patonga session

[tomcat8819]

myself and a mate got into patonga friday evening after sunset and set up camp ready to be up early for a kayak session. after way too many beers we slept in a bit but still managed to be up, fully rigged up out on the water by about 6:30am. My mate loves using live nippers as bait but i had convinced him to have a lure only session (as much as i love using nippers also haha) as we had both gotten some new topwater lures and were keen to see if we could tempt some whiting on them (id never caught a single fish on topwater) so sleeping in and missing the bottom part of the low tide wasnt a big deal since we didnt need to pump yabbies. 

the first sand flat was nearly completely underwater when we got there and we started drifting along the deeper channels flicking plastics for flatties amongst the weed beds. after a few drifts and no takers the sand bar was completely submerged and  i thought i should put a few casts with my sugapen across the top of it. first cast and im ripping it back towards me and wham im on, wasnt the biggest whiting but was so much fun on my light set up (1-2 kg gen black and 2000 gen black 4lb braid). i thought here we go, gonna get right into some thick whiting action but after several more drifts past the sandbar/flats couldnt tempt another one so we kept heading upstream. 

we pulled up at a heap of oyster leases and i tried for ages on all of them to pull up some bream on my light rod with a small ecogear live prawn and to snag a flatty on my 2 - 5kg rod flicking 5 inch curly tails on 1/8 jig heads but couldnt find any. my mate looked like he was in no mans land but ended up pulling two flathead out of some sandy/weedy patches one undersized one keeper. 

paddling to the next likely looking spot i trolled a 4 inch diesel minnow paddletail out the back and got onto a small flatty not 5 m from where i had started drifting! haha

then the rain came pounding back and we started heading back upstream to the car. it eventually was coming down pretty hard and i was starting to get cold so i was head down and just paddling like my life depended on it when my mate yelled out, looking up i saw my rod was bent right over. picked it up and felt headshakes immediately. a minute later i had a decent legal flatty (1cm bigger than my mates) in my net...until he kicked out and landed in my yak and started going mental, using my legs i managed to keep him inside for the next minute whilst he thrashed around somehow without getting spiked. good day out on the water 

 

Edited November 6, 2017 by tomcat8819

[ARC H]

good report 

good to see the flatties getting around

 

[sam bros]

Nice work mate

where were you camping?

[GoingFishing]

Great work and comittment to get out in the rain. At least you were rewarded with a few

[JA1990]

Good on ya guys. Seems to be lizards getting caught a lot.

[tomcat8819]

On 11/7/2017 at 7:54 AM, GoingFishing said:

Great work and comittment to get out in the rain. At least you were rewarded with a few

looked pretty gloomy but we were out for about 4 hours before it started raining. 

tis the season for the flatties

[Regan]

nice report and catch mate

nipers are the bomb on flatties there lol