There’s a funny thing that happens when Aussie fishos head offshore to drop lines to the seafloor in deeper waters. There’s an almost entirely black and white, fork in the road split between fishing for sport and purely chasing a feed. Those after fillets can’t understand why fellow fishos would put in all that huff and puff battling a fish quite a distance to the surface only to let it go, while sport-focussed anglers can’t find the fun in dragging up meat from the depths. As a result, we tend to view certain species that inhabit the depths beyond the old fashioned 20 fathom line purely in those two veins sportfish or meat fish. Up in the tropics, some of the most common sportfish found out here are members of the trevally clan, and their worth on the end of a line is entirely defined by your own personal aims when fishing these deeper waters. Meat fishos HATE trevally. To the fillet focussed their poor table qualities make them nothing more than a tackle destroying waste of energy. But for those purely interested in rod bending fun, trevs in deeper waters can be an exciting prospect.
As sportfish, tropical trevallies such as GTs, goldens, brassies, bludgers and gold-spot are more renowned as shallow water targets that can provide all sorts or thrills working surface lures or sight casting with fly gear. But most species of tropical trevally are habitual reef loiterers, and this includes reef systems that lie on the seafloor in deeper waters. Jigging for these deeper water trevs is not something too many folks consider in northern waters, but it can be a really reliable way to have a total hoot working vertical lures. And we’re not just talking about the often prolific schools of small trevally species that are typically found over most reef systems up north. Look in the right places and target them specifically, and some real horse trevs are on offer jigging out in these deeper waters. FINDING DEEP WATER TREVALLY As mentioned, if there’s one thing trevally love it’s structure. Almost regardless of species, trevs are highly structure orientated fish that spend most of their time lurking around reefs, bommies and other such solid features looking for baitfish to bother. So when it comes to finding trevally in these slightly deeper waters, the key word is structure, and the bigger the structure, the better. In the tropics, that makes coral reef systems the obvious starting point. There’s plenty of this type of ground to be explored through most of the top half of the country, and it’s a fair bet just about any of it that has sheer edges much over a metre or two will hold trevally of some description, right out to as deep as 70 or 80 metres. For some reason, trevally have a strange fascination for manmade structure too; perhaps even more so than the naturally occurring stuff. Things like wrecks, artificial reefs and even navigation marker poles tend to be trevor magnets in deeper waters. I think the explanation behind this is that these seafloor features tend to be very isolated structures, typically sitting in the middle of otherwise flat bottom so make perfect baitfish ambush points for ever-hungry trevors. That ‘isolated structure’ tag is a significant clue to where to look for trevally in this slightly deeper water. Jigging as a technique is at its most effective when you’re targeting schools of fish, and these isolated blips of solid features be they natural or manmade are where trevally really seem to like to school up hard. Find this scenario and you can jig up trevs ‘till you drop! The other big clue to finding trevally out deeper is the presence of current. Wherever they’re found, trevs love current simply because it provides them a big advantage over their baitfish prey. Powerful fish like a trevally can easily motor through strong flowing water, whereas their weaker prey are all but pinned down by current. Easy feed for hungry trevs! So by that logic, any deeper water structure that is subject to strong current is a likely trevally hot spot. Even better is structure that creates tidal constrictions in its own right, as this can result in areas of eddying current which are real killing fields for trevally. Think spots such as the back edges of offshore islands or gaps between large reef systems for these types of swirling water spots. As mentioned, in the deeper waters that suit vertical jigging, trevally often school up hard which makes them particularly easy to find on a sounder. This means the job of finding fish is a lot easier for us fishos, as more often than not when you do find them in deeper water, your sounder screen will all but black out with strong arches. Good news as it means you can quickly scope out lots of potential spots and won’t mistake that goldmine when you find it! TYPES OF TREV JIGS Nowadays, there’s a huge and varied range of different jigs available from tackle stores, and just about all of these could be used to catch trevally. As we’re not talking particularly deep water for these fish 80 metres or so is about as deep as you’ll find them there’s no requirement for really heavy jig types such as knife jigs that are designed to sink super fast and therefore, need to be worked really fast too. Instead, smaller jig types in the 40-200 gram range (depending on depth and current strength) are the go, and in these sizes what we could broadly call micro jigs are perfect. Again, there’s loads of these to choose from nowadays, as they’re still somewhat on-trend at the moment in sportfishing’s never-ending search for new and improved lure designs and techniques, but you can narrow down the shopping list by considering a handful of more specific types. First up are slow pitch jigs or swing jigs which are pretty basic in that they are largely scaled down versions of the larger vertical jigs that have been in common use for decades now. Usually best rigged with a single assist hook, slow pitch and swing jigs are actually much more versatile lures than they first appear as they can be worked in quite a few different ways to help tempt a strike. Next are the even simpler octo jigs and flutter jigs which require very little angler input to get eaten. These compact, heavily weighted jigs are particularly well suited to strong current situations, although their sometimes extravagant skirts and rubber tendrils that give these jigs their fish attracting powers can be an issue as ravenous trevally will often rip them to shreds quick smart which can get expensive. Although not technically jigs in the truest sense of the word, heavily weighted soft plastics are dynamite on all tropical trevally species (like they are on just about anything else!). The versatility to work these lures a variety of ways from super slow to flat our quick is what makes them so useful for this fishing, although in these slightly deeper waters you will be best served rigging them just a little differently. Standard jigheads in weights much over 1½oz tend to turn soft plastics into glorified sinkers, robbing them of their natural fish-fooling movement. Instead, try employing elevator jigheads which have an articulated joint (usually just a split ring) between the weight and the hook which helps to maintain the natural action of the lure. Alternatively, using a dropshot rig is a good way to get a plastic down deep without killing its action. However you rig your plastics for this deeper water work, they seem to be absolute killers on golden trevally and believe it or not, big GTs too. The only thing to be mindful of is that most trevally species – but in particular GTs and brassies have crazy strong jaws which combined with their sheer pulling power means strong, high quality hooks are required to hold them. Many of the standard issue jigheads or assist hooks just aren’t up to code for our hard pulling, strong jawed tropical trevally species, so swapping these out for XOS versions or making your own assist hook rigs is generally a given. TEMPTING TREVS To be honest, there’s really not much to tricking trevally of any species into eating a jig or heavily weighted soft plastic. Being such aggressive predators, they’ll enthusiastically mow down most anything that resembles a distressed baitfish, although there’s a few little tricks of the trade that can help bend more rods. Given that they are such high speed predators, you’d think that a pretty rapid approach to working your jig would likely be the best way to go about jigging up trevally. But in actual fact there’s no need to jig really fast; much of the time it’s best to slow things down a touch. Every single big GT and most of the big goldens I’ve caught on jigs or plastics have climbed on a slow to moderate retrieve. Most of the time, a solid trev will nail a jig or heavily worked plastic on the pause, as it glides or even flutters back down a little. So while you can try all sorts of ways to work jigs for these fish and still expect to come up solid, keep in mind they like the pause and incorporate plenty of these into your retrieve. As mentioned, even the largest of the many tropical trevally species are schooling fish, so whenever any of your crew hooks up, there’s an instant and easy opportunity for everyone else onboard to do likewise. It’s very common to find the rest of the school of free swimming trevally following the hooked fish up from the bottom, and dropping another jig straight down into trailing fish is an all but guaranteed way to score multiple hook ups. Being the great sportfish that they are, you can have a hoot jigging trevally on light tackle. However, it’s not advisable to go too light. Even relatively small trevs pull hard around what may be line shredding structure and there’s always a chance of a big boy jumping on. But the main reason to fish a little heavier is that where there’s trevally in northern Australia there’s almost always sharks too, so fishing jig gear in the PE3 5 range is best to help keep shark maulings to a minimum. Another way to get around the north Australian shark plague is to lessen the distance etween the boat and the school. Once a school is located, work hookless jigs to tease the fish up higher in the water column. Often it’s possible to entice them right to the surface in this situation. Tropical trevally would rank right amongst our hardest fighting sportfish, yet the enduring obsession many Aussie anglers have with the table qualities of a fish species dictating its worth seems to mean these fish are so often completely ignored, particularly in deeper water situations. Give jigging for trevs a go and you may discover the sportfishing smiles they never fail to deliver might just change this view. This is an extract from upscaleexistence.
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