A Summer Night on the Reff - Part 3

Apologies for not getting my Part 3 of this blog up last week - I was down south fishing the Taree Bream Super Series in a high and dirty river....Great fun and more on that in a later blog.

This week we are going to look at how to drift fish your local reef with soft plastics - as part of this thread of fishing reef systems when the sun goes down.

In the previous threads we have looked at tackle and where and when to find the fish, so lets get straight to the nitty gritty and explore drifting the reef with plastics.

The whole drifting thing is a little bit more difficult to pick up than the anchor fishing, but with some practice you will find yourself catching truck loads of fish on the drift.

Having found your fishing location head up wind of the target location and let the wind, or current (whichever is strongest) begin to push you towards the target. Once the drift is initiated, position yourself at the back of the boat, flick the plastics and jigheads over the edge and let them go into freefall. To do this, simply open up the bailarm and let the weight of the jighead get the plastic sinking towards the bottom. The aim of the exercise as with fishing at anchor is to use a jighead that is heavy enough (or light enough!) to only just get to the bottom. Remember the faster the rig sinks through the water, the less realistic the presentation and the less llikely it will be that a fish will be tempted to eat it.
As your jighead and plastic sink watch your coloured braid line carefully. Any sign of the line suddenly speeding up or stopping prematurely (ie before you reasonably expect to hit bottom) means a fish may have picked up the plastic. If you are in any doubt a fish may have eaten the plastic, lift the rod and strike - you have nothing to lose! When the jighead does finally reach the bottom, you will notice the line behaving differently - ie become a lot more slack. Once the bottom is reached, simply engage the reel, lift the rod and give the whole lot a few big jigs/lifts. Having done this, wind any slack on to the reel and then keeping the line tight, let the plastic drift just off the bottom behind the boat for 10 or so metres. If nothing has eaten the plastic at this point, drop it back to the bottom and repeat the process. Once you have passed the prime location, simply wind up, head back up wind again and do it all again. The act of the jighead sinking through the water column past resident fish, or as the plastic is jigged off the bottom and then swims like a baitfish just off the bottom - is often all it takes to tempt local reef fish.

The trick to fishing this technique is to:

• keep experimenting with jighead weights until you get the right presentation
• experiment with plastic size and colour - some days the 7 inch stuff does the job, other times the smaller plastics will work best
• Watch the line carefully - fish will show up anywhere in the water column, so by being aware of what your line is doing all the time will mean you pick up those midwater bites
• establish a mental picture of what your jighead is doing at all times. By being down there with the jighead so to speak means you will work it better and develop the best presentation a lot faster on any given day.

Other than that there is not a lot more to divulge about drift fishing with plastics. The best thing to do is to get out there and give it a go. Hey, its a great excuse to go fishing.

If you have any questions about this, feel free to fire any questions via the blog site.

Happy Fishing

Nige