Fishing – Thinking outside the square

Most activities lend themselves to shortcuts or hacks – fishing is no different. The following are a few tips and tricks to help make your fishing even more interesting:

Wind against tide – the strayliners’ nemesis

Thanks to a month or so of easterlies the Tackle Tester crew have found themselves in the more sheltered harbour waters and have been well rewarded. When straylining baits down a berley trail, it is imperative you have tidal flow to firstly spread the berley and, secondly, carry your baits back to where the fish are hoovering up the chum trail.

When you get unfavourable wind against tide conditions there are a couple of solutions. Firstly, anchor your boat from the stern, the downside of which is to risk tangling your line with the ground tackle, chain or warp.

My favoured technique to combat the wind vs tide scenario is to deploy the sea anchor where the wind is stronger than the current. The drag of the drogue will be enough to pull the stern of the vessel, so it is facing down current. Run the drogue on a short rope helps keep it away from the angling action.

Windage on the drift

One of my favourite ways of fishing, especially lures in the deep, is to drift. In windy conditions, the sea anchor comes into its own, slowing the vessel down to an acceptable speed. Some simple ways to check the vessel’s progress is to open the cabin or hardtop’s side windows and drop the cockpit’s side covers. If your vessel has a flooding keel, fill it to the maximum, the added weight helping to decrease hull’s speed, improving stability.

Get the best and biggest drogue you can afford. I find drifting at up to one nautical mile per hour is about the maximum you can successfully employ lures and softbaits in depths to 100 metres. When in this situation (a fast drift), increase the weight of the lure by as much as double what you would normally fish.

When softbaiting the same applies. Ramp up the weight of your jighead and even jighead style. I use a 168g Catch Tenya jighead and the articulated Berkley Elevator rigs in various weights. These two rigs can be adapted to fish natural whole and cut baits successfully, especially when combined with the Stingaz assist hooks.

While there as some weird and wonderful slider type lures in use in lighter weights, the uglies come to the fore when the weight goes up.

Hyabusa have the most ‘normal’ looking of them all with their VS Free Slide option. Power Jig’s 330 is another option that is close to the conventional slider action.

From then on in it gets weird. Glowbite, which as the name suggests, uses flashing light, lumo colours, dinner bells (rattles) and a scent dispenser to get the job done with a couple of differing styles. The 250g Grumpy Fish is a good choice when targeting deepwater snapper.