King George Whiting On Lures: Unravelling The Mysteries

Bombers Tips For King George Whiting On Lures

• Your lure needs to be right on the bottom at all times. Long casts and slow retrieves assist with this, Bomber timed his retrieve at over four minutes until the lure arrived back at the boat.
• Expect a lot of missed bites when casting lures at King George Whiting. Their fairly small, soft and downwards facing mouths make it difficult for them to easily take soft plastic lures
• Bomber explored various locations across northern Tasmanian estuaries, including Smithton, Port Sorrel, Tamar River mouth, St Helens and more. He found King George whiting in water depths between 1.5m and 4m in clearer and tannin coloured waters. Often fish were caught at the top of the estuary in areas that contain insufficient water at low tide to hold whiting. Focused on broken ground and areas with good water flow.
• Bait fishers often look for patches of sand among weed, but lure fishing for whiting is about finding weed edges, allowing the lure to be in the water for longer.
• The last few hours of the run-in tide tended to fish best in the estuaries. Fish were sometimes taken outside of the estuaries in coastal areas at low tide and at times in fast flowing estuaries it was only possible to fish for short periods right near the tide change when the flow slowed sufficiently.
• Tasmania can be a windy place, but Bomber found that KGW were happy to take lures even on windy days. Position yourself so the wind assists your casting.
• Bomber used a little Squidgies S Factor scent on his King George whiting lures. He’s vowed he’ll try more crustacean based scents in future.

Bombers Tackle for whiting lure fishing

• A 1000-size Shimano reel with 5lb braided line and an 8lb fluorocarbon leader coupled with a 6’9″ Shimano graphite rod was perfect for King George whiting, but also handled a range of other freshwater and estuarine species in northern Tasmania.

Whiting Fishing Lures And Techniques

• The Squidgy Wriggler in 100mm size worked very well, particularly those with a red coloration. The 120mm size also worked when Bomber ran low on the smaller lures.
• Hook size was chosen to suit the size of plastic, with weights from 1/16th to 1/4 ounce coming into play, depending on tide and water flow conditions.
• Bomber experimented with placing the hook higher in the plastic to convert more bites into hookups. This worked, but left the plastics prone to being torn by the hook. A spot of superglue helped save some lures.
• It’s important to keep working the lure after a missed bite as whiting often miss the hook completely and will come back for another bite.