GARY BROWN’S 15 VALUABLE HINTS TO IMPROVE YOUR FISHING.

Gary Brown shares some of his tips for young or inexperienced anglers.

1. When you are fishing at night for tailor, Australian, salmon, yellowtail kingfish and mulloway you should try attaching small starlight to just above the hooks. You will be surprised how many fish you will get.

2. I find that is much better to hold onto your rod when trolling for bream or flathead. This due to the fact that is you feel that your floating lure has hit a snag, you can immediately move the rod tip towards the back of the boat to allow the lure to float over the top of the snag.

3. When fishing for luderick and drummer off the ocean rocks and you are not quite sure where to go. A good starting point is to locate where there is either some cabbage or green weed. Find this stuff and luderick and drummer should not be too far away.

4. Squid are commonly found over places that have a combination of kelp, rocks and sand, kelp and rocks, as well as weed beds and sand. I find that you need to have a range of squid jig size and colours, as one day they may like a small jig and then the next the like a larger jig. I usually start off with a small jig and work my way up if nothing is happening.

5. If beach fishing for dusky flathead with big rods is not to your liking, you could always down size to a 1.8 to 2.0m, five kilo flick stick and toss either a few baits, plastics or lures around. One of the best places to start is near the entrance to a lake, creek or river. Especially on an out-going tide when there is not a lot of swell and the wind is coming from the shore.

6. Try casting either your minnow lure or plastics onto the sand bank, and then retrieve it in a slow jerking motion right up to your feet. The makes it look like a wounded prawn or baitfish.

7. If fish are following the lure and are not striking, try down-sizing the lure, a colour change, speed it up, chance the action by twitching the rod tip or by just stoping the lure for a few seconds and then start the retrieve again.

8. Many lures will have the depth that the lure will go down to. If you buy a lure that has the working depth marked on the packet and not the lure, you should engrave it somewhere on the body so you know for the next time you use it.

9. If you don’t know the working depth of a lure, you could always troll it about fifteen metres behind the back of the boat while looking at the depth on the sounder. Once it starts hitting the bottom you can then engrave it on the body of the lure for the next time you use it.

10. It pays to have a range of sizes in your favourite metal lure, as the fish may be feeding on something very small or very large. This range will give you a better chance of matching the hatch.

11. A rule of thumb to work by when selecting a lure, is that a lure with a very acute angle will travel up near the surface, and a bib that is much flatter (parrel to the body of the lure) will dive much deeper. The size and shaped also comes into the depth equation as well.

12. For distance casting it’s important that the lure travels accurately in flight, it doesn’t veer or sway and is unaffected by the wind. If the lure has more weight towards the bottom end it will generally cast straight and true.
13. To help you improve your fishing catches you will need to keep a diary of every time that you go fishing. Even the bad days.

14. Make sure that the point and the barb of your hook are always outside of your bait. This will give you a much better hook up rate. It is an old wives tales about hiding the hook point and barb so that the fish can’t see it.

15. Just remember that old staying “No Run No Fun”. When the tide is not moving the fish are not active, so try and plan to either move to a new spot, get ready for the change of tide or just have a cup of coffee or a drink while you are waiting for the action to start back up.