Beer Battered Flathead
Beer Battered Flathead, 3 of my favourite words to read on any menu! So when the opportunity arose to fish with a good friend, work colleague and expert flathead fisher, I jumped at the opportunity.
As we pulled up in the tinny on the edge of the channel, my mouth started watering. I could literally taste that fresh flathead which surely would be on the menu at home tonight. Now predicting to catch anything in fishing is a sure fire way to failure, however, on this occasion and with Sam’s expert guidance, within the hour we had 3 lovely eating size flathead chilling in the esky.
The technique we used was pretty basic. Line the tinny up down the edge of a sandy/weedy drop off and slowly drift along it with the little bit of wind there was. 2-4in soft plastics (I was using prawn type patterns) were then cast ahead of the drift and slowly worked along the bottom back to the boat – Similar technique to chasing squid on jigs or snapper on plastics. Sure there was plenty of casts between fish, but it was a productive and leisurely way to spend the morning.
As mentioned earlier, I love beer battered flathead. I made the batter with a nice crisp pale ale and a combination of half corn flour and half self-rising flour sifted into a bowl. I added a pinch of salt and pepper for seasoning. Add the beer slowly and whisk to a pancake batter type consistency. Allow the batter to set and chill for 30mins.
Dip your pieces of flathead into the batter and then straight into 180 degree vege/rice bran oil. Served with some fresh cut chips and salad, it is hard to beat!
catch it, clean it, cook it 