By Stephen Booth
Not much has really changed in that department as I still just like catching fish and if lures aren’t working, I’ll swap over to bait in a heartbeat. I’d rather be catching than watching but if you’re a lure-only person, scroll on as there’s nothing here for you.
Toga dance
Recently we’ve been testing out a range of new Duo and Live Target lures on saratoga and our most recent trip coincided with a pretty wet and ordinary forecast. Yes, we still caught a couple of toga on some new lures, but with the lure action very slow, we decided to take a step back and fish some baits.
As we were lure testing, guess what, we had no baits such as worms or shrimp, so we had to make do. In the water we were fishing weed is abundant so the only real option is to fish floating baits.
Luckily I’ve been shown a little secret bait that saratoga just love and we had plenty on hand. Good old-fashioned steak. Yep, standard camping steaks, cut into thin strips, work wonderfully well. Please don’t ask me why this is so, just for a moment believe.
Baitfishing should be simple and with the right gear it is. We used the same rods we were tossing lures with, the same leader and main line and the only things that changed were the terminal pieces. We swapped lures out for a size 4 Mustad Octopus hook (red), a small split shot and a SureCatch float. We used a few different floats, some pre-weighted and others unweighted, but the rig is the same for all.
All floats used had the ability to clip onto the leader without having to tie any knots and hold position or have a peg inserted to hold them in place. All the floats used also had a Starlight holder – one of those bright green chemical light sticks that was going to be invaluable as the light faded.
The list of floats used included the pre-weighted Oval 1 1/2″ model (309FWO112), the pre-weighted Torpedo 2″ float (309FWT2) and the unweighted 2″ Cone Float (309F2). These are attached to the leader about 30cm up from the hook and a tiny split shot is added about 10cm up from the hook on the pre-weighted floats, with a larger split shot added the same distance from the hook on the unweighted float rig.
From there, it’s simply cast the rig out, pop it in a rod holder, grab a chair and a coldie and wait.
In the evening and morning session the wait was not very long at all with saratoga, coal grunter (jade perch) and spangled perch all crash tackling the steak fillets and providing some great action. It really was the game saver and showed just how good baitfishing can be.
For those interested, we did throw lures around the floats and couldn’t raise many fish. Over the two session we landed two toga on lures with the float rigs accounting for 6 toga, 10 coal grunter and another 10 quality spangled perch that surprised with their size and bulk!
We also tossed in some redclaw pots and to our surprise and joy, some very big redclaw climbed in along with a couple of extra-large freshwater shrimp. These shrimps went straight out under the floats and the first one to hit the water lasted all of five seconds before the biggest toga of the trip nailed it and after a few awesome runs on 8lb braid, buried deep in the weed and busted off leaving the unlucky angler with a great story, a float and a split shot. The barbless hook and the fish were long gone!
The second shrimp got destroyed by smaller fish with another couple of spanglies mopping up the scraps.
All in all it was a simple to do, super fun couple of sessions that had us catching fish rather than fishing lures for little reward. For me there are few things as awesome as a surface strike on a lure and that will always be my preference, but watching floats and waiting for the ‘down’, followed by a solid hook up is pretty good too.
Check out the pics and go have yourself some fun baitfishing when the lure bite is slow – it’s always better catching than casting!
