Extra ASSISTance helps

Gordon River Tip and Tricks

Daniel Deppler

On a recent trip to the Gordon River chasing big brown trout, a switch from trebles to twin assist hooks, mixing up small to oversized lures and sheer persistence resulted in an awesome trip for Daniel and Michael Deppeler.

With the side scan showing good numbers of fish cruising the drop off where the mighty Gordon River pours out onto shallow sand bars and into the vast expanses of Macquarie Harbour, we knew we were in with a shot at a good fish or two. After a full day of casting hard body lures up onto the sand bars and bringing them back over the drop-off, our ‘hookup to hit’ rate was sitting well below fifty per cent. We had landed several fish but the number of hits that failed to hook up or fish following the lure to the boat only to turn and swim away, left us feeling a bit deflated. Watching the other boats troll up and down the channel, enjoying a cold beverage or two and protected from the elements in their cabins, we did wonder if the sore backs and arms from 12 hours of casting were really worth all the effort.

However, we put it down to bad luck but were confident things would turn around for us the next day.

Something needed to change

We were back on the water at first light again spot-locking, with the electric bow mount, into the current and casting hard body lures up onto the shallow sand bar. After the first hour, our tally was two fish from eight strikes and we knew we needed to change something. As we were obviously getting the fish’s attention using minnow style hardbodies, we didn’t want to change our lures too much. With a couple of sets of twin assist hooks floating around in the tackle box that Michael had used in the past for finicky bream bites, we decided to give them a try and replaced the rear trebles on our lures with the twin assist hooks.

Second cast and BANG hookup, a nice rainbow trout was netted, followed by another, then a brown and then another. Our hookup rate went to almost one hundred per cent with this small change and the next few hours was a remarkable session, to say the least.

Assist hooks rigged up on the job. Some braid, a couple of size 8 hooks, some silicon skirt and a split ring.

Why the difference?

Given the number of hits and follows we were experiencing, we put it down to the fish not being totally committed to eating our lures. While changing to assist hooks didn’t reduce the amount of fish following our lures and not eating them it most definitely increased our hook up rate when they did decide to whack them.

Another key learning was that not all lures can handle the change of hooks and some lost their action. I recommend spending some time testing your favourite lures out with twin assists so that if the time comes that you need to adjust you are not going through trial and error during prime bite times! I will certainly be spending some time playing with my favourite trout lures and trying different hook combinations.

Upsizing when things are slow

Trolling the river channel is probably the most popular method used by most anglers visiting the Gordon River. Although we spent the majority of our trip casting lures we did turn to the old reliable troll when our arms needed a rest, to cook up some lunch and to recharge our batteries. We started out trolling similar lures to what we had been casting, small minnow style hard bodies, focussing on sitting just of the drop off into the river channel. Using smaller lures we were getting plagued with small Aussie salmon.

After persisting through countless salmon and nothing else to show for our efforts, I decided to change it up and put on something that mimicked the salmon! We know there are BIG trout in the system so surely a 20cm Salmon is occasionally on the menu! Although most of my ‘trout tackle’ is of the smaller size I did have a Rebel Broken back lure that is one of my all-time favourite Mulloway lures that mimicks mullet to perfection. This lure is 180mm long and I must admit confidence was not high when I sent it out the back of the boat for a swim. Well first run down the river channel it got absolutely smashed by what turned out to be about a five-pound brown trout. We put another couple of larger lures on and managed to get another two fish during what was a shutdown period.

So my advice would be, don’t be afraid to mix things up, just sometimes it can make all the difference.

Persistence, Persistence, Persistence!

The last key learning from our trip to the Gordon River was around bite times. There was no denying that the fish fed hard during bite windows and almost shut down outside of them. The hard part for us was there was no pattern that we could follow to try to target the bite windows. We had success in the middle of the day with full sun at times and went fishless in primetime dusk sessions at other times. We monitored tides, wind, barometric pressure, sun, but could not find a constant indicator to tell us that the fish would start biting. The sounder showed fish all the time so finding them was not the problem.

Basically, we fished and fished and fished, cast and cast and cast, trolled and trolled and trolled and then cast and cast some more until we hit feeding fish. I took the mindset that I hadn’t travelled 1500km kilometres from South Australia, driven 300 km from Hobart and then 50 km by boat to the Gorden River mouth to relax for 10min and miss a bite window.

Summary

The Gordon River has to be one of the most incredible places to fish in this country. The adventure to get there, the panoramic scenery and the quality of fish are in my opinion second to none.

If you get the opportunity to fish this special place then my advice is to cover all your bases, pack lures that might be a little ‘out there, don’t be afraid to mix things up, adjust, try untried tactics. Maximise the time your lures are in the water and most importantly throw in some assist hooks!

Daniel Deppler

•Winner of Yellowstone Anglers 2020 5wt Shootout “Best Overall Rod” with 30 plus 5wt rods tested

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