Cracking Code Red

It’s somewhat ironic that in a recreation where local knowledge prevails as being of paramount importance, one of the foremost experts on the fish-laden grounds of the Fraser Coast and reefs of the Capricorn and Bunker Group near Gladstone, has never even lived in that area.

Greg Lamprecht is a recreational fishing guru, that willingly and regularly opens his vault of knowledge and hands chunks of it to total strangers, somewhat ironically, while prominent fisherfolk guard the GPS coordinates of their ‘secret spots’ with a greater voracity than the infantry stationed at the US Treasury’s bullion stash at Fort Knox.

Greg Lamprecht is a living enigma machine who cracked the code for catching reds.

And then like Da Vinci who left a deliberate trail of recorded information unveiling some of the great aspirations and mysteries of mankind, Greg too is leaving an obvious path for others to follow.

It’s a path that will lead anglers to catch the elusive red.

“The red emperor is a very elusive fish – they are the holy grail of reef fish,” Greg said.

“Their size, their eating qualities, there’s nothing you can’t like about them, they’re such a beautiful fish and they’re hard fighters.”

Greg has caught thousands of them.

He’s so far through the learning curve, that he’s now back on the flat.

But in a welcome revelation of good news for all ‘un-redded’ anglers, the scavenger feeding traits of reds mean, according to Greg, that they are not hard to catch.

But unfortunately, as Greg explains, it’s just that they are hard to find.

Drawing on the expertise of his father, Terry who blooded Greg as a little tacker in the gentlemanly art of angling, Greg has produced two outstanding DVD’s: “Double Island Point and Beyond” and “Breaksea and Beyond”.

They not only cover the catching of more than 24 species of fish, but match that with outstandingly good underwater footage which joins the dots between what is happening underwater and what is being viewed on the electronic sonar screens aboard a boat.

Greg’s regular team that also includes David Fox and Trent Butler, explains the strategies, the locations, the techniques, the rigs, the baits and in fact, the entire path from boat launch to “fade to black”. And there’s a whole lot of red, in fact Quentin Tarantino amounts of red, before any black is seen.

Greg writes for fishing publications and is a regular presenter at boat shows and to fishing clubs. He is refreshingly calm, clear and constrained in his explanations – more towards Hemingway’s style in the Old Man and the Sea rather than Robson Green’s jugular rupturing exclamations in Extreme Fishing of: “That there is what I’m talking about – what a fish!!! ” delivered with every decibel his frame and Jordy accent can project.

Greg said: “Catching reds became a bit of an obsession – learning about them, writing about them, and then talking about them in presentations.”

“Basically, all my time and effort went into chasing those fish.”

“At the time, it was probably only commercial fishermen targeting them.”

“As far as recreational fishers went, there was not a lot known about them, not much publicised and when I began, recreational fishing boats were a lot smaller, engines were not quite as reliable or fuel efficient and many people didn’t venture as far offshore as they now do.”

“People look for a lot of big structure, but everyone else also finds that place and fishes it.”

One of Greg’s wonderfully understated, but frequently appearing quotations on the DVD’s and in his writings is the beautifully simple: “We found a rock.”

It’s a comment about an undersea formation appearing on his sonar screen that inherently predicts success, coloured red, is imminent.

“Some of those rocks are the size of a small car – just over a metre high. People don’t look for structures that small, but a lot of trophy fish hang around those rocks.”

Another key component in Greg’s outstanding success is his simple philosophy: “Do the miles, get the smiles.”

In other words, he frequently spends more time travelling, watching the sounder, interpreting what he is seeing and fine tuning a virtual keyboard of settings to achieve the best possible image, than he does actual fishing.

“It’s imperative to understand what’s going on down there – you’ll fish a lot better if you do.”

“Breaksea Spit for example – it’s the way the currents work.”

“While we’ve got an east coast current that runs south, the sand itself along the beaches, heads north – it comes from New South Wales.”

“It then gets to the most northern point on Fraser Island which is the Breaksea Spit.”

“From there we have the east coast current plus the ebb tide currents from the southern Great Barrier Reef meeting in the general area of Hervey Bay and Bundaberg.”

“Those ebb currents come from a different direction again and it gets to a point right the tip of Fraser and it throws all that sand off the Continental shelf creating sandfalls,” Greg said.

He explains that it is the water from different currents colliding and crashing with sand and rock that helps to create a perfect environment for fish.

Greg’s favourite rig for reds is a single paternoster – that’s an in-line loop standing out at 90 degrees and located beneath the swivel and above a snapper lead.

“We normally use Schneider 80-pound mono – it’s very thick but is extremely strong. Obviously, you weaken your line with the knots, but Schneider is one of those lines that does seem to weaken a great deal.”

In his videos, Greg also gives a three-way swivel as a second option, particularly for those people having trouble with their knots.

But now he’s heading down a different direction.

“Lately for a bit of fun, I’m using soft plastics I’ve tried going to a 15-pound main line with a 25-pound leader,” he said.

“It’s been pretty successful so far, but I’m just in the early stages of finding out to catch them like that…”