They call them ”Grunters” in the Western Cape, “Tigers” in Port Elizabeth and “Spotties” in East London. Nevertheless, it is an awesome fish to catch and it gives you a great fight.
As I relocated a few times during my life, I’ve encountered many different instances fishing for Grunters with prawns.
I started fishing lures, and by lures I mean bucktail and paddletail in estuaries and the surf. After moving to East London this year, having some success with lead heads in the Port Elizabeth area, I decided that I would like to add something to my developing set of skills and give top-water action a try.
A few tricks I have learnt thus far:
- How to “walk” the lure: The whole idea with walking the lure is to imitate a swimming prawn or a prawn blown out of its hole, swimming along with the tide. To get the lure twitching and almost touching its own backside on every twitch is like tapping the top of your head and making circles on your stomach at the same time (Go ahead try it). It takes practise, dedication and time to perfect, but once you figured out the rhythm, it’s actually easy. I hold the rod with my left hand and reel with my right hand. While casting out the lure and reeling the slack, I like to get the rod tip close to the water and pointing to the right. I will make about three twitches for one turn of the reel. Two twitches and on the third twitch you make one turn with your right hand. Varying the speed and aggressiveness of the retrieve by making shorter or longer twitches. I do not think you can go too slow, as long as you can hear the lure’s rattles go “click” “click” ”click”, you are still fine. In faster moving water you can cast the lure in the channel where the Grunters are feeding and just let it drift while giving it a twitch now and then. This last retrieve takes a lot of patients; patients I am yet to master.
- Location: I do 99% of my fishing off the banks. I always try and fish with the tide and mostly in water with sediment. People always say that you will never hook the Grunter busy tailing, which is true, but normally Grunters move in schools. In my opinion that Grunter you see tailing and blowing prawns out their holes, will not be able to eat all of the prawns blown out. This is where your lure comes into play. That is also the reason why I like to fish with the tide, imitating these prawns kicking and swimming with the tide and getting smashed by other Grunters.
- Depth of water: Grunters feed where there are prawn holes and prawn holes are normally in the shallows. Grunters can tail in extremely shallow water, so do not ever be afraid to throw a lure into those shallow waters.
- The SMASH: Like any type of fishing, you get those days where you will get swirl after swirl behind your lure and boils underneath your lure but cannot manage to hook the elusive Grunter. On these type of days, you need to be patient and play around with speed of your retrieve and even the angle you are retrieving. And then… you get those days where, without warning, SMASH! Vas! Flatstick! About 70% of the fish will get hooked by the bottom treble and the back treble will get stuck in the top of the head or gill plate somewhere. Tying assist hooks can increase your hook-up rate, replacing the back treble with two assist hooks tied on 50lb braid up and stronger.
- Lures: Everyone has their favourite lure. Mine would be the Rapala X-rap Walk. (Rapala discontinued this lure, so if you find one in a shop, give it a try). There are many other good walk lures, for example; Grunter Hunter, Z-killer, Storm Z-stick, and Strike Pro also have a few on the market. A good colour to have in your tackle box would be white and red. I like to use the pink X-rap, because I can see the lure from far away. A few people have told me that the different top water lure colours are for the angler walking into the shop and not so much for the fish. It is all about the action, sound and silhouette of the lure. Yet again, this statement is for each individual to decide for him- or herself.
- Rod and reel: I fish with two different outfits. 7ft Rovex D Alcock series together with a Shimano 2500 Solstace fitted with 15lbs Rovex braid. I like to use this outfit in windy conditions when I really need some help getting my lure out. This Rovex rod is a pole! My second outfit is a 7ft Daiwa Laguna together with a Shimano Sahara 3000 fitted with the new Berkley 14lbs braid (0.13 diameter). I normally use this outfit in calmer conditions and to fish bucktails and jerk minnows. I get a better action from the rod, and the thin braid helps me get some distance fishing smaller lures.
It took me a while to get the lure “walking”. It resulted in a lot of frustrated days without any action but once I got that first enquiry from an interested Grunter behind my lure, I was hooked! I also realised that these beautiful fish are more aggressive than I thought. If you get an enquiry and the fish miss the lure, just make a cast out in the same direction. Watch out for those gill plates when handling a Grunter as they can do some damage.
At this moment my best advice is not to fish blindfolded and by blindfolded I mean take some time when fishing those shallow banks. Look at the direction of the tide. Look at the direction of the wind. Crouch for a few minutes and take in your surroundings. Grunters sometimes feed so shallow that they are easy to spot. Switch your Stealth mode on and move in for the hunt. Go out and spend some time “walking” those lures.
Always remember to practise Catch and Release!
Tight braid