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Fly Fishing

Chasing Golden Trevalley on the Magnetic Island flats.

Relaxing!

Enjoying one of the many beautiful beaches of Magnetic Island.

Sunday 28 December 2008

Shelly Beach Soft Plastics

Still looking to land a fish a small window of opportunity in the wind today allowed me to get in a morning Soft Plastics session at Shelly Beach. I knew the calm wouldn't last long, so not worth putting the boat it anyway. And after hearing about Deions experience there the other week I was pretty keen. The tide was not ideal, with the big high not until 10am. But I figured it was worth a couple of hours.

On arrival there was about 8-10knots of wind on the water. Just enough to chop it up a little and make the water a bit murky. I tried a few casts on the way to the rocks where Deion had said he was getting the fish. But no luck.

As soon as I got close enough to the specific set of rocks I could see bait scattering and small GT's racing around. A couple of casts soon had me hooked solid to one of the little fish. These are a lot of fun on light spin gear. A photo and he was away. Over the next half hour or so I worked these rocks to death. There was the odd scatter of bait, and something BIG that came through, but I couldn't fool another fish.


I tried another location with out luck. And finally I changed to a Squidgy fish on the bottom to try snare a Flathead. I got a couple of bumps from small fish, but nothing hooked up. Eventually I gave up and headed for home. But half way along the beach I spotted a big shower of bait. It was a little far out, but I thought I'd give the area a few casts. It paid off, and I was soon hooked to another small GT. This fish was followed all the way to my feet by a bigger GT, probably 3 or 4 times as big. There was plenty of gar in this spot, and I even managed to foul hook one!

Then a short cast over some sunken rocks resulted in a small Mangrove Jack. This was probably the highlight of the morning for me. I love these little fish. It was not top of the tide and getting quite hot. The bite had slowed so I headed home. What a great way to spend the morning.