Triple tail are out and about

Over the last few weeks the weather has been warming up, the days are getting longer and with a gentle sea breeze moving in during the afternoon, it has been making it a little more difficult for the smaller boats to comfortably fish out wide or up north.

I have been noticing more and more triple tail floating around the place. I find the easiest way to catch them is to fish an unweighted strip bait of mullet, pilchard, squid or queenfish.

I like to fish a 2kg light spin outfit with 10kg fluorocarbon leader attached to a braided mainline with a small size 1/0 circle hook.

Once the bait is cast close to the fish, the fish normally home in on the bait quite responsively.

It helps to leave the reel in free spool to limit any tension on the line from occurring and affecting the natural presentation of the bait.

Once you see the fish swim off, just close the bail arm (or disengage free spool for bait caster reels) and wait for the tension of the fish swimming off to set the hook.

Resist the urge to strike as this will impact on a successful hook up.

For those preferring to target them on lures, I suggest keeping the lures quite small.

I have most of my success using surface or floating lures. I like the short retrieve and pause approach when casting lures as it is exciting to watch the fish scrutinise the lure, then demolish it and battle it out.

The offshore reef fishing still seems to be a little hit and miss, as well as the billfish action further north. It appears that some anglers are getting more fish when fishing the days with more tidal movement.

I managed to get up north at the end of last week with a work colleague — we thought we were in for a great day when five minutes into the day a nice cobia nailed a switch bait.

As the day wore on we managed to see a couple of freejumping sailfish and a nicesize black marlin get airborne, but no luck getting them to eat a bait. With the masses of good bait it seems that the sharks just get worse.

On three occasions we had sharks come and take baits off the teasers, leading me to be a little discouraged. If I actually did manage to hook a fish it would have been an uphill battle to get the fish away from the sharks.

Ben Little is an aquaculture lecturer at Kimberley Training Institute and an advocate for sustainable fishing practices.