INCOMING or OUTGOING

[Des 818]

I have just enjoyed a couple of golden bag out Lure sessions on the “GOLDBARS”.

Two successive days with bag limits of quality fish in the 32 to 41cm range

This time mostly caught on the incoming afternoon tides.

My usual fishing sessions, most often involve some of both the outgoing and the incoming tides.

It is interesting to ponder on, which tide has the best fishing.

There has always been many a discussion amongst Yellow Fin Whiting fisher people as to which tide  is better to fish. The incoming tide or the outgoing.

My view is that varies. Generally it changes with the peak tide cycles, prevailing at that the time of year.

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Yellow Fin Whiting’s lives revolve around the tides. Especially across the sandflat habitats.

The tides are what provides them access to their feeding grounds or wash out food to them.

So it is no surprise that their feeding behaviour and movements change and mirror the tide cycles.

They do most of their feeding on the biggest tide of the day.

They probably have evolved a 24 hour digestive cycle to match and so have developed a 24 hour hunger/feeding cycle. Hence they soon form a feeding routine that coincides with the biggest tides of the day.

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Follow the Tide height cycle. By around the end of February the evening tides start to get bigger than the morning tides. This is when I find the YFW feeding behaviour starts to switch from AM to PM.

In the earlier part of the Yellow Fin Whiting lure season, from early October to February, I prefer fishing the bigger run off morning tides. From March onwards I prefer the bigger incoming evening tides.

However I am selective of the tide sizes I choose to fish! They are different tide heights that work better for the outgoing and incoming tides.

The big morning tides of early season, see a lot of YFW move into a wide area of samphire beds and sandflats. The bigger the tides the more fish that move in.

So early season I like to fish the runoff of the biggest morning tides and have a chance of catching the most fish as they beat a path back to deeper water in the outgoing tide.

When it comes to the evening incoming tides late season, it is the opposite. I don’t want to go chasing fish far and wide, spread out by a big incoming tide.

I pick the smallest evening tides to fish. When the fish will be concentrated in a small area. When the competition to feed in a restricted space heats up.

There are exceptions to the rule … but that is a story for another day.

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There is a slight shift in the availability of food and subsequently successful lure choices with these two tidal situation.

The early season big morning tides, which usually happen before dawn, provide access to a lot of juvenile prawns and Haswell mud carbs. Surface lures are highly successful during this period.

In the smaller evening tides, surface lures also take their share of fish, but subsurface lures are more successful. Especially on the smaller evening tides when the fish are restricted to the more inshore sandflats holding Clickers. So it is reasonable that a subsurface lure bouncing and puffing up the sand along the bottom is likely to be more successful.

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My go to favourite lures did the trick on these two Golden Sessions. The Bassday Sugapen 95 on the surface, earlier in the run off. Then most fish taken with the Ecogear ZX 43 in the run in, bouncing along the bottom.

There was a new kid on the block this time. It was my first use of the Chasebaits Armour Prawn Vibe 50mm. I had accidentally ordered the wrong colour. I thought I had ordered orange, the go to colour for YFW. But nonetheless it took a nice whiting in the limited time in the water on both sessions. I have yet to figure out the best tow point, the assist hooks to rig, or the best action for these. They look very promising as a sub surface whiting lure and I am keen to try them some more.

 

The Ecogear ZX is a good all rounder and able to attract a variety of fish. Flathead regularly fall victim to this lure. They are a delightful by catch and provide a great fight in very shallow water on your ultra light whiting gear. I managed to land a nice 51cm Flathead in my second session.  I missed a couple on the first day, mainly due to too fast a retrieval speed that I was using to attract YFW.

 ...    It pays to have a few spares when they swallow the whole lure !

 

One of the great pleasures of fishing is getting connected with nature. Becoming in-tuned with the varying seasons. Observing the changes in the habitats and the changes in your target fish’s behaviour.

I find it perfectly summarised in this quote from the famous Canadian, Author, Naturalist and Outdoorsman   … Roderick Haig Brown

"Invoke a mental and physical discipline that goes beyond making a successful catch or kill. Its central virtue is knowledge, intimate and thorough, transcending the pursuit”

Tight lines all.

Cheers, Des

[Territory Lad 1,137]

Great write up @Des and good to see you getting a few. Those ZX's have taken a beating, especially that bottom of the three. I imagine the missing rubber "feelers" don't hinder the YFW catch rate?

Side question, what size vanford you running these days? 2500 or 1000?

[Des 818]

1 minute ago, Territory Lad said:

Those ZX's have taken a beating, especially that bottom of the three. I imagine the missing rubber "feelers" don't hinder the YFW catch rate?

Side question, what size vanford you running these days? 2500 or 1000?

As a lure that bounces across the bottom there is always going to be a bit of wear and tear on them.

They do have a diminishing catch rate as they loose their paint and extra feeler bits.

 

On the Reel question ... I use the Vanford 2500

The bigger spool provides a bit better cast. Also and importantly, the larger diameter provides me with a better retrieval speed for the lures.