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Estuary entrance channels are the best place to start looking for bigger dusky flathead, particularly during the October through March breeding period.

It’s surprising how little many of us know about the life and times of one of Australia’s favourite fish. In this fascinating feature, Steve Starling fills in some gaps, scuttles a bunch of myths, settles a few arguments and offers a stack of valuable tips to help you catch more (and bigger!) flatties this year.

O kay, I admit it… I love flathead. I’m certainly not alone in feeling that way, either. The flathead has long been one of Australia’s favourite

recreational angling targets. Whether its tigers in Tassie, Yanks in Melbourne, bar-tails in the Swan or big duskies along the eastern seaboard, Aussie anglers spend more time chasing ‘lizards’, ‘frogs’ and ‘crocs’ than just about any other saltwater species. Yet, some folks still denigrate these wonderful fish. According to their more critical detractors, flathead are ugly, spiky beasts with the fighting characteristics of a wet rag and all the charisma of a cane toad.

I guess it’s fair to say that flatties aren’t

conventionally ‘pretty’, at least not in the same way as, say, a barra, snapper, jewfish or marlin. And when hooked, they don’t peel line from your reel like a tuna, charge for the snags like a mangrove jack, nor dance on their tails like an Australian salmon. Still, to those of us who venerate them, flatties have something very special going for them. When it comes to playing favourites, I guess it also doesn’t hurt that a pile of crumbed or beer-battered boneless flathead fillets is high on my list of all-time favourite seafood meals!

When assessing their value as a sport fish, it’s also worth remembering that more big flathead are lost every year than just about any

other commonly encountered species. Often, these losses occur close to the boat or bank, usually after the hapless angler has had several opportunities to clearly eyeball their opponent. This makes such losses doubly painful. Personally, I know that every large lizard I hook (especially those that are obviously over 80cm in length) has me tightly clenching various parts of my anatomy and quietly muttering to myself with subdued tension. Big flathead are perhaps the ultimate piscatorial escape artists, and they’re never truly yours until they’re on the measuring mat and photographed. Even then, they have the potential to leave you bruised and bloodied before you finally send them on their way.

A reasonable dusky carves it up and actually gets some air close to the boat. This is where most good flathead are lost.

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Myth 1: Flathead Are Lazy FishThe description of any fish as ‘lazy’ — be it

a barra, a Murray cod or a flathead — is a classic piece of anthropomorphism (the attribution of human characteristics to animals). It’s also not especially useful when it comes to working out the habits and behaviour of your target species.

It’s rare for any animal to expend serious amounts of energy pursuing activities that aren’t directly related to one of three ends: obtaining food, escaping being eaten and breeding. Flathead are no exception. Their lives are dominated by the urge to eat, to run away from danger and to reproduce. This, however, doesn’t make them ‘lazy’.

Flathead are iconic ambush predators. They use a combination of camouflage, body shape and white-meat muscle structure to lie concealed on the seabed, from where they launch relatively short range but incredibly fast and powerful attacks upon their prey. If you were a prawn or

Eaters and TrophiesThese days, I tend to mentally divide the

flathead I target into two quite distinct categories. In the first group are the relatively abundant and typically quite willing 40-60cm specimens I chase primarily to satisfy my yearning for fresh seafood. Catching lizards in this league is fun and not especially demanding, with the significant added bonus of providing some great meals.

Then there’s the second category: flathead over 60cm, and especially those over 75-80cm. Like most informed anglers, I don’t chase these big girls as food any longer (more on that later). Instead, I target them for what they clearly are: challenging and highly rewarding trophies, to be carefully handled, briefly admired, possibly measured and photographed, and then promptly returned to the watery world from whence they came. If flathead are special, then big flathead are extra special. It’s also noticeable that far fewer anglers catch these ‘crocodiles’ on a regular basis,

at least compared to the vast ranks of those who can pull together a feed of smaller specimens. There are good reasons for this disparity.

In this feature I want to put you on the path to more regular success with both categories of flathead: the abundant ‘eaters’ and the much rarer ‘trophies’. In particular, I’d like to open your eyes and your mind to the things that make flathead unique, and offer you some insights that will improve your performance when it comes to finding, hooking and landing those larger lizards we all dream about. While my comments here relate primarily to the dusky flathead (Platycephalus fuscus) of our eastern seaboard (from about Cairns to Wilsons Promontory), much of this information can also be applied to the various related species found in other parts of the country.

Let’s begin on our path to flathead enlightenment by dispelling eight deeply-entrenched myths about these fish:

Soft plastics account for a large number of lure-caught fish. This one was just over 50cm.

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a finger-sized mullet capable of such abstract thought, I very much doubt that you’d regard flathead as being ‘lazy’! Terrifying, deadly, murderous or apocalyptic perhaps, but never lazy.

Make no mistake about it: over distances up to a metre or two, flathead are amongst the most efficient and deadly predators found in our waters.

Myth 2: Flathead Are Bottom FeedersYes and no. Flathead generally lie on the bottom prior to launching

an attack, but as already mentioned, they will readily spring off it to press home that attack. In shallow water, this can actually turn them into surface feeders. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve seen big flathead smash surface lures, even becoming totally airborne during such violent attacks.

On rarer occasions, flathead will actually leave the seabed and cruise in mid-water, actively seeking prey. This is more likely to occur in the presence of dense schools of baitfish such as pilchards, anchovies or small mullet.

Like every other fish that swims, flathead are where you find ’em!

Myth 3: You Can’t Land Big Crocs On Light LeadersLots of the big flathead that are lost by anglers each year win their

freedom by rasping through relatively fine monofilament leaders or lines. They’re well equipped for this task, having hard jaws lined with small but very sharp teeth. The combination of this formidable hardware and a violent, head-shaking action when hooked can damage even quite thick lines. It would seem that a gossamer strand of 2-3kg bream or whiting leader would stand little chance of hanging in, yet a few ‘lucky’ anglers regularly land monster flathead on such flimsy tackle. In truth, these victories are more about skill than luck, although it certainly doesn’t hurt to score a corner-of-the-jaw or front-of-the-mouth hookup to begin with.

Savvy anglers like my mate Kaj ‘Bushy’ Busch (who has landed some genuine crocodiles on spider-web-thin 1kg fluorocarbon!) understand that big flathead do most of their damage to leaders at close range, and especially when their heads break the surface. Some remarkable captures are possible if you apply constant but gentle pressure to ‘lead’ the fish (ideally moving ahead slowly with your electric motor, if in a boat equipped with one) and then deftly net the big fish at the very first opportunity, without letting it break through the surface.

Stay cool, keep everything ultra-smooth, lead the fish and have that big net ready… you might just surprise yourself!

Myth 4: Flathead Change Sex As They GrowIt was once commonly believed that dusky flathead (like many other

fish) were capable of changing sex from male to female as they grew. It has now been proven that this is not the case. Instead, the female fish simply grow considerably faster from their second year of life onwards, and also live longer (up to 15-16 years) than the males, which rarely top ten years of age. The biggest males ever recorded have been around 60cm in length, so any flathead over 65cm is definitely a female.

These fish also mature and spawn for the first time at quite different ages and sizes. Male flathead typically mature in their second year of life and begin to play their vital role in the reproductive process at a length of around 25-32cm. By contrast, females are generally four years old and at least 45-55cm in length before they spawn for the first time. They may then go on to spawn for another ten years or more as they continue to grow, producing more and more eggs each year (up to 4 million in really large females).

Interestingly, studies in New South Wales have revealed that the

Catching lizards on soft plastics can be child’s play at times! These youngsters are showing the correct way to cradle a solid dusky when using a lip-grip device.

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minimum legal length for dusky flathead would need to be increased to around 56cm in order to allow at least half of the female population to spawn once or more before potentially being caught and killed.

At first glance, such an increase in the legal length looks like a good idea. However, the imposition of a 56cm minimum length would mean that virtually no male dusky flathead could be kept by recreational or commercial fishers. This would almost definitely lead to a serious imbalance in the population, with unknown consequences. So, it seems like the current minimum legal length of 36cm in NSW (apparently set to increase to 40cm in the near future, in line with Queensland) is probably the best way to go, especially as flathead stocks appear to be in pretty good shape. Perhaps this is a perfect example of the old adage: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

Myth 5: Really Big Flathead Don’t Spawn Any MoreThis one still gets trotted out from time to time, usually by someone

trying to justify having killed a 95cm croc. “Your great grandmother doesn’t breed any more,” they’ll glibly state. “Neither do these big, old fish. They need to be culled.” The same anthropomorphic (and scientifically unfounded) argument is sometimes applied to large Murray cod, barramundi and various other species, too.

I can find absolutely no scientific evidence to support the claim that very large flathead ‘dry up’, become infertile and stop producing eggs. In fact, the number of eggs dropped by a female flathead is generally proportional to her body weight, and a 90cm-plus dusky (which, by the way, is likely to be just 12-15 years old) is capable of producing literally millions of eggs each year, in contrast to the hundreds of thousands dropped by a smaller specimen. Furthermore, there’s some reason to believe that the offspring of bigger females may grow faster and potentially attain a larger size than

those of smaller females (this correlation has been proven with some other fish species, like tailor). In short, these big breeders are vital to maintaining healthy flathead stocks. There’s no longer really any excuse for killing them.

Returning larger flathead to the water alive makes great sense and is increasingly being enshrined in law. In Victoria, anglers may keep no more than one flathead over 60cm in length per day as part of their five fish daily bag limit. These are great regulations, although the minimum legal length of a mere 27cm needs review.

In NSW, recreational anglers can keep a rather generous bag of ten duskies a day over 36cm, although only one of these fish may exceed 70cm in length. As mentioned, that minimum length is mooted to rise to 40cm soon, which seems like a good idea. A lot of us would also like to see the bag limit come down to five per day.

Interestingly, Queensland has slipped from having arguably the best dusky flathead regulations in the country a couple of years ago (when the state limit was five fish per day in a slot size of 40-70cm) to quite possibly the worst! By increasing the upper end of the slot to 75cm, Queensland authorities have effectively given the green light for anglers to kill five big, breeding female fish in the low to mid-70s every day! It’ll be interesting to see what impact this ultimately has on flathead stocks.

Myth 6: Flathead Spawn Upstream In Late WinterWrong. There’s a strongly held view in some areas (such as Victoria’s

East Gippsland) that larger flathead travel upstream in July, August and early September to aggregate and spawn. However, all the latest research points to the fact that dusky flathead spawn at or very near the entrances of our estuaries (or even just outside them), primarily during late spring, summer and the start of autumn.

A classic example of where flathead spend most of their time — hugging the bottom.

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Spawning may begin a little earlier in the far north of the fish’s range, but in south eastern Queensland, NSW and eastern Victoria, most dusky flathead spawning activity occurs around our estuary mouths from November until March. This is where you’ll find the bigger girls at that time of year. You should also encounter plenty of feisty males in the 30-50cm range right along with them.

Myth 7: Elephants Eat PeanutsI used to believe this one myself and, to some extent, it is actually

true! Plenty of big flathead get caught right alongside the average-sized ‘eaters’, using exactly the same baits, lures, flies and tackle that are so effective on those smaller 40-60cm fish.

However, it wasn’t until I began actively targeting school jewfish (mulloway) on lures in our coastal estuaries that I realised just how many more big flathead live in these systems than I’d ever guessed. Switching to bigger offerings and working slightly different areas (particularly deeper dropoffs, reef areas, current breaks and the estuary bed under bait fish and tailor aggregations) resulted in a dramatic increase in my encounters with 70cm-plus flathead.

There’s no doubt about it in my mind: using bigger lures (both plastics and hard-bodies) results in catching fewer but larger flathead over the course of a year. If you’re seriously interested in boosting your ‘PB’ mark and perhaps landing a genuine crocodile, you should definitely upscale your lures, leaders and tackle and start fishing those big fish haunts, both deeper… and shallower!

Myth 8: Deep Holes Hold Bigger FishEvery estuary has one… its legendary ‘jewie hole’… a place spoken

of in secretive, hushed tones, with furtive looks cast over hunched shoulders to make sure no one else is listening in.

I wish I had a dollar for every mention I’d heard over the years of the magical ‘deep hole’ or ‘jewie hole’ in a coastal creek or river. I’d certainly be a lot better off than if I’d received the same payment for each fish I’d actually caught from such a hole!

A lot of less experienced fishos seem hell bent on the idea that deeper water always holds bigger fish, and that the very deepest area of any estuary will be home to the system’s genuine monsters. This doesn’t exactly tally with my own experiences over four decades of intensive fishing. Most of my mulloway (especially on lures) have come from water 3-8m deep, and a lot of my bigger flathead have been pulled from exactly the same depth range, often as a by-catch while targeting those

jewies. However, another bundle of very nice duskies have also come from water shallower than 2m… sometimes much shallower.

It never ceases to amaze me just how close to dry land XOS lizards will move to lie in wait for prey, especially in areas relatively free of boat traffic, swimmers and wading anglers. You’ll never forget the first time shin or even ankle-deep water explodes all around your chugging popper or shallow-running minnow as an 80-plus flathead detonates all over it. It’s an eye opener!

Instead of being obsessed with finding deeper holes, concentrate instead on identifying prime ambush points and food bottlenecks, regardless of the water depth they lie in. Look for distinct choke points where small fish and crustaceans will be funnelled together by the flow as they leave a large area of flats or weed beds, especially on a falling tide. These are the genuine big flathead hot spots.

Solving The PuzzleIf you carefully study all of the information contained in this feature

(including the accompanying fact boxes), you’ll end up knowing a lot more about big flathead and their habits than you did before. This knowledge about your target is one vital ingredient in cracking the code and becoming a better flathead chaser.

The rest of the story will only be revealed with time spent on the water and keen, astute observation of exactly what’s going on around you.

Any mug dangler can usually catch themselves a couple of just-legal flathead from a spring, summer or autumn estuary. It’s a much smaller sub-set of anglers who regularly go out and tangle with the significantly bigger run of flatties we all aspire to hook. These folks are the ones doing things a little differently: fishing slightly different places at different states of the tide, and using different tackle to the rest of the mob. Attaining this level of flathead enlightenment isn’t rocket science, but it’s also not likely to happen by accident. Like anything else in life that you desire, it will take some work and study. The good news is, that means going fishing more often!

Acknowledgements: Some of the scientific information in this feature was obtained from a paper entitled Reproduction and growth of dusky flathead (Platycephalus fuscus) in NSW estuaries, published in 2008 by Charles A. Gray and Lachlan M. Barnes for the NSW Department of Primary Industries, Science and Research. Thanks must also go to David Green, Stuart Hindson, Christine Hunt, Rob See and Andrew Badullovich for their considerable help and input.

Drop-offs from shallow flats into deeper channels are prime spots for big lizards, especially on a falling tide.

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There’s still a fair degree of loose talk about mega flathead...there are even semi-regular references to fish measuring 1.4-1.5m

Flathead of all sizes are suckers for surface lures being fished over the shallows for whiting. 47

FactBox

Dusky Facts1. Dusky flathead range right along our eastern seaboard, from

about Cairns in far north Queensland to Wilsons Promontory in Victoria.

2. These fish occur in estuaries, bays, inshore waters and coastal rivers, upstream as far as (and sometimes well beyond) the upper limits of tidal influence.

3. Dusky flathead don’t change sex, but females of the species grow faster, live longer and reach a larger maximum size than males.

4. These flathead grow quickly, especially in the early stages of their lives. Both males and females can reach the 30cm mark in their first year.

5. The oldest dusky flathead scientifically recorded was a 16-year old female measuring 88.5cm. The largest male recorded was a 61.5cm fish weighing just 1.58kg and aged 11 years.

6. Dusky flathead growth rates vary considerably beyond the two or three year mark. A 98.5cm female weighing 7.5kg was aged at just 13 years.

7. Male dusky flathead tend to mature and breed for the first time at a length of around 25-32cm and an age of 1-2 years.

8. Female dusky flathead tend to spawn for the first time at a length of around 45-55cm and an age of 4-5 years.

9. A mature female dusky flathead can produce 300,000-4,000,000 eggs each year. Generally, the larger the female, the more eggs she will produce.

10. Spawning takes place between September and March (but mostly from November to the end of February), near the entrances of our coastal estuaries.

Classic StatsAbly run by the energetic folks at the Gold

Coast Sportfishing Club, the famous Flathead Classic celebrates its 19th anniversary later this year. Over that time, this event has become one of the most prestigious tournaments on the Australian angling calendar. Not surprisingly, two decades of the Classic have also generated some rather illuminating statistics. These have been used for such worthwhile purposes as validating the effectiveness of new size and bag limits. They’ve also highlighted interesting catch trends as angling techniques evolve, from an event dominated by hard-bodied lures and trolling in the mid-1990s to the soft plastic ‘revolution’ of the new millennium and, interestingly, a swing back to trolling down-sized hard-bodies by some of the most competitive teams in recent years.

Computerised statistics for the Classic have

only been recorded since 2000. Before that, catch results were all hand-written. However, even 12 years of collated data makes for interesting reading, as you can see hereabouts.

The first observation that jumps out when reviewing these figures is the increasing popularity of the event (with a growth from 199 competitors in 2002 to 450 last year). Yet, despite this obvious increase in effort and the significant pressure associated with all that extra boat traffic, the Classic continues to fish exceptionally well.

In total, 31,771 flathead have been caught, measured and released in the 12 annual events shown here, by around 3,500 anglers. Peak years in terms of catch-per-angler occurred in 2000, 2001 and 2002 when each competitor averaged a dozen or more point-scoring flatties for the event. However, even today (and despite the number of competitors having doubled), each

registered angler averages 7-9 eligible flathead for the three days of competition.

Equally illuminating is the fact that the biggest flathead recorded in the 18 year history of The Classic measured 98cm (caught in 2006), although most years produce at least a handful of fish in the high 80s and low 90s. (See the ‘Size Matters’ fact box with this feature.)

The Flathead Classic’s figures show that the Gold Coast is in great shape as a fishery for this important species, and that this prestigious tournament is going from strength-to-strength. If you’d like to find out more, or learn how you could possibly be a part of this year’s Classic (scheduled for October 4-6), go to: www.goldcoastsportfishingclub.com.au

Finally, my sincere thanks to Christine Hunt and Rob See of the Gold Coast Sportfishing Club for their generous assistance in compiling and supplying these fascinating statistics (opposite).

Flathead can turn up just about anywhere in an estuary, including the freshwater reaches.

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FactBox

Size MattersThe $64,000 question whenever anglers discuss flathead is just

how big the biggest crocs can grow. In this argument, there’s only one species in genuine contention, and that’s the mighty dusky. A few of the other members of the flathead clan (especially the southern blue-spotted) may occasionally give the 85-90cm mark a nudge, but duskies are definitely capable of topping a metre in length and weighing in excess of 10kg. This maximum growth potential makes them the true heavyweights of the family.

That said, there’s still a fair degree of loose talk about mega flathead, especially on Internet forums and in on-line chat rooms. Some pundits mention “Metre-plus” flatties with reckless abandon, and there are even semi-regular references to fish measuring 1.4-1.5m. However, photographic evidence of these leviathans is strangely lacking.

In truth, genuine metre-long flathead are exceptional animals and most of us may see just one in our lifetime, if we’re very, very lucky. If you doubt this claim, please carefully read the accompanying fact box entitled ‘Classic Stats’. It makes use of more than a decade’s worth of data about the fish landed in Australia’s most prestigious flathead-catching event. It’s sobering to learn that the biggest dusky ever measured in the Classic’s 19 year history was a 98cm specimen landed in 2006. That’s right: not one fish of a metre or better has yet been recorded in the Classic, despite hundreds upon hundreds of fine anglers having measured tens of thousands of flatties across two decades. There has to be a message in that!

In putting this feature together, I interviewed two of the most respected flathead anglers in Australia to get their thoughts on the relative abundance of metre-plus lizards. David Green is a high profile magazine writer, tournament angler and self-confessed big lizard junkie based in south east Queensland. Here’s part of what he had to say:

“I know of four definites over a metre,” Greenie wrote. “One of 101cm was caught near Seaworld (on the Gold Coast) by local guide, Brad Smith, about eight years back. Another weighed at the 1987 AAA

comp from the Clarence River went 10kg. Two more from Yamba were skin-mounted and displayed on the wall in Glen Porter’s BP garage. I measured both the mounts: a 102 and a 103 to 104. I think Freddy (‘Flathead Fred’) Bayes also caught one. They are pretty rare animals.

“Personally,” Greenie continued in his email, “we’ve caught a 995 (mm), a 984, a 960, four 950s and lots below this. I caught one on live bait years back that went 7.8kg. I didn’t measure it, but it was fat and probably in the high 90s… it’s kind of good we haven’t got one (a metre-long flathead), as it keeps us going.”

I also called on my good mate and renowned NSW south coast fishing guide, Stuie Hindson for his observations. Despite having seen more big flathead than almost any other man alive (his clients recently caught 80 fish over 80cm in a single season!) Stuie confirmed that he’s only ever measured two metre-class fish. Very early in his guiding career, a client landed a specimen of 106cm from the Clyde River at Batemans Bay. Stuie explained that this was a particularly skinny fish and only weighed 6.35kg. A few years later another client boated a flathead of exactly a metre in length.

Hindson has weighed quite a few big lizards (in his Environet) and the heaviest he’s ever recorded was a fat 98cm beast from Merimbula Lake that dragged the scales down to 7.4kg. Stuie adds, however, that he has clearly eyeballed one crocodile at Tuross Lake that he’s absolutely certain would have nudged or even exceeded the 110cm mark. It ate a 48cm flattie his client was fighting at the time, finally coughing up its would-be meal just short of netting range.

So yes, metre-plus flathead certainly exist, but they are exceedingly rare creatures. I also strongly suspect that many of the 1.4-1.5m monsters we hear about were actually 104-105cm in length (1.04-1.05m). There’s a world of difference!

So, how big do they grow? Well, I’m willing to accept that there may be a 120cm, 12-13kg-plus behemoth out there somewhere… and that tantalising thought is enough to keep me fishing until I’m too old to hold a rod!

WIN, WIN, WIN!FishLife readers who have photographic

evidence of flathead genuinely over a metre in length (ideally displayed on a measuring tape) are invited to submit their images for our year-long ‘Top Croc’ competition. The final winner will be announced this time next year and there’ll be a great prize up for grabs! To find out more, go to www.fishlife.tv

Year Flathead caught Anglers Largest flathead caught

2000 3,103 N/A 91cm2001 2,965 240 93cm2002 2,580 199 93cm2003 2,361 282 86cm2004 1,671 N/A 90cm2005 2,217 284 91cm2006 2,674 259 98cm2007 2,693 324 90cm2008 1,885 333 90cm2009 2,708 339 94cm2010 3,417 392 91cm2011 3,497 450 91cm

Statistics from the Gold Coast Sportfishing Club's famous Flathead Classic.

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