Shelly Beach Soft Plastics

Still looking to land a fish a small window of opportunity in the wind today allowed me to get in a morning Soft Plastics session at Shelly Beach. I knew the calm wouldn't last long, so not worth putting the boat it anyway. And after hearing about Deions experience there the other week I was pretty keen. The tide was not ideal, with the big high not until 10am. But I figured it was worth a couple of hours.

On arrival there was about 8-10knots of wind on the water. Just enough to chop it up a little and make the water a bit murky. I tried a few casts on the way to the rocks where Deion had said he was getting the fish. But no luck.

As soon as I got close enough to the specific set of rocks I could see bait scattering and small GT's racing around. A couple of casts soon had me hooked solid to one of the little fish. These are a lot of fun on light spin gear. A photo and he was away. Over the next half hour or so I worked these rocks to death. There was the odd scatter of bait, and something BIG that came through, but I couldn't fool another fish.

I tried another location with out luck. And finally I changed to a Squidgy fish on the bottom to try snare a Flathead. I got a couple of bumps from small fish, but nothing hooked up. Eventually I gave up and headed for home. But half way along the beach I spotted a big shower of bait. It was a little far out, but I thought I'd give the area a few casts. It paid off, and I was soon hooked to another small GT. This fish was followed all the way to my feet by a bigger GT, probably 3 or 4 times as big. There was plenty of gar in this spot, and I even managed to foul hook one!

Then a short cast over some sunken rocks resulted in a small Mangrove Jack. This was probably the highlight of the morning for me. I love these little fish. It was not top of the tide and getting quite hot. The bite had slowed so I headed home. What a great way to spend the morning.