What different fish have you caught on lures? Part 2
by Gary Brown on 30 Sep 2013

Leatherjackets just love to eat up your soft plastics Gary Brown
Back in early July I put together an article on 'What different fish have you caught on lures? Part 1. Some of which were while using a surface popper in Vanuatu over a shallow reef I caught a Green Jobfish, then there was the parrot fish while working TT 1oz blades for snapper over a gravel patch off Sydney and what about the cockle on a TT jig head and a Gulp Camo 6 inch sand worm while chasing bream.
Since then I have been out targeting bream, flathead and whiting with blades and soft plastics in Botany Bay to try a get a feed of fish for my mother-in-law. What we did manage to get was a few port Jackson sharks, one of which pulled the scales down to just under 9 kilos.
Andrew did a really good job of playing the fish to the boat, considering that he was use 3 pound NanoFil with a 6 pound leader. It took him around twenty minutes to get the fish to where I could net it.
On that same day while using blades we did many to get a few pike, and while chasing bream, flathead, whiting and trevally with blades is great fun, it can be very expensive when these toothy critters get hold of them. Oh, and we did manage to catch a couple of flathead for the mother-in-law.
While fishing off shore with a good mate of mine, Scotty Lyons from Southern Sydney Fishing Tours we were trolling for Australian salmon and bonito off the coast of Sydney and although we did catch a number of salmon and bonito we did manage to troll up a sergeant baker on a Rapala CD7.
We have found this quite common over the years and I am a bit of a believer that you need to keep the trolled lure fairly close to the bottom and if we are unlucky to troll up a few sergeant bakers it means we are pretty close to the bottom. We have also trolled up a couple of snapper while doing this.
Deep water jigging with soft plastics off Sydney will produce a variety of fish species and I can’t remember how many red rock cod I have jigged up. This is usually due to the fact that I have misjudged how long the weighted soft was left to fall through the water column and it reaches the bottom where these fellows live. Some of them have been around the 1 to 2 kilo mark. Now many anglers will turn their noses up at catching a red rock cod, but one in the 1 to 2 kilo range will have a couple of good fillets off it and they are very sweet to eat. Just remember if you do get one watch out for the spines.
Maybe you have caught a fish in what you class as the unusual type. If you have you can let me know by send and email to me at gbrown1@iprimus.com.au
If you want to link to this article then please use this URL: www.sail-world.com/115179

