Mother of a 16 yo kid in my street asked me to take 16yo fishing.
Story behind it is 16yo was given a Jarvis Walker spinning rod and reel by his older brother a couple of years ago. Brothers asked mum if the young fella could go fishing next day. Mum said "no" as young lad had homework to do etc.
Older brother went somewhere else next day and got killed in a car smash.
Mum has never forgiven herself for not letting younger brother go fishing that day etc...etc. She had tears in eyes when asking me about young bloke. She (and he) wanted him to catch something/anything on that rod.
So off we went last Friday.
Couple of pix of young fella unintentionally catching a 54cm barra on his second cast. He was over the moon as you can see from the facial expression. As was mum later
Unintentionally got 14 barra ranging from 54 - 82cm. Tagged and released them and kept 2 king threadfin so young fella could say he caught dinner.
Also released a smaller king (tagged), 21 gold-spot cod, 1 x 1m king (tagged) and a 1m bullshark.
With the exception of the young fellas 54cm barra, ALL the rest were caught on Jackall hard body suspending DD (3 m) Squirrel of sardine colour. Blue back/orange belly.
All fish were caught off a rock bar downriver.
Water clear there despite city barrage gates being open letting some low level flood runoff into salt.
Technique was to spotlock boat about 20m off rocks and throw into about 1/2 metre of water on edge of rocks. 3 quick winds to get the lure to touch bottom then small flick/jerks with small retrieve on the jerks. Pause for a count of 5 before jerking again.
ALL barra hit on the pause.
There were barra free jumping (3 at different times) and I haven't seen that for years. Could see barra swimming just under the surface in vicinity of boat along with the speedier blue salmon of about 70cm zooming around.
Dropped 5 barra along with 1 that cleaned me up (Squirrel lure, leader and line. Took the lot). Was my fault as I'd felt the line touch a rock on the previous fish and forgot to check the line before casting back out. Checked the leader (no damage) but forgot to check the braid itself.
Good day had especially by young fella followed by a grateful mum when we got back. Pressure is off now so I can revert back to barra fishing without any self imposed social worker tasks.
What about you guys wrt Squirrels? Use 'em?
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