Scents Again.

I have no answers I can offer Howard. 99% of my flathead fishing is with plastics and in our local lake. I have watched flathead travel in shallow water up to 3m for a kill but it's not the norm by any means. I can only speak as I fish and from observation while doing it. Quite a number of our flatties take while on the drop. We often just feel a 'click' through the line and believe 100% that one has closed its mouth on a plastic lure. Others I think take on the lift but it's hard to generalise.
What happens today might not happen tomorrow. The effect on fishes metabolism by changing barometric pressures is a definite. During a low we find them more sluggish and more difficult to entice. Our water is rarely over two metres deep. Perhaps that makes a difference to their habits. I so rarely use hard bodies I'm not able to have opinions there either. No matter what else; We have a positive hit with a take and there's no mistaking it. Maybe ours will suck if you use bait. I don't so I don't know. Many of ours are simply aggressive when they hit.
Noel
That's the challenge of fishing; working it out.

 

Well I'm sold I used sex factor (S factor) today and kepped these 2 40cm bream for a feed and through the smaller fish back a big contrast from yesty......

Cheers TAC

 

You could always us the garlic scent on spaghetti bolagnase if you run out of the normal garlic, garlic definatly makes me bite into my food

 

Never thought of that. Thank you

 

Tac, a couple of nice bream there. I guess most of us would agree flathead are not the most spectacular of sport fish but have you ever tangled with a 'real' flathead on light gear?
Several times I've spent over half an hour. One 95 on 4lb took me 3/4 of an hour and we chased it with the electric motor for almost half a kilometre while doing it.
Noel
Fishes light because it works

 

I used to fish with 4 lb mono when fishing for trout and redfin in the local channels. Then the Murray cod took over the channels. Now I won't fish with light line in there. I won't risk hooking a 70 + cm cod on 4 lb mono and then fighting the fish to its point of exhaustian before releasing it.

From my experience, finesse fishing will always attract more interest from larger species but that is where the advantage ends. Especially if you are chasing something like Murray cod where the larger specimens (75 cm + here in Vic) must go back.
Cheers
Jim

 

The big flatties I've had from 75 to 107 with I think, four in the 90s, have at least seemed to have been OK after release but of course we can't know for sure, except that I've never heard of a big one being found floating or dead on the shore. Using 1-3kg rods, the fish control me, not the other way around. They don't have to work very hard to peel off a fair bit of line in a run.
I hear what you say about holding them until they are exhausted but mine, even after a long time, never seem to be any slower or weaker. It just takes a long time to get them close enough to net. You don't of course have to agree or otherwise.
I look at the way blokes on TV treat fish before release and if I was a fish I'd prefer to do a lot of swimming under light pressure than being held for cameras for five minutes while drowning in air.
As said, you don't have to agree.
I always used 3lb mono when we fished for trout at the lake and 6lb leaders on an #8 fly rod when fishing the big NZ Tongariro River 12-14 times. The fish there at times averaged 8lb with a few over ten in wild and powerful 4celc temp water like we simply don't have here. Probably 90% are released too. People have to fish water like that to understand why only heavier gear will survive with rapids and rocks in a river 30-40m wide most places. You can't wade water that's knee deep as it's travelling too fast and will bowl you over. Been there, done that too.
Noel.
Has no conscience issues with his fish handling.

 

Noel nothing like the flatys you have there down here .
Just this 60cm jobbi on a 1-3kg rod and 2lb braid only took around 15mins to the net.
cheers TAC

 

Tac, there's nothing wrong with a 60. Excellent fish and I'd rate the time frame as fairly normal with that gear.
Don't get the wrong impression. While Tuross is classed as a trophy flathead water, among those giants are lots of ordinary and small ones. There are plenty of people down here who have never caught a 70.
I've just been lucky over the years
Noel
Thanks for the pic.

 

I do love the long runs from bream like this

On 2lb braid I was lucky to get this one as he gave up just short of a tree in the water ......

 

Long before commercially produced scents became available, fishos used tuna oil to improve their catch rate and it worked. An ordinary day could be turned into a better day just by using oil to attract various species, flathead included.

I can recall many days fishing the flathead grounds off Hat Head where most of the time we were pulling in double headers on every drop and then all of a sudden they would go off the chew. A few drifts over the same spot would not produce fish until we dropped baits that had been coated in tuna oil. Some would say that maybe it was purely coincidental that they came back on the bite and if it had only happened once or twice then I would agree, but to replicate it day after day then it speaks for itself.

The way I see it, the commercially produced scents that are available today are just one step advanced to the tuna oil that I used years ago. They have taken the messiness out of using an attractant and I see that Pro Cure is now available in a spray bottle.

Jeff

 

Like diesel, but with a bit less experience in such things, I too have done the same while fishing for tiger flathead, a few kms off Marlo and the mouth of the Snowy River in Vic. We always had tuna oil on board. W lived in Orbost (Vic) at the time and often took my Quintrex tinny out to sea. We actually went all the way out to the oil rigs one day when the sea was still.
I have much trouble comparing that offshore flathead fishing where you do (or did at least) pull up two at a time, with the way I fish today.
There is surely much more skill (or finesse) involved when chasing individual fish as compared to drifting baits where the bottom is literally covered with fish. The sheer numbers there at times release the competitive nature of spontaneous feeders. They attack a bait because if they don't, another will and they must eat. We simply don't have massed fish in the estuaries. There's also an obvious abundance of food here, otherwise Tuross would not be a trophy flathead water where a couple at 120's come in every year. I've seen one in the water, right beside the boat after chasing a fish on a line and it was like a young crocodile.
Before I got this medical issue, I fished two or three days a week. I used to get between 500 and 1000 flathead a year but not any more. Boss says it was four times a week and that 95% were returned.
To use or not to use is still the question: Basically, I never use it to start with. If after fishing a while and/or trying more lures and spots, with nothing much happening, on it goes in the hope things will change. I do other things differently too. When fish are hard to find and at others, when they are 'tailing' plastics but not really taking them, a common trick is to change to small metal vibes as I feel sometimes the extra vibration and noise has got them moving a bit better. I only use the smallest of them. That has been known to succeed where scents have not changed anything, That's just another of my many funny ideas that probably doesn't appeal to others. Two years ago I pulled three over 70 in an hour doing just that up in the back of the system, using a purple sort of coloured vibe.
I may have posted the following pic before. I forget. The fish was exactly 40; the marks suggested the flathead that grabbed it was 20cm across the head. The big front teeth ripped the entire gill out of one side but it was never hooked and we never saw it. It swam away after about one minute. Wouldn't have known what was happening.
Can't post it. My PC is away having new hard drive installed and pics are not in Boss's machine. Next time.
Noel

 

I used to use Pro-Cure,changed to Sax never looked back. As somebody said you can buy it direct. I buy in bulk it works out a lot cheaper. I find the Bream and the Flatties love it. It is like anything you have to experiment.
Cheers.