A word from David Green
Welcome to the 2025 Flathead Classic! This is the 31st time the event has been run by the Gold Coast Sportfishing Club. It is quite interesting to reflect back to the early years of the event and see how much things have changed. Boats are much bigger, sounder technology and marine electronics have pushed fishing into the frontline of technological advances and most anglers are pretty tuned in to the fishing these days. In the early years of the event trolling was the most commonly used method, using lures like the Manns 5+ and 10+, the early Tilsan’s and Cotton Cordell Wally Divers. The locally made Pig lures and Lively Lures Micro Mullets were also standout performers in the early years and have stood the test of time. Soft plastics were almost unknown in the early years and most anglers used mono line. The advent of braid changed flathead fishing forever, giving far better feel and making almost imperceptible bites possible to feel.
Over time a lot of new lures and techniques have been developed. I remember using Renosky Shads in the early 2000’s and catching plenty of big fish. This method used a rapid upward jigging action and while it was deadly for a few years, it seemed to stop working a bit later on. The advent of Berkley Gulps showed anglers a new way to catch them, and while it is quite debatable as to whether these are a lure or a bait, they are deadly on flathead. Casting big lures into the shallows became a winning method about 7 years ago, and it is amazing to see the size of the lures a flathead is happy to attack! These days it isn’t uncommon to see anglers carrying up to 9 rods each and boxes and boxes of the latest lures
Planning your flathead fishing requires practice and a lot of thought. Teams must decide if they are going to cast or troll, whether they target the big females in the deep water or work the channels and flats. You need to be in the right spot at the right time! And what works today probably won’t work tomorrow! On Facebook a lot of the teams go into ‘radio silence’ in the weeks leading up to the classic. They may post photos with African animals on the banks, dam walls and carefully black out the secret lure hanging from a big flatties mouth. This is all a part of the fun, but for many teams this is an extremely competitive event. Fishing for flathead can be a very fickle game. 4 days ago we caught 35 nice fish up to 78cm long in the morning, but in the afternoon, we caught one small one and a bream.
Despite 30 years of trying no angler has caught a metre long flathead in the Flathead Classic. There’s been quite a few fish in the high ninety-centimetre range, but the unicorn remains! Hopefully this is the year that the grander is caught. It is quite surprising that a fish of this size hasn’t turned up, considering that in the years of the Flathead Classic over 80,000 have been caught in the event. I’m sure that there is one out there! In N.S.W. metre flathead do turn up every season, but they just don’t seem to cross the border.
If you are a newcomer to the event and haven’t fished this areas before the waterway can be quite a daunting place to fish, with its myriads of channels and canals. A few general rules apply. Look for the cleanest water that you can find. If the wind blows hard from the north for a day or two, the water becomes brown and visibility is poor. You can sometimes find clean patches on the run in tide, or by looking for areas with less tidal flow. Sometimes as the tide starts to run out, a blanket of brown water moves down stream and takes a lot of good spots out of play. When the tide is high, baitfish move up onto the flats and flathead chase them. The biggest fish are often in the shallowest water. Big swim baits, long soft plastics and shallow running minnows are all effective in this situation. On the run-out tide look for draining channels where the water runs off large mud or sandflats. I find the hardest part of the tide to catch fish is often between the first and third hour of the run-out tide. In this situation trolling is often the best method. The more water you can cover, the better the chances of finding an active fish. Try and stick to the cleanest water you can find.
It is important to have your own game plan and not to follow other boats. Lead don’t follow. Make sure you give other competitors ample space top fish in, staying at least a reasonable cast length away from the boat that was in the spot first. Remember that we aren’t fishing for sheep stations here! The aim of the competition is for all anglers to have as much fun as possible. The competition has remained in the same type of format since it began. Rather than a 5 or 10 biggest fish bag, the Flathead Classic applies a score to every fish caught. This gives a good population-based assessment of the various sizes and takes a bit of pressure off the adult spawning fish. In the early tournaments a lot of fish were tagged under a research project run by the DPI. A lot of the information gained from this helped in the establishment of the current 5 fish slot limit, originally allowing the keepable size to be from 40 to 70cm. This upper limit was later changed to 75cm. At the time this was one of the most progressive pieces of fisheries legislation in the country and protected a lot of big breeding female flathead. As time goes on, it is clear that this is a very sustainable fishery.
I hope you all have a great 3 days on the water! Good luck to all anglers.
David Green
