Officially Barra Slimed :-)

[Talina]

Hi guys,

Firstly I’d like to dedicated this to Mal Nielsen (mnielsen) HI MAL Mal is one of our Active Angler fans from down at the Burdekin (Ayr), he was only telling my grandad, Pat, the other week that he has been missing my stories...So hopefully this is the start of many more

Well, we had it all planned to put my new boat (Runamuc) in the water early Saturday Morning for its maiden voyage...it was all set up & ready to go Friday afternoon so we could get away for a early start.....Went to the Townsville Game Fishing Club Presentation Night....& guess what, as usual we RUNAMUC!!....

I believe my crew member (TODDOSH) got home at 4.30am ( I wasn’t much earlier)....We had planned to leave at 6am!! OOPS!! ....I finally made it around there by 7am (after a little sleep in)....We looked at each other & said!! Naaahhhhh lets go tomorrow!!!

Ok Take 2.....SUNDAY MORNING 6am!!!

We are on the road to one of the well-known local creeks to the South of Townsville called Morrissey’s Creek....We get to the boat ramp & the car park looked like the Dairy Farmers Stadium Carpark on game night!! Every man & his dog was there!!!

Put the boat in & the motor started first time, thank god, as being the first trip you always expect something to go wrong!!

It was a fairly cool NQ winter morning (I would like to highlight that I did say NQ morning, so there are no smart a#s comments required from you Southerners )...The sounder water temp read 20.7 deg (I said no smart a#s comments ), which is pretty cold up here & normally most of the popular species like Barra are sooky la, la's when it comes to the cold, so we didn’t really have any high expectations!!

Here we heading down the creek - This site is so worth getting out of bed for

It was right on high tide & we planned to go straight to a couple of Todd’s favourite trolling banks which 9 times out of 10 produce some quality mundies….But guess what??? Everyman & his dog brought 4 crab pots each so the joint was covered in crab pot floats (the poor crabs didn’t stand a chance)……As we said a few explicit words , we attempted to do figure or eights amongst the floats but it just wasnt going to allow us to run our lures over the relevant snags!!

Oh well, we scooted down the creek a little more & we found a bank that allowed some trolling room….Lures were out & BANG, something took my RMG Scorpion! It felt like a good bite but then it was just coming up like a little cod! So I did call it for a cod!! Diiirrrr, it was a dam barra!! (I told you they were sooky la, la’s in the cold as it didn’t even fight)…Although it was a little fella, I was happy with it, as you always here these horror stories of boats being jinxed when it comes to catching barras (just like I’m jinxed when it comes to Sailfish) so I was happy to get the first one out the road….Hopefully there are many more to come J

Runamucs first official barra slime – 56.5cm before release

Had a couple of more half hearted bites after that & then WHACK, my lure was smashed again….This time it ripped drag on 30lb braid!! I wasn’t stopping whatever it was as it quickly took be under, over & around some pretty wooded timber (YEP – I GOT BRICKED!!!)….We mucked around for a little bit with it but whatever it was won the fight…& a new piece of jewellery (my RMG Scorpian J ) My guess was a good size Jack!!

The tide was quickly dropping so before we ran out of to much water, we decided to go for an explore (away from all the boats & crabs pots) up some little side creeks….There were some great looking snags along the banks so I was confident we were going to have some fun with some little Jacks/barras

I used a little Halco Laser 150mm, which I had never really used before….But I was very happy with it, it had a nice little action that I was very pleased with…I have a new favourite lure for the time being!

Ok, now I want to make you Southerner Jack fishos a bit jealous……

To cut a long story short….We flicked lures for an hour or so & got 4 Jacks, 2 were released & the following 40cm & 42 cm were kept for dinner J

I know, I know that our creek Jacks don’t even get closed to the size that you guys get down South…but its was great to get a couple of quality fish during winter!!

Not a bad little sesh, especially seeing though we didn’t have high expectations & we were home by lunch!!

Overall, I was very very happy with the boat…..as well as a great day out on the water once again with Captain TODDOSH!! (My No 1 RUNAMUC team member HAHA!!)

Stay tuned for more RUNAMUC ADVENTURES next week…..As this weekend I’m off to explore Missionary Bay, at the famous Hinchinbrook Island!! (Can you tell that I’m over the STRONG WIND depression I was having )

HI HO HI HO I’m off to Hinchinbrook I go!!