I spent the last 5 days guiding Andrew “Korg” Jarvis on the freshwater chasing bass, and also spent a day fishing for flathead. Andrew is from W.A., and had never caught a bass or large Dusky Flathead before. Unfortunately, we had some extreme temperature fluctuations with record cold temps for this time of year, and the barometer was up and down like a yo-yo all week… however we still managed to catch some nice fish.

The highlight of the trip for me was the last bass session, with 14 fish landed, 8 on surface lures. The Z-Man Hard Leg Frogz was the stand out lure – I think they will also go well on barra, I can’t wait to try them out on some of the lagoons around here.
That last surface session started at day break with no interest at all from the fish until at least an hour after first light. I actually mentioned to Korg that maybe I should give up guiding and take up golf at that stage! Next thing the wind switched direction from the north to the south-east, and a very memorable surface bite started…  typical top water fishing! We probably had twice as many strikes as hook-ups, but any surface fish is worth two sub-surface fish – in my book anyway. Most of the bass were in the mid to high 30s with the best going 42cm.

Two things that worked for us on this trip, and fishing in general:
•    Changing tactics on the flathead – I normally fish the run out tide for flathead in this area, but finally a change in tactics to fishing the very shallow water on the incoming tide produced the best fish of the day, a nice 65cm lizard. Don’t be scared to change tactics if what you are doing isn’t working.
•    Have confidence in what you’re doing, even though things can be slow sometimes. Persistence on the last bass session paid off, even though the temptation to go sub-surface was nagging at me;  we stuck to our guns and continued to fish the surface, with a very memorable session and outstanding results!

I don’t know where the big bass are at the moment; maybe we’ll catch them next time! There’s always another day, or another bend in the river…

Cheers JH

[responsive][/responsive]