Episode 342: Lake Conjola Flathead With Mitch Fischer

Mitch’s Top Flathead Fishing Tips

• Lake Conjola is close to St Georges Basin and is often thought of as the second cousin. Fish reckons it’s actually a very good alternative.
• Targeting trophy flathead at lake Conjola starts with looking at Google Earth to identify bends that have a sand flat on the outside of them. This may sound counterintuitive but happens quite a lot at Lake Conjola and results in shallow flats with plenty of water movement.
• Water depths of less than 1m fish best, with flats as shallow as 30cm holding fish, provided there is tidal flow across them.
• Time of day is the major factor when it comes to bite windows. Fish likes to be on the water well before dawn and finds that tides, lunar cycles and other factors are far less important than an early start. Beating the jet ski and boating traffic to the flats is the key. The only other predictor of a good bite is to be on the water just before a big southerly blow.
• If you’re having a quiet day, go looking for the flathead-shaped depressions in the sand (called “lies”) that indicate a fish has been there. When you find these on flats that are receiving water flow you know a fish has been there recently and is probably not too far away.

Mitch’s Flathead Glidebait Tackle

• It’s not necessary to have the latest and greatest, most expensive rods and reels to target flathead. Fish has a dedicated swimbait rod consisting of a 7’8” brandless rod from the online shopping app “wish” and finds that it works really well. You’re looking for a rod that is light enough to cast with all day but solid enough to handle 50-70g lures such as the big glidebaits favoured or this style of flathead fishing. Fish likes older Shimano baitcast reels such as Chronarchs’ Curados and Calcutta’s. He loads his reels with 30lb braid and completes the outfit with a 30lb leader.

Mitch’s Top Trophy Flathead Lures

• The Savage Gear Shine Glide in either 135 or 170mm is a great, cost effective and deadly flathead lure. Even smaller flathead will eat the 135mm version, although using the larger 170 will tend to limit the catches to larger fish and reduce the bycatch encountered. These lures can be fished using all different kinds of retrieves, including super erratic, stop-start techniques. However, fish finds he gets best results by simply slow rolling them across the flats. This is the lure of choice if you need a confidence boost after a run of donuts!
• The Crossfire 110 or 190mm are bent minnow style lures that consistently tempt flathead from the shallow flats of Lake Conjola, especially the 110mm version. Fish tends to switch to these lures when he needs to get his fix of aggressive surface water strikes.
• Fish’s final lure choice is his own hand-made timber swimbaits. He’s only been making them for a few months but already has some impressive results on fish over 90cm in length. His trick is to make just one design and keep tweaking until it’s perfected, playing with the weighting and fitting it with the best hooks he can get. Fish with confidence using a slow rolling retrieve.