by Reuben 'Banana' Sheckter

In the midst of a stormy Perth winter I was invited to a trip up to Jurien Bay and fish one of WA’s best kept secrets with a skipper who is second to no one, this man is known as ‘Whitey’. I accepted this trip without a second thought at the prospect of being able to score some nice demersal fish and consequently get a chance to try out some McArthy Baits that I had been given to test, I had previously used these plastics once before on a metropolitan session and it was a generally unproductive trip but the majority of fish that were claimed on that trip were taken on the McArthy baits and namely the Bullhead Minnow. This left me with high expectations of the damage that these awesome plastics could do on a spot which held good fish!

The days leading up to the trip were monotonous and disheartening with constant weather changes but on the day before we decided that the weather should be good enough for a fish. We made the road trip to Jurien through the night and got in Jurien with enough time to have a good rest, which not many of us actually ended up achieving anyway. Awoken by our alarms in the early hours, we proceeded down to the marina to meet up with Whitey and board his vessel for the day’s fishing. We then plugged on for about 50 minutes before reaching the first spot which sat in about 45m of water. First drop with the 7in Bullhead Minnow in the hot orange colour and with nothing more then one twitch of the Crony rod I was on to a decent sized Pinky and after a good fight on the light gear, the first fish of the day was on board. The plastics continued to be sent down in to the abyss and plenty of sambos were taken on the plastics – talk about a fish that loves a soft plastic!

With everyone getting sick of the sambos we steamed on to Whitey’s notorious Dhufish spots which sat in approximately 50m. With the plastics being so successful previously I coaxed myself in to resisting the jigs and this choice was not to be a bad one! On the first drop I managed to land a sized Dhui which also took a liking to the hot orange colour, after a couple happy snaps I proceeded to tie on a new colour and see just how good they really are! Second drop and I was on again using the chartreuse pearl colour this time, it was a pearler indeed! This Dhui gave me a lot more curry but sadly turned out to be of a similar size but still a tiny bit bigger. Unfortunately there was a camera malfunction and no picture was saved of my Dhui. Third drop and I was on once again but unfortunately this Dhui smoked me on 15lb line and the bigger Dhui was not to be mine today. Although I didn’t manage to score the Dhui I hoped for fellow fisho Ben managed to score a nice Dhui at approx 10kg using the Paddletail 6in in the baby elf colour! Ben was stoked with his capture and the responsible skipper Whitey decided we leave the Dhui grounds. We then proceeded to the wreck where I managed more sambos and even scored one using light gear and the Bullhead 7in once again! After finishing off the day with some angry sambos we headed back to the marina and reminisced of the day I had and just how successful these McArthy baits are, anyone wanting to get in to some good demersal fish must give the McArthy baits a go, even if you’re not ready to make the full transition to plastics you can rig these on droppers on your bottom fishing rigs, I wouldn’t be surprised if they out fished the baits because these plastics are simply awesome!