queensland Flatty Flick'n'. New PB

[samsteele115]

I have been doing a lot of catch and release fishing of late, so i decided its time for a good feed of fish.

I headed out to the Pine with Richard who is very new to lure fishing to try and get him onto a decent fish. I thought flathead would be a perfect species to target for a newbie as they are pretty easy to catch. Flathead is also my favourite eating fish so it was a no brainer!

It wasn't too long before Richard hooked up to a fish, a solid flatty about 50cm. He was stoked! He kindly donated it to my esky

He was next on again with a 39 and I was relieved to follow him with a similar sized fish which fell just short of the legal mark.

We worked our way over to some promising looking flats at the start of the run-in; a perfect ambush location for a big lizard.

I landed another smaller flathead before I got a solid hit on my soft plastic on a 1/8th jighead and my Nordic Stage Jaeger buckled over. I slowly and carefully steered the fish towards the boat in the 40cm water depth making sure I didn't pop the 6lb leader. After a very crappy net job by Richard I had my new PB flathead which was somewhere between 65-67cm :whistle: (I was itching to get her back so it was a very brief measurement). It's always great fun catching lizards in very shallow water.

After a few happy snaps and me dropping my lip-grips in the water I put her back and she swam off strongly. It was not a very long fish but was fat and heavy for its size, so I'm thinking maybe it was full of eggs if it was a female.

Richard got called into work shortly after so we called it a day after only 3 hours of fishing. A total of 5 flathead landed but only 1 kept for a feed. Oh well, it tasted bloody great! :woohoo:

Thanks,

Sam.

[Binder]

Congrats on the PB, its a good feeling

[Luvit]

Congrats to Richard on his first flathead and your PB.

Your guiding is improving, or maybe it'srthe quality of your clients.

[STKE]

Solid effort Sam

I've got a free Saturday this weekend so planning on doing the same

Where do you mainly focus you're efforts. That spot in you're photo looks like the southpine arm.

[samsteele115]

Yep in the south pine. I actually spend more time near the mouth of the north pine because I can usually pull in a few 40-50cm flathead which makes a great feed. Having spent more time there I have had greater success at the mouth opposed to the upper reaches, but I know for sure that more big girls hang out up further. If I fish the upper reaches more and sus it out a bit I'm sure I could get do better than I do at the mouth, I reckon the fishing pressure isn't as great.

[STKE]

There are some pretty good long drop off's in places on the run out.

Doesn't matter if it's 30m of water or 30cm. The big girls dons't care.

Those Bloodworm colored paddle tails are perfect.

[samsteele115]

Just noticed the poor quality of Richards photos. Here's another from my phone. Fat!

[Do$tylz]

Good on ya for putting the big girl back in. And man.. I really like the new AFO shirts hey.