Jiggin' The Burley Trail

The ‘Centurion’ is a wrecked collier in 18 metres of waters south-east of Quarantine Point, on the northern side of Sydney Harbour. There’s hardly anything showing, because it’s been smothered in sand! Although clients tell me that the 700 tones of coal she was carrying when she went down means your anchor sometimes comes up covered in black marks:

Even though there’s hardly any structure showing, your sounder screen can get blocked out with fish at times. This is because the wreck is surrounded by sand only, for hundreds of metres around. That always makes it so much more attractive, for bait fish. Here’s my sounder screen last week:

Readers on our Facebook page know that we’ve recently moved to Manly – into an apartment, just 150 metres from the boat ramp. I took the windscreen off my little 4.2m Atomix and was able to get it into the underground parking. This means we now live only 5 minutes from the boat ramp. My wife calls that quite a coincidence:

One little thing to mention, about launching on an exposed ramp? The surge can be diabolical and even if you launch quickly the boat can get into trouble. Especially when you are going solo, like I often do. I bought an extendable pool brush that stretches to 15 feet long. On the business end, a loop of cord, which I pin to the anchor davit on the bow. This way, you can push or pull the boat on or off the trailer, and steer it from and to the beach. Works great:

These wrecks on sandy bottoms attract an incredible amount of bait fish. Which in turn, attracts an incredible amount of predators. One hunter that you don’t hear much about in these circumstances is flathead. It’s a perfect set up for them because they can burrow into the sand and launch an ambush when the opportunity presents. And there’s a permanent biomass of live bait meaning sooner or later one will come within strike range. Last week I only had a couple of hours to spare and I thought I might try for some flathead at the Centurion. Here’s how it all went down. First up, the downrigger. I packed an old mesh bag with half a loaf of bread and 20 or 30 pilchards cut in half. Then, lowered it down to a few metres off the bottom. The idea was to drag the bait down deeper in the water column and turn the flathead on with the smell of fresh food:

I started out with one of our 10 gram micro jigs. They’ve been working great for me inside the Harbour:

I was hooking up almost every drop but unfortunately, the hook ups were all large slimy mackerel. And they weren’t my target. Switched to our 40 gram jigs to get the result I wanted:

At the same time, I had a lightly weighted half pilchard drifting down. That worked too:

Non-target species got in on the action:

Not the biggest two hours I’ve ever had on the water but non-stop action and some quality flathead taken. Two factors lead to success:

Firstly, running a burley bag down deep. This works in three ways:

Setting your burley at a depth where water pressure becomes a factor. I was using some old pilchards. The water pressure squeezed the oil out of these fish and it rose in an invisible column. That brought top water bait down deep;

As the boat rises and falls in the swell - mostly, from ferry wash - the pilchards break up and sink to the bottom. That triggers a bite from the fish which inhabit the bottom - at this spot, mainly flathead and small keeper reds;

Just the excitement transmitted by hundreds or maybe thousands of small baitfish triggers a predator response. Predators can detect that action through their lateral lines.

The other key to success is our 40 gram jigs. They work so well in this situation. They cast well, sink fast, and have prismatic sides and a Mylar tag for maximum flash. I work them back up through the water column in the same way you would work an SP. Two sharp lifts then a pause. Absolutely deadly:

More information here. At $62 for 10 including delivery anywhere in Australia, they’re a good investment:

10 x 40 gram jigs $62 inc delivery

Give it a try? Nothing fancy, just using your downrigger for deep burleying and working a jig through the trail. It works. Thanks for reading
Andrew Hestelow

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