Fishing on Jeff Prince of Peace: Inshore Shallow Jigging

Always always try new approaches to your usual fishing grounds. It's a golden rule that I abide in and this mindset will produce surprises sometimes especially when the fishing is tough. It was one of those trips on Jeff. We would start out by spinning our prawns in the shallows for the small jacks and snappers. Just that today, they weren't really biting. 

So I thought heck... let's try something totally different. I took out a 80g green top kurau jig and did some casting. The idea was to simulate baitfish fall while horizontally retrieving the jig. This will allow me to cover more ground and to also simulate fleeing or injured tamban. I decided on a 80g one simply because I wanted to go for size. Small tiny micro jigs won't work as they are for folks that usually target smaller fish. Risky I thought to myself... as the water was just up to 5m and there were rocks peppered throughout the terrain. 

A few casts into the strategy, I connected with something that took the jig while it was falling. Gave it a good set and off it went... into it's hole. After a bit of yanking and confirming the fish was still there, Jeff came out with his "Mouse" or "Tikus" or perhaps you know it as the "Lure Retriever" and worked his magic. Within a few seconds, the fight was on again and up came this very decent orange spotted grouper. 

Yippy! My first grouper on jig fishing those spots. But yet again, trying something different and changing the playing field worked in my favour. 

Some general tips if you're trying this out:

1. Observe terrain and surroundings. If there are tamban or assam schools, chances are that there will be predators around. The hit profile and scenario is a little different for shallow inshore predators. They love bait that is off the school or injured. This is their preferred method rather than smash the school. If there are schools, you can try casting beside the school (not into it) and work it as though a bait is being divided away from the school.
2. Adjust your jigging strokes and motions to the terrain. Is it grainy? Sandy? Small rock or big rock? These will determine if you employ a flutter or zipping stroke or in this case a long range fall approach. Mix it up if you don't really know! In this trip, we managed to get snapper, barracuda, giant herring on jigs as well. Once you get a hit or a fish, do the same thing and reap the rewards.

Really good sized specimen

Green top kurau jig!

Ever the resourceful captain Jeff

Couple of herrings visited us

All on jigs

This barracuda was preying on tamban schools