Didn't know AnglingVic Forum folded some time ago and was searching for it...So it changed from FishingVic to AnglingVic back to FishingVic.
Anyways, some of you may know me from the previous forums and have fished with me before. So here's my 1st posting in this forum
I’ve read few articles on whiting popping and it seems like an interesting lure fishing proposition. Most of these articles originate from NSW and finz popping usually coincides with the estuary prawn run. I did give it a few cracks but with no fish to show. At best the whitings tailed my pencil stickbait and made some half-hearted attempts to attack it but gave up after a short while. I blamed it on the spot so shallow the whiting could spot me miles away. Also the wind was not in my favour and seriously impeded my casting distance. The lures aimed for whitings are tiny and you require finesse tackle to cast this lure far out to search for whitings, not to mention the price tag on them! That put me off entirely.
Fast forward 4 years, I got an invite from a fellow WA Fishing forum member (John) to give it another crack. According to him, there are no hard and fast rules. So I rocked up at the estuary, armed with my bream outfit and a bag full of tiny lures, I was ready to give the ‘tings a serious bash.
To my delight, we arrived at the spot with glassed out condition but John was concerned that might put the fish off. We walked about 2km into channel and started casting from the middle of the channel onto the flats. The lure of choice for me was Sugapen 70F in tiger prawn colour. I have replaced the Owner Trebles with twin assist hooks. After a few retrieve the mirror surface was shattered by a mini explosion and I was on! My heart nearly skipped a beat! After a short fight, I landed my first Yellowfin whiting on popper. I was absolutely stoked to say the least, as I managed to deflower a new lure!
- 1st Fish!
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- Check out the glassed out condition
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So I went through a handful of other lures and deflowered a good number of them. By noon, the fish were fired up and it didn’t matter whether the tide was incoming or outgoing or if the wind churned up a chop. These feisty litter buggers were shouldering each other to get a piece of the hook! At one stage, one fish actually went absolutely air-borne and crashed onto the lure before hooking up. That was absolutely insane!
I had an absolute ball and between both of us we landed at least 30 fish, biggest measuring 35cm. We released all fish less than 30cm and kept a few for the table. Add in those that missed the hooks we are looking at 50 over strikes for the morning sesh.
There were several highlights of the trip :
1. John landed a mullet on his Atomic surface lure. Not foul hook but a bona fide hook-up.
- John's Mullet on Atomic surface lure
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- Micro Metal Squid
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4. I tried micro jigging and landed one foul hooked on Saurus micro jig of 5g!! Obviously the fish made an attempt to eat the jig and got hooked in the process.
5. Last but not least, double header on my Sugapen! How good is that ?
6. Some fish made several attempts consecutively to inhale the lure before hooking up. It sounded like barra boofings, albeit on a much smaller scale hence the subject of this report.
7. Double header!
- Who says you can't catch whiting on minnow ?
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- Smith ?? surface lure
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- Ecogear lure victim
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- Micro-jagging errr I mean micro-jigging whiting.
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- Double Header Close Up
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1. Most whiting popping articles advocate working the lure consistently to mimic a fleeing prawn. They claim stopping the lure will result in the fish shying away. My experience tells me that isn’t true. In fact, I’ve caught whiting on the pause or when the lure sits completely still in the water! However, I reckon that’s to do with my assist hooks having a layer of fish skin on it with scale patterns. These fins like skin must have resembled the legs of a prawn that made them irresistible to the tingz. The twin assist hook -one being shorter than the other also ensured zero tangle and a secured hook up. It is not uncommon to have 2 hooks in a fish mouth, or one in the mouth and another outside. There’s no way the fish is getting away no matter how hard it thrashes around.
- Twin Assist with Fish skin. Sorry about the condition of the skins...they've been smashed big time
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3. I also read somewhere that the lure should track straight ‘cos that’s how shrimps behave when they skitter across the surface to escape predation. So I tried walking the dog in a zig zag fashion but didn’t seem to put the fish off either.
4. Use a rod of less than 7”. My MajorCraft AirRock Kurodai (black bream) Special is 7”3 - too long for this purpose. I find it difficult to stab the rod side ways to induce walk-the-dog action because the rod tip will be poking into the water. To compensate that, my rod was held high pointing towards the sky all the time, resulting in sore shoulder and upper back.
5. Change the trebles for singles or assist hooks. In fact the latter will fare better than the former due to the downward facing mouth position of the tingz. They are designed to suck up worms and prawns from the sand, not snatching prey from the surface.
6. They are no prawns visible in the estuary that I fish. I reckon the fish just struck the lure out of aggression and hunger. So any preys small enough to fit the gob will be food. That may explain why the Rapala Husk Jerk got nailed.
Hope you are not disappointed by the fact that this article is not about barra but yellowfin whiting. ☺
