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Estuary fishing: when to drift and when to anchor/burley?


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Interested to hear others thoughts and preferences here?  

I personally find it more relaxing/enjoyable to anchor and burley but you do risk attracting all the pickers. Drifting covers lots of ground but it’s hard with my 4 year old as I’m already pretty busy managing lines and generally stopping him from causing harm.

ive never drifted AND Burleyed but I generally adhere to the KISS principle 

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For me it depends what you are after.  Drifting is my go-to method for flathead as covering ground is more productive on the lazy sods.  If I am chasing beam or trevs then I would anchor up and burly away.

Either way if what I am doing is not producing then I will switch it up.  

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Kiwicraig is spot on....depends on what your target species is.

Id have to say 90% of my fishing involves drifting...u will still catch the usual bread and butter species drifting such as bream, trevally etc.

I use a sea anchor which slows the drift right down. In shallow water u can still berley and drift rather successfully... fish will swim up the trail and follow the boat.

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Sitting on the anchor is definitely more relaxing and less work especially with a junior crew member as you have.

But in terms of productive fishing, I feel it really depends on the the target species, the tide flow and the submerged terrain of the estuary that you are working. 

Examples 

1. targeting flathead on sandy bottom - drift with the tide. The flathead will be waiting in the gutters for food to drift over them with the tidal flow. As @kiwicraig says you cover more ground and increase your odds. If the current is slow I'll drop some burley in the pot - fish follow the trail. If current is fast - I don't bother with the burley.

2. incoming tide where you know there is a deep hole or drop off (eg Flint and Steel on Hawkesbury, 8m to 22m drop), anchor on the hi side (up current) and burley. Drift baits in the burley trail over the drop off for all sorts of fish (bream, snapper etc) and predators (jews, hairtail, sharks etc).

In other words work with what you are presented and mix it up.

Since installing the electric anchor winch I have actually started to use a combination of the above - drift and drop. eg. I'll drift until we hit some good size flatties, then drop the anchor and swing on the anchor rope for a while and generally pick up a few more - then its quite easy to let out another 10-20-30m and repeat. If the bite slows we up anchor and drift again. We have observed that flatties tend to hang around in schools of roughly the same size (guess that stops them eating each other) and by anchoring rather than just drifting straight past we pick up a few more then we used to previously.  This has worked for me more in offshore deeper water (30-60m) but I guess it could be used in the estuary setting.... again depending on the conditions and terrain.

Cheers

Zoran

 

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