FLATHEAD FACTS
Like most of the east coast of Australia, south-east Queensland had plenty of rain in summer and early autumn. This fertilised the estuaries and a few months later the fishing greatly improved.
We generally start to get serious about our flathead fishing around May, and this season started well. In my last three trips we caught well over one hundred flathead. As is usual at this time of year, they were mostly smaller fish in the 35 to 65cm bracket, but they bit well and it made for productive fun fishing.
Flathead fishing is an ever evolving pastime. There are always new lures to try and I find I am constantly learning. This year we had one of the longest and most productive banana prawn seasons we have ever had, and both the locals and the flathead were feeding voraciously on prawns. This lead me to do a lot of work using prawn imitation lures, and this experimentation showed me a few new tricks that the flathead seem to love.
When flathead are feeding on prawns, they chase them aggressively, often leaving cover and moving quickly through the water column. Prawns are spiky by nature, and when they grab one they
