Wandering around in ankle deep water kicking a few fish out of the way is a great way to spend the day, as Dave Magner explains.

I don’t know about you, but lately I’ve been wondering if I’m making my fishing adventures more complicated than they really need to be. With work and other commitments eating into my already limited leisure time, I’ve been attempting to squeeze every last drop out of each trip. I know that probably seems like the way to go when fishing opportunities are limited but lately all I seem to be doing is carting way too much gear with me. It’s reached the point where I’m wasting even more of my precious time getting all those different rods and reels ready for each trip and then cleaning them up and putting them away once I get home.
Now I know that a lot of anglers don’t suffers from tackle addiction as badly as I do, but I’ve reached a point where lugging all those extra outfits around has become counter productive. First there’s the amount of room everything takes up in the boat and then instead of concentrating on one technique, I find myself adopting a bit of a scattergun approach, regularly switching from one outfit to another and not really putting enough time into any one of them to get the most out of it.
Luckily, I’ve recently had a mate reintroduce me to the simple joys of wading the estuary sand flats to chase flathead. I reckon this must be the most low stress form of fishing there is. Without a boat or even a kayak to cart your gear around, you are physically limited to taking only what you can carry on your person. It certainly reduces the tendency to take all those extra bits and pieces along ‘just in case’. Amidst all the hustle and bustle of my usual fishing forays, getting back to this simple approach has been a real breath of fresh air for me.
I’ve got to admit; I’d almost forgotten how relaxing and enjoyable this type of fishing can be. Andrew and I simply grabbed a rod each (although I think he actually managed to sneak one spare rod along), a small box of lures, a camera and a few other bits and pieces and we spent the day wandering around the local sand flats. Despite packing light, we still caught fish, in fact, we caught lots of fish. They were mostly flathead up to 50 cm or so, but what they lacked in size, they more than made up for in numbers and in a couple of hours we probably racked up something like 20 between us.
While it has been great to simply take a laid back approach to my fishing again, the two things that really stood out about this trip was just how shallow water can be and still hold flathead. Honestly, as the tide turned and started to trickle back in, I witnessed a couple of flatties holding right on the edge where the water was hardly deep enough to cover their backs. I almost ended up standing on them. The other was that we caught all our fish on surface lures. Now I know that’s not unheard of, but I don’t know too many people who use them as a first line of attack when chasing flatties like Andrew does. However, let me tell you they were very successful and perfectly suited the extremely shallow weed beds and mudflats we were fishing. I guess I should also point out that Andrew is a lure maker and surface lures are his specialty. In fact, he designed and built the lures we used specifically for the location we were fishing (see Fact Box) so it’s hardly surprising they worked so well.

Never assume any water is too shallow for flatties. This sort of country can be really productive and is ideal for surface lures.

HOW SHALLOW?
Prior to this trip, I’ve spent a lot of time sneaking around in the shallows in both kayaks and boats and generally been pretty successful. In fact, I’d go so far as to say around 90% of the flathead I catch on lures come from less than a metre of water. However, on these flats the vast majority came from water that wouldn’t get your knees wet, with some coming out of water that only just covered my ankles or lapped at my calves.
If you stop and think about it, it shouldn’t really come as a surprise to find flatties right up in the shallows. Old Mother Nature has a way of allowing fish to evolve so that they suit specific environments. A good rule of thumb is to look at the general shape of a fish and it will quickly tell you a lot about where it spends its time. Apart from flounder, you won’t find too many flatter fish than a flathead. Viewing them from side on perfectly illustrates the sort of water depths they should be found in. When you add in there remarkable ability to alter their colouration to perfectly match the background they are lying on, then you can easily understand why they are quite comfortable hunting right up in the shallows.
Of course, there is one key factor for finding fish right up in the shallows and it’s that they simply won’t stay there if there is a lot of human activity going on. While they probably aren’t the most wary or intelligent of all God’s creatures, if there are too many people about, their basic survival instincts still kick in and send them shooting out of the shallows and back to deeper water. They simply aren’t very tolerant of people running up and down the shoreline or splashing about at the water’s edge.
Knowing this can save you a lot of wasted time and potentially fruitless trips, particularly in more urban environments. If you plan to fish right up in the shallows, then you will need to be on the water early in the morning before too many other water users are up and about. Another good option is to seek out secluded shallows away from the more popular locations. Places where mangroves and a bit of mud keep the tourists away might be just the ticket to finding a bit of relatively undisturbed water and feeding fish.
Anglers in other, less busy locations have things much easier. Andrew lives on the doorstep of the Great Sandy Straits. These sheltered shallows sandwiched between the mainland and Fraser Island offer almost limitless potential as far as ultra-shallow fishing options go. Amazingly, apart from a couple of spots, it’s almost unheard of to have to share your fishing activities with anyone. Not surprisingly the fishing can be mind blowing at times.

Andrew of Red’s lures tossing one of his surface lures.

GETTING IN WITH THE FISH
When wading the sandflats, the best approach is to be mobile and self-contained. Flathead like to sit on the bottom and wait for their prey to come to them so the idea is to keep moving and work the water ahead of you until you put the lure close enough to draw a strike. On most flats, the fish are generally going to be spread over a relatively wide area so you just keep on moving and casting, picking up a fish here and a fish there and before you know it you’ve covered quite a bit of shoreline and racked up a few fish.
Of course, if you are wading, that means you need to be able to carry everything with you. Even if you are only taking the bare necessities with you, you still need somewhere to put it all so you can keep your hands free. Probably the easiest way to achieve that is with a chest pack or bum bag of some sort. There are a few purpose-designed packs like this on the market. I’ve got a Plano chest pack that holds more than enough for a few hours on the water and I can see it getting a lot more use in the near future.
Of course, you can always take a leaf out of the fly fisher’s book and wear a fishing vest. It doesn’t have to be anything too fancy, as long as it’s got some smaller pockets for leaders and some larger ones for a camera and a small box of lures it should do the job. If there are a couple of attachment points for clipping your pliers etc, then so much the better.
LURES AND TECHNIQUES
Like any other approach, lure fishing in shallows has its own share of challenges which you need to come to terms with before you can expect to be consistently successful. So before I start talking about suitable gear and lure selection, I’d like to point out that you really need to tailor your whole approach to suit the situation.
For a start, in shallow and generally clear water, the fish are normally very wary of what is going on around them. While you can certainly get a lot closer to them on foot than you would in a boat, you can normally expect a more positive approach if the fish haven’t seen you before they see your lure. That means you need to fish fine and far off. Finesse fishing is where it’s at on the flats.

Flathead are flat for a reason and that’s so they can sneak right up into the shallows.

As far as suitable outfits go, a light threadline set-up should be your first choice. A good quality graphite spin rod, matched to a small threadline reel spooled with 4 or 6 lb braid makes a very useful combo. In the wide-open spaces of the flats, accuracy takes a back seat to distance, so as long as you can cast lightweight lures around 20 to 20 m, you should be set.
Now onto lures. As I’ve already mentioned, Andrew is a lure maker and produces some handcrafted gems under the Red’s Lures banner. His work is absolutely first class and his lures not only look amazing, but they are proven fish catchers too. Fishing the flats is Andrew’s specialty and he has several lures in his DFA lineup which have been designed for this sort of fishing.
Andrew’s addiction to surface lures actually makes a lot of sense. When the water is this shallow, even the shallowest running minnows will find it difficult to work without dragging along the bottom during the retrieve. Soft plastics may seem like a logical alternative but there tends to be a lot of weed in these areas and if you let your lure sink to the bottom, you’ll waste a lot of time clearing it off your hooks. Surface lures avoid all these problems and when the water is so shallow, the fish seem to have little hesitation coming off the bottom to nail them.
One key characteristic of Andrew’s lures is that they all cast particularly well. He takes great care during the construction phase to carefully weight them so that they fly tail first without tumbling or tangling mid-flight. The result is extra distance on each cast and the more water you can cover, the more fish you are likely to encounter.
Of course, there are numerous commercially made surface lures you could use, with most of the better known brands having something suitable in their line-up. One of my favourite commercial lures is a relatively overlooked model in the Killalure 2Deadly. The smallest size is a diminutive 60 mm and if ever there were a lure that lived up to its name, this is it. I catch almost everything on these things – from barra to bream – and they are just one of those lures that work almost anywhere.
RELAX AND ENJOY
If you are looking for a relaxing way to chase a few flatties, then this style of fishing might be just what you are looking for. Wandering around the shallows is a low stress approach that can be surprisingly effective with only minimal prep time required. This makes it ideal for quick, spur-of-the-moment trips. All you have to do is grab a few lures, rig up a lightweight spin outfit, slip on a pack or vest and you are good to go. If you look around, there are probably plenty of places that rarely see a lure because most people think they are too shallow to be worth fishing. You might just be surprised at what they hold and how much fun you can have running a surface lure over them, so get into it!
Dave Magner is a keen angler who relishes the freedom and flexibility that fishing from canoes and kayaks brings. While he’ll chase anything with fins, he has a real passion for our native and imported freshwater species