I decided to have a crack at Yellowfin Whiting popping after reading so many articles on the topic both from fishing magazines and FW reports.

Fellow FW member (John) is kind enough to show me the ropes. According to him, there are no hard and fast rules. So I rocked up at the estuary, armed with my bream outfit and a bag full of tiny lures, I was ready to give the ‘tings a serious bash.

To my delight , we arrived at the spot with glassed out condition but John was concerned that might put the fish off. We walked about 2km into the flats and started casting from the middle of the flats towards the shore. The lure of choice for me was Sugapen 70F in tiger prawn colour. I had replaced the Owner Trebles with twin assist hooks. After a few retrieve the mirror surface was shattered by a mini explosion and I was on! My heart nearly skipped a beat!  After a short fight, I landed my first Yellowfin whiting on popper. I was stoked to say the least, managed to deflower a new lure! 2nd cast, pop, pop, pop and bang! Another hook-up, another fin landed.  Although I had my polarized on, I couldn’t spot the fish but was merely blind casting to prospective spots. By the 5th fish, I said to Johh that it’s time to give other lures a chance.

CHECK OUT THE MIRROR CONDITION.

On my next hook-up, I backed down my drag such that the fish would peel some line off the reel. Finally my Complex Ci4+ 2500S F6 screamed in protest – sounded like sweet music to my ears. 

I went through a handful of lures and deflowered a good number of them. By noon, the fish were fired up and it didn’t matter whether the tide was incoming or outgoing or if the wind churned up a chop. These feisty litter buggers were shouldering each other to get a piece of the hook! At one stage, one fish actually went absolutely air-borne and crashed onto the lure before hooking up. That was absolutely insane!

I had an absolute ball and between both of us we landed at least 30 fish, biggest measuring 35cm. We released all fish less than 30cm and kept a few for the table. Add in those that missed the hooks we are looking at 50 over strikes for the morning sesh!

There were several highlights of the trip :

1.     John landed a mullet on his Atomic surface lure. Not foul hook but bona fide hook-up.  Who says mullet doesn't take lure ? Lol.

2.     I hooked up a whiting on micro metal squid but the fish threw the hook whilst I was unhooking it, so there’s no photo to show. (bugger!)

3.     I also landed another whiting on Rapala Husky Jerk minnow!

4.     I tried micro jigging and landed one foul hooked on Saurus micro jig of 5g!! Obviously the fish made an attempt to eat the jig and got hooked in the process.

Micro Jagging or Micro Jigging ??

5.     Last but not least, double header on my Sugapen! How good is that ?

6.     One fired up whiting actually made 5 attempts to inhale the lure before hooking up! It went boof, boof, boof, boof, boof, BANG!

These are the thoughts I’ve gathered from this short sesh:

1.    Most whiting popping articles advocate working the lure consistently to mimic a fleeing prawn. They claim stopping the lure will result in the fish shying away. My experience tells me that ain’t true. In fact, I’ve caught whiting on the pause or when the lure sits completely still in the water! The twin assist one being shorter than the other also ensured a secured hook up. It is not uncommon to have 2 hooks in a fish mouth, or one in the mouth and another outside. There’s no way the fish is getting away no matter how hard it thrashes around.

2.     The same articles also advocate mono over fluoro carbon leader claiming the latter will sandbag the surface lure, dampening its action. I was using 8-10lb FC and that didn’t seem to discourage the tingz.

3.     I also read somewhere that the lure should track straight ‘cos that’s how shrimps behave when they skitter across the surface to escape predation. So I tried walking the dog in a zig zag fashion but didn’t seem to put the fish off either.

4.     Use a rod of less than 7”. My MajorCraft AirRock Kurodai (black bream) Special is 7”3 - too long for this purpose. I find it difficult to stab the rod side ways to induce walk-the-dog action because the rod tip will be poking into the water. To compensate that, my rod was held high pointing towards the sky all the time, resulting in sore shoulder and upper back.

5.     Change the trebles for singles or assist hooks. In fact the latter will fare better than the former due to the downward facing mouth position of the tingz. They are designed to suck up worms and prawns from the sand, not snatching prey from the surface.

6.     They are no prawns visible in the estuary that I fish. I reckon the fish just struck the lure out of aggression and hunger. So any preys small enough to fit the gob will be food. That may explain why the Rapala Husky Jerk got nailed!

Thanks for reading. :)

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