Southern Estuary Winter Lure Selection

How To Use This Lure Selection

Bream: Less experienced anglers often notice that as winter progresses the bream start thinning out on the snags, flats and rocky shorelines and they'll often assume bream are no longer catchable. More experienced anglers know that winter is the time when these fish start moving into the deeper water of the main river channel and school up lower in the system in big numbers. They're starting to condition up for spawning, so they often take lures very well through the cooler months. Here's how to use this lure pack for black bream:

• Find the weed edges, dropoffs from sand flats and similar areas that are around 2-2.5m deep and work them on the runout tide using the S36 Crank deep diver.
• Perhaps the most productive strategy is to find schooled fish in deeper water and either cast or teabag using the V35 blade. Work the blade with small, gentle hops and slow your normal retrieve down.
• An incoming tide in the afternoons is a good time to work flats that have been shallow or even dry during the low tide. The sun can warm the sand in these areas, which in turn warms the incoming water and stimulates fish. The 92mm clone prawn is a great lure for bigger bream and works well rigged on the unweighted Jigman hook included in this pack. There's a tutorial in the team doc lures members area explaining how to fish this lure.
• Also during the afternoon on an incoming tide it can be worth working the ST72 Minnow or deep diving Pro Lure Crank on shallow flats, especially in places where fish have been mudding.
• Fish the Pro Lure shallow diving crank around oyster leases and shallow, rocky shorelines during the incoming tides.

Flathead: Depending what part of Australia you're fishing, the flathead fishing can be a bit tough in winter.... or it can be very productive. Like bream, flathead often move to deeper parts of the system during winter where water temperatures are more stable. However, they'll often follow the water onto the warm sand of the flats during an afternoon incoming tide or bask in shallow water as the flats drain and carry food to them on the runout tide. Flathead will often be taken as a bycatch whilst using the above techniques for bream, but here are some tips more specifically for flathead:

• The V35 Blade is a great option hopped or teabagged through the deeper channels, but can also be cast onto flats and shallows and worked back fairly briskly, or worked with a "burn and kill" technique.
• The 105mm Pro Lure Fishtail rigged on a 4/0 Jigman SOSo hook and worked through patches of weed or broken bottom in shallow water is very effective. Slow rolling at constant speed can work, but throwing a few pauses into the retrieve is even better.
• The Clone Prawn is super effective rigged on a 3/0 SOSo hook and worked with subtle twitches across a flat in the afternoon or rigged on an unweighted 3/0 Jigman hook and drifted around pressure edges.
• Any of the hardbodies will work in the shallows, but especially the deep divers if they are bumped into the bottom to throw up puffs of sand and mus.

Jewfish: The Holy Grail of estuary fish on lures. You'll typically find lower numbers in winter, but often they'll be a better quality of fish. This lure package gives plenty of options for jewies, but they're not the primary focus, so if jewfish are your thing you might consider topping the pack up with some 130mm Fishtails, 160mm Prey Minnows and some larger, heavier hooks and jig heads. Nonetheless, if you find yourself in "silver ghost" country, there are some options among the current offering, particularly for the smaller, school sized fish:

• Rigging the Fishtail weedless and bumping it down rock walls with a series of small hops is deadly at any time of year. Drift your boat or kayak along, casting 45 degrees ahead of the drift and work the lure slowly through the area where rock meets sand. Strike at the slightest sign of a twitch.
• Look for places where mullet congregate at night and work those areas over thoroughly. Creek mouths, flats with deep water nearby and the light pools around bridges and wharves are all good places. A standard jig head with an exposed barb is the best rigging option.