You know how people say “things just clicked”, well it did and now I laugh at the simplicity of it all. I still get a bit queasy when I think about all the missed opportunities while “doing-it-wrong”. The possibilities of what might have been given this knowledge and experience at an earlier time, oy vey, endless.
It was the strangest thing, there I was firmly believing that my surface lures were pretty to look at and served no further purpose. I mean really, 3 years of zippo, nada, and 1 year of that was spent in the Eastern Cape. The place I believed that grunters lie around all day just waiting for some piece of floating plastic they could smash. We struggled for success. I had asked the experts, the guys that were posting daily pics of their prized catches. Still this did not seem to help and actually just frustrated me even more. We had managed one or two palm sized specimens that were on kamikaze missions, but that was it.
On a fateful Saturday afternoon while I stood around flicking some bucktails at the kob feeding around the banks I noticed a mudprawn leisurely doing a bit of breaststroke on the side of the current. I kept my eye on it for a while, day dreaming about the life of a mudprawn and how scary it must be to leave the safety of your hole. Where were you off to Mr Prawn, exploring new wild African frontiers like the beardy Kingsley Holgate? Brave you are, naive perhaps about the dangers that surround you, birds-crabs-fish. Perhaps none of them were interested in Kingsley the prawn as he was covering some great distance. Bob, bob, bob then suddenly like a thief in the night there was the tiniest bubble and pop, and Kingsley was gone.
It took me a couple of seconds to snap out of the daydreaming and register what had happened. I still wasn’t sure but it got the hamster wheel turning. What if… location… current… movement… action… cover… setup… lure… Could I have been so wrong all this time? I changed my setup. Lighter rod, smaller reel and the thinnest diameter braid I could find. I made some other adjustments but most of all, my plan of attack needed tweaking. How to catch spotted grunter on surface lures, that was the big question.
I was fortunate enough to grow up on a farm and allowed the privilege of a bit of hunting as well. I spent many hours walking and stalking some of the game we kept, carefully watching and choosing the buck that I wanted to shoot. Often I would just sit and watch them graze and not even take a shot. Likened to my love for fishing, especially lure fishing, patience, working out the strategy, walking, watching and very important, being quiet and stealthy is the perfect recipe for targeting spotted grunters on surface lures.
I could not believe the difference. It was as if someone somewhere flicked the OK GO! switch on the HP catching spotted grunters on surface lures distribution board. Grunters were slurping, swirling, smashing, and sometimes even jumping out of the water trying eat my lure. Some days it was the tiniest bubble pop while other days it looked like one of those great white sharks attacking a seal from below at 40 kmph. I can’t wait to get back to the Breede River and show those giants who’s the boss.
Here are but a few of the pics of our season. We caught well in excess of 50 of these beauties, going on a 100 this coming season.
Jays was down from KZN visiting for a couple of days. After a successful day out the sun was setting, reluctant to leave he persisted into the dark. I joined him on one of the banks and we blind casted into the darkness. Chatting away about the fun of the day, twitch, twitch BOOM! Grunters feeding in the dark, taking a surface lure, NO WAY! How… the rattle? AMAZING! Taking photos at night is a bit of a struggle, but we managed a couple.
Often you find yourself without someone to snap a quick pic. The first of the day usually earns the right of snap.
We were super stoked to have finally adapted our technique to something that answered the question of how to catch spotted grunter on surface lures. Just a word of warning and perhaps a good way to end this post. We release 99% of our catches, so you need to handle these fish with care. They are difficult to hold and the gill-plates as well as the spines are sharp! Add to that a couple of dangling singles and perhaps a treble hook, it requires a surgeon-like touch to get these guys back into the water and your hands and fingers out in one piece. We learned the hard way and still often get hooked, cut or speared by one of the many sharpies. Find a nice soft and wet place to work on or get a lip-grip to handle the fish. Have fun!
Looks like it’s the ‘red head’ lure or go home – judging from the pictures above. Any other colour work for you?
Sounds about right 🙂 You know how it is, a lure you have confidence in is the one you normally go to first and persevere with the longest, resulting in more success… We have caught on various colours of the X-Rap Walk and Skitter-V, but I have definitely caught the bulk of them on the older Rapala X-Rap Walk red head.
Just read a previous post on your Actual Techniques here: http://www.rushofblue.com/topwater-lure-fishing-grunter/ and am ready to give this a try when next neat grunter waters. Just a thought – on those days when you struggle to get anything more than a swirl – change your colour! Stywe lyne…
Great! If you are ever in or around Port Elizabeth and you would like to join us for an outing, just send me a message. Let us know how it goes.
What’s your take on the stinger? I see you have one in most of your pics here. I’ve caught with and without, but I have to say on the last outing I had them on and must have been hit over 20 times without a hookup. I wonder if it’s best to take them off when there’s more chop on the water
Hi Richard, thank you for getting in touch, we appreciate the comments. Yeah, that’s an interesting conversation point and probably have its merits both ways. Let me mention firstly that we do not like the trebles at all, they really do excessive damage to the fish, especially the smaller grunters and it is a mission to get the hooks out. If we had more confidence in the hookup rate, we would probably fish singles back and front. The single at the back works really well if the grunters are feeding shyly and slurping off the top, we feel that they commit more to the bite rather than with the treble in those calm and quiet conditions. On the contrary, when conditions are a bit up with current flow and wind chop we find that they feed much more aggressive and often miss the back trailing hook and most hookups are on the front treble. I agree, when there is more chop on the water and they are feeding aggressively you would probably get more hookups on the treble back and front, as you would often find them braking the surface and turning into the lure, but then the fish are being hooked in the eye/head/side with the other loose treble. So its a toss-up between landing more fish and releasing more in a better condition… fortunately our success rate has been really good, so we are happy to go single back and treble front at the expense of missing one or two bites in the “up” conditions. What do you think?