pretty much anything that will fit in their mouths in range but I still like to mimic the save of the prevalent baitfish where ever possible.

Catch ya Scott

 

[Jeffo]

I've had most success on the 3" Berkley minnow (in pumpkinseed colour) I have caught from undersized throught to 50-60 cm

Cheers

Jeffo

 

[milansek]

I use 4" - 6'' . But if you are catching smaller flathead thats good becouse there will be a biger one around. Most of the time there are 3 or so smaller males to one biger female. So just keep casting around were you are hooking the smaller fish. Hope that helps, MILAN.

 

[PeterJ]

I use lures around the 2 to 3 inch size. Most fish these days i ping are around the 45 to 65 cm mark in Port Phillip.

 

[RedPhoenix]

Unfortunately, due to the change in ownership of this web site and the lack of response by the owners to my requests to remove my email address from all administrative-level notifications and functionality, I have decided to remove my posts on AKFF. Thank you for the great times, the fantastic learning experiences and the many many fish. If you are desperate for the old content of this particular post, it is available below base64 encoded and bzip2 compressed.

Red.

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[Davey G]

my pb flattie (80cm) was caught on the same rig as jeffo ( 3" pumpkinseed powerbait minnow)

have also caught quite a few on the 6" gulp sandworms cut in half to 3".

as others say, the size of the lure doesn't seem to matter. small fish will attack big baits and vice versa....

gotta love those big stupid fish 8)

 

[aleg75]

I've had most success though, with the 3 inch swimmer-tail shads they sell in KMart (generally the black/silver ones, with the red or yellow swimmer tails).

Red.

Ditto, 3 inch shad's, work for me, get allot of the pan size, but I think the big ones are luck.......but try the bigger 5" ones for the big ones, less hook ups, but bigger fish as Peril suggested.

 

[sam60]

I have had some success with berkely 4 inch turtleback in pumpkinseed with 1/8 oz (3.5 gram) jighead in the shallows and the last couple of trips a couple of 50 cm and few undersize flatty's have come unstuck. this has been in around 1 metre of water. I did manage a small flatty on half a sandworm in bloody but agree if you mange to "match the hatch" you may end up with some decent fish