Sooty Sessions with the Samurai 302 Bluewater

By Luke Galea

God I love RDO’s. I couldn’t think of a better way to spend an RDO than chasing Sooty Grunter in some of Mackay’s most pristine gorge country. The water up here is crystal clear and the dense vegetation makes the landscape look similar to a scene out of Jurassic Park. Surely this spot has got to be one of the most picturesque locations I have EVER fished. Just being out in such magnificent terrain is reward enough but to land several marauding, thick-set sootys was just icing on the cake.

I have just purchased a new Shimano Stella 2500FE and I had the intentions of blooding it today. I had it matched to my Samurai Reaction 302 Bluewater and all I can say is WOW. I highly doubt I have held such a gutsy, lightweight and quality combo, and after today, it has definitely rocketed up there as one of my absolute favourites. I wouldn’t usually use a 6-12lb rod to cast a light 3 inch plastic as I would usually used my 2-6lb Samurai 203 Estuary for that, but my the 302 was light enough in the tip to be able to cast these lures, plus the 302 packs some serious grunt in the lower end as well which is definitely needed when chasing these big, black footballs. The lures of choice were 3 inch Atomic Plazo fat grubs in the colours of rainbow bass, brown crawdad and ghost pearl. These were all rigged weedless on 3/0 Gamakatsu worm hook. I was using 14lb Unitika Silver Thread FC as leader.

It was amazing to be able to sight cast to these fish in the gin clear water. Often we would cast to one fish that we could clearly see, but then 3 or 4 fish would come out of nowhere and try to steal our plastics. This continued from pool to pool, over the 5km (each way) length of stream we hiked. It was damn hard work walking through this elevated gorge country, through water and over boulders but hey – definitely better than being at work!

Curl tailed grub style lures are up there with some of my favourite softy profiles. The tail wafts tantalisingly among the flowing water and often proves too hard for a big, angry sooty to resist. We would cast these out amongst the flowing water and let it drift down with the current, double-hopping them as it drifted down.

One of the most memorable moments of the day was a double hook-up at one of the pools. On approach to this pool we could see at least half a dozen large sooty’s swimming around. It was decided that we would fire out our 2 casts at the same time to try and land a fish each before they shut down. Like clockwork, 2 nice sootys smashed our atomic fat grubs which put on a fiery display before being landed and sent back.

We had an epic day landing some quality fish on quality gear and in beautiful surroundings. I am definitely looking forward to giving my Megabass topwater lures a crack up here on my next outing as surface fishing for these angry brutes would seriously be hard to beat.

#gallery-8 {
margin: auto;
}
#gallery-8 .gallery-item {
float: left;
margin-top: 10px;
text-align: center;
width: 33%;
}
#gallery-8 img {
border: 2px solid #cfcfcf;
}
#gallery-8 .gallery-caption {
margin-left: 0;
}