West Coast
WA
Plenty of beach encounters LANCELIN
Peter Fullarton
January can be a difficult time to catch a decent sized fish off the beach. My recommendation would be to roll out the wire trace. It is a sharky time of year and there is usually plenty of small whalers at perfect eating size around a metre or so in length. Most of the sharks are accidentally caught by beach casters around sunset to early evening taking baits intended for tailor. Use of berley increases the chance of a shark encounter and having a wire trace will certainly reduce the number of bite offs. With the summer run tailor in full swing, the size of the fish is down, although numbers will be up along with plenty of
Sambos are on the lumps out from the 25m depths, this one fell to the Black Magic knife jig in pilchard.
Chris recently caught several great eater size whalers in a session at Didie Bay. potential by-catch herring, flathead and dart. Fishing smaller pilchards on 3/0 gang hooks helps gather a good mixed bag. It’s time for that typical ‘fish a cast’ hot tailor bite. The secret to get the bite on and keep it going is momentum. Fish with two or three mates and keep the casts of fresh pilchards going in to keep the fish in a frenzy. If you stop casting for a break, the fish are likely to move on down the beach to the next group of fishers. Not a lot of people specifically target flathead around Lancelin, although on the right day some great sessions can be had. Flathead are a superb eating fish and a great sport fish aggressively taking artificial presentations. They can be caught well offshore to only a few centimetres of water, and 114
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the techniques must be varied to suit location. The bays’ shallows offer the best environment to chase flathead on artificial lures. I can’t think of too many lure types that don’t work on flathead, although vibes or soft plastic jigs are the easiest to keep in the strike zone near the bottom. Work lures around broken ground, weed or reef to sand edges and drop offs. January also sees some good size fish on the whiting grounds 18-23m, the bonus being you can lazy drift flathead baits in the rod holder while filling a bucket with tasty sandies. Rig the small live sand whiting above a suitable size ball sinker keeping the bait in contact with the bottom, just leave the rod in the holder until a fish hits. Mackerel numbers
Deklan Seitz, one of Lancelin’s young gun anglers, landed this cracker 15kg yellowfin – a great catch out of the tinny.
Pink snapper off the beach, when will we be able to do it again? Jason hooked up on this one during the ban and snapped a quick picture between removing the hook and putting the fish back in the sea.
Dr Hook Long Tom lures cast a mile and are well suited to getting out to those near shore reef breaks to find the larger tailor.
increase this month, it’s a little early in the season as the water needs to warm a bit more for them to be aggressively feeding. It’s best to concentrate any trolling around the peak
times of first and last light of the day around the new moon. Otherwise look for places the mackerel will be looking for an easy meal. Schools of small To page 119
