Hinchenbrook Barra Season Final day

[happygilmour]

Hi All,

Just thought i would post my fishing trip at hinchenbrook on thursday, the last day of the qld barra season. After a late finish on late shift I got home and put my head on the pillow at 2am only to rise again at 345am to meet my fishing partner at my house at 4am for our 1.5hr drive to lucinda.

Arrived at the ramp to a car park which i thought would be full with trailers taking advantage of their last chance to get a feed of fresh barra before the season close. Only 1 other boat was on the water so we headed off to a creek that i had never fished before but had been told about. The creek is small and on a low tide the mouth dries up over a huge sand flat.
With a high tide at 4am and the tide running out we just managed to get in before the water had exsposed the mouth. I did however have to get out and push the boat for 50m or so to get in Phew!!

Once in the creek we proceeded to cast lures at the mangove lined sides and muddy banks.The tide movement was wuiet slow because of the mouth drying up and losing the tidal influence. The main channel was about 8ft so we concentrated on firing vast slose to the roots and any drains that we came accross.

My partner in crime was using his new rod and eel and he had never caught a legal barra so I was super keen to change that and christen his new setup. We came around a bend and i saw a little grain that looked fishy. I told my non boater to fire a few casts up to mouth of the drain while i cast to other bank into mangove roots. # or 4 cast later with no sign of a fish i started to think there was not a fish there when I heard "yep im on" and a splash as a just leagal barra decided to tail walk.
Quickly grabbing the net i waited for the barra to arrive at the boat which after a few jumps came to the boat with relative ease. As I put the net in the water the barra made a another run . I thought he would simply dive down under the boat and then resurface at the boat lying on his side waiting to be netted but the barra had another idea.

The barra pulled plenty of drag and power back to the drain and then back into the main channen lumping all over the place. Eventually the barra won and managed to dislodge the lure under the water I was disspaointed I missed the chance earler to net the barra but thats fishing.

We continued to fish up the creek and and explored fish holding snags etc. oince we hit as far as we could go up the creek I said we should troll back to some good snags we had seen on the way up the creek. After 5 min my rod buckled and line peeled from the reel. At first i thought i had a snag befor ethe line direction changed. After a great little fight and a charge into timber my poartner netted a nice little 62cm barra at 10am. We had 2 more hours to land my partner a barra so we contineued for nil result.

There was so much bait in the creek but not alot of action.We ended up catching some prawns in the cast net so decided to try some live bait to improve our chances. Anchored at a deep bend in the creek with some good snags lineing the bend we put a few prawns in the drink.

After a short wait my mate ended up christening his new rod reel on a saltwater tarpon. The tarpon jumped all over the place and my mate had a ball catching it. We caught 3 there as well as a some legal grunter, pikey bream and silver bream before decided to go and come home for some sleep.

Enjoy the pics.

Cheers

Aaron

[Stingray]

nice story Happy i guess it was as hard to find them as we found them last week Hinchenbrook can be tough i think there is to much area and cover for them to hid in and to much bait for them to chew.
cheers Stingray

[happygilmour]

Hi Stingray,

As tactics go i am a big beleiver of "No Run, No Fun!" This was my bad decision to fish this particular creek on the tides I did. I think the creek would of fished better on the first of the run out during the high tide period as there would of been flow. By the time we entered the system the flow was nearly non existant.This was my first time there so i have now learnt some important things to try for next time if i decide to fish it again.

Fish can be caught while there is little flow/no flow but on lures it certainly is much harder.Barra are opertunistic feeders and lazy and used this tidal flow to push bait to them. Ambushing the bait from their ambush point, that being dirty discoloured water coming out from a feeder creek, snag , deep hole or rockbar.

Knowing what tides do to a particular creek is paramount if you want to regulary catch fish on lures as you can identify periods of the tide and sections of the creek to fish where optimum conditions present themselves.

We saw prob over 100 big black picky bream which we could of targeted if we wanted but didnt.Downsizing lures we could of had a ball but I wanted my mate to get his barra which he nearly did.

Unforunately the hinchinbrook has 1000's km of fishy looking water and it would take many lifetimes to know the place intimately. But is fun trying

Cheers

Aaron

[virty]

Gday Aaron

Good post mate keepin comin and some nice pixs too.