With a great weather forecast it was decided that Sunday would be a good day to get after some sweetlip (Emperor) at our local sand bank. My confidence level was low considering it was the day before the full moon and the tides were far from ideal BUT the weather was nice for a change so we headed out with great anticipation.
The real interest for me in the day was to try out some lures that I have been making, in the field. I had a selection of 6 poppers that had been water tested but not put in front of a fish before. I was reasonably nervous about it but also very interested to see if the lures were as good as I had hoped. All of the lures swam and popped very nicely and with some tweaking of the colour schemes will be deadly I am sure. As it was they caught fish on the first try on a day when many of the commercial lures were not working at all.
As you can see from the picture, the day was beautiful and generally the conditions were good. The fishing was not at its best but we returned home with a good box of sweetlip and other assorted reef species.
On the lure front, the lure that worked for me was a bit of a surprise. The best performed lure was a natural wood coloured lure with a tiny bit of silver on each side. My idea with the lure was to present something that the fish wouldnt have seen, while showing the beauty of the wood.
On several occasions a large school of fish were seen competing over the lure, with the lure being hit by several different fish before finally getting a hook up - exciting stuff. The colours in the commercial lures that worked best that day were gold/brown/red varieties with the blue/green lures catching only one fish all day (Ryan's sweetlip pictured above).
So a great day and some good fish and a even better BBQ with sashimi and grilled sweetlip the stars.
The real interest for me in the day was to try out some lures that I have been making, in the field. I had a selection of 6 poppers that had been water tested but not put in front of a fish before. I was reasonably nervous about it but also very interested to see if the lures were as good as I had hoped. All of the lures swam and popped very nicely and with some tweaking of the colour schemes will be deadly I am sure. As it was they caught fish on the first try on a day when many of the commercial lures were not working at all.
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| First timer Ryan with a top fish, just what we were after for dinner |
On the lure front, the lure that worked for me was a bit of a surprise. The best performed lure was a natural wood coloured lure with a tiny bit of silver on each side. My idea with the lure was to present something that the fish wouldnt have seen, while showing the beauty of the wood.
On several occasions a large school of fish were seen competing over the lure, with the lure being hit by several different fish before finally getting a hook up - exciting stuff. The colours in the commercial lures that worked best that day were gold/brown/red varieties with the blue/green lures catching only one fish all day (Ryan's sweetlip pictured above).
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| My best lure for the day, who would have thought that this colour would be the best? Pictured here with a good sized (45cm) sweetip. |
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