Customer Jordan has been away in the United States for a couple of months and has recently returned. While he was away and staying in Santa Monica in California, he found a small urban lake close by to where he was staying. Jordan got talking to some locals who were fishing it and he quickly found out that the lake contained largemouth bass, one of the most iconic fish in the USA. Being prepared with a travel rod, Jordan returned and started fishing for the bass. One of the locals remarked that the fish were 'bedding' and not normally as aggressive as they usually are, so a finesse tactic was going to be the best approach. 

Jordan adopted an American technique of 'dropshotting' which is effectively fishing a soft plastic suspended on an in-line paternoster rig. Use of the correct shape hook is also critical for this technique, which involves keeping the soft plastic suspended right in front of the fish's strike zone and 'shaking' the plastic to get a bite. Jordan did well with this technique and managed to land around 5 bass in the time he was fishing the lake. The plastic of choice was a 7'' floating worm pattern, with the odd fish also caught by locals on massive 10'' swimbaits as well. Dropshotting is a technique that also works here is Australia for numerous different fish species as it enables the angler to keep the lure right in the fish's face at all times. Give it a go!

While the West coast SBT have slowed down a lot, there have still been a trickle of reports coming through from anglers finding gaps in the weather to tackle the fish that are hanging around in close. Customer Jacques jumped aboard a charter last weekend where 6 nice fish to around 20kg were landed on skirts and hardbodies. Most productive area at the moment has been in around the 50m area.

James from Unreel Fishing Charters had customer Michael aboard amongst some other customers in search of some chunky bluefin off the south coast of NSW last week. The guys launched from Eden and headed north in search of the tuna. Customer Michael landed this nice 45kg fish on a River2Sea knife jig from 60m down. 

Heading a bit further out of town, staff member Dylan has just recently returned from a trip overseas to the USA. While it wasn't a 'fishing' trip for Dylan, he still managed to get out and get into a few different fish species with the help of his Daiwa Generation Black 'Deepstriker' travel rod that fit inside his suitcase. Dylan ticked off some of America's most popular inshore saltwater sport fish such as Snook, Black Drum, Speckled Seatrout, Red Drum, Tarpon, Mangrove Snapper and a few others. 

Dylan found that shrimp imitation soft plastics in 3 - 4" worked the best on most fish species, along with small surface lures and shallow running hardbodies. Dylan managed to catch fish from the shore, pier, kayak and inshore flats boat and would recommend anyone thinking of doing the same to do so!