Which Lure for Murky Water?

It was late November and my mate and I decided to head out yak fishing in the local Causeway Lake. The area of Rockhampton and Yeppoon had been impacted by a fair amount of local rain which had greatly affected local waterways making them very muddy and silty. When fishing in these situations, I’ve found that the lighter coloured lures are the lures of choice when the fish are playing hard to get and are shut down. Also you need to think about the other factors that allow fish to feed in murky water. Sound and vibrations made by baitfish are also the key to targeting these shutdown fish so pick a lightly coloured lure with a very prominent rattle.

We launched our yaks from a dirt boat ramp near the Cool Waters camp grounds and headed out into the back creeks with mangrove fringing banks. I was armed and dangerous with my Okuma Flame F-30 reel and Okuma travel spin graphite rod. I started with a minnow type lure using a twitch and pause retrieve to entice predatory fish to smash my lure but the lure was left untouched. My mate experienced the same irritating treatment from the fish as he had a similar type of lure. After a few more casts without any hits I swapped to a herring coloured shad profiled lure, while my mate switched to the same lure in a different colour. A few casts into the snags using a seductive twitch retrieve produced a nice little barramundi which tried to dart back into the snags and break my line off. After a couple pictures were taken the fish was released unharmed back into the water where it disappeared as it headed back to the snags.

My mate soon after hooked up on some type of estuary salmon using his shallow diving, floating minnow lure. Soon after, I hooked up on a larger fish that hit my lure just as the lure approached a drop off from the shallow snags to the deeper water. The fish stuck to the bottom till it was almost under my kayak before I could get it to surface. It was a nice mangrove jack that was very camouflaged due to its brown appearance. Soon after the release of the mangrove jack, we started heading back to the boat ramp and were against the wind the whole way.

 Half way there we came across two men in a tinnie which had broken down and were drifting to the rocks and mangroves at the side of the lake at quite a speed. They asked me and my friend for a tow but we had to pass that offer up as we were having a hard enough time getting back any way. Just as we were approaching the ramp we could see the two men in tinnie cruising up one of the creeks so we figured they got it to work.

That day my mate and I learnt the importance of changing our lures around till we found the fish’s favourite.