Muz and I took a day off work to head up a local creek in search of his first barra. After spending some time with Adam in the area a week ago I was pretty confident we could find a few fish. We made our way to the system in pretty average conditions early in the morning. We were hoping to have the place to ourselves but alas that was not the case, we saw another 4 boats during the day. The tide was starting to ebb and our spot had a bunch of live baiters in it, this made trolling pretty hard as our run was now half the length. All good, we set out the lures anyway and I cant remember if it was the first or second pass when Muz came up solid on a nice barra, it jumped and.........carrying on in the last trips fashion it got off. hmmmmmmm is this going to be another one of those trips? that’s what I was thinking after Adam and my last "dropped him trip".

Anyway we persisted and continued to drop another 6 or so barra throughout the day, we couldn’t figure things out was really really really frustrating. If I actually had any hair I definitely would have been pulling it out. On the flood tide most of the boats had cleared off so I moved into one of my favourite sections of the creek and set out the lures again. First pass and BANG!!!! finally Muz was on and the lure had stuck, or had it. Muz landed his first barra in the most unconventional of ways, get this... The barra had a hook hanging out of its bottom lip, attached to the hook was about 2 foot of leader with a #4 ball sinker and a swivel. Muz'z lure had tangled on to the piece of leader and maintained enough tension to bring the fish in, even when it jumped. Well, we were stoked, 7 or so dropped barra and finally one in the boat. Within the next couple of passes I had too hooked and stuck to a barra, a healthy high seventies fish and we finally closed out the day with 2 in the boat. It could have been 10!

Muz'z first ever barra

My first after dropping 4 or 5

Taking a back step for a minute, we did pretty good during the middle part of the day on jacks, thready, I got a triple tail which was pretty cool, even some small grunter found their way to the boat. Muz was cleaning up on his favourite type of fish as well, the cattie!! hahaha

Muz'z PB thready

I got quite a few thready's on Plastics, was sight casting to them, pretty cool in some very tight snaggy country.

My PB triple tail, went hard for a small Fish

Muz'z flattie

Well after that we woke to a pretty awesome morning and decided that we had to "put in the big ones" to redeem our efforts from the previous time fishing. We made our way to another creek and on arrival things were looking good. There were a few fish showing on the sounder so we anchored up in a spot and decided to cast some lures around until the tide slowed. I was catching threadies and grunter etc on plastics when I saw a big swirl near a near by snag. I changed to a deep diving reidies taipan and flicked it in close, just as the lure got bellow the surface a BIG barra came up and WHACKED IT. Instantly my line went slack, but it was weird because I could see the lure in the barras mouth, it was just sitting there. I reeled in my line to discover that the bib which has the tow point attached to it had snapped off on the very powerful barra strike, great what else could cause me to loose another fish! The barra then shook its head and set the lure free, crushed barbs you so, the lure floated to the surface and I grabbed it as a keepsake of yet another lost barra and another first for me.

breaky

Broken lure = result of powerful barra strike!

Well at this point another boat arrived and anchored up in our trolling run to live bait. This pretty much ment that on the low we too had to live bait. My cast net had more holes in it than a pair of fishnet stocking so I set about with some 60lb jinki and a pair of scissors to mend it enough to grab a few mullet. I sat in the mud and sun for the next half an hour fixing it as best I could, I prayed that something would finally go our way. I went for a walk over to the other side of the bar and couldn’t believe my eyes. At a time when bait had been scarce I saw the biggest school of mullet mooching around right next to the bank. Would the old cast net have one more moment of glory? I cast and landed right on top of it, there was fricking mullet going ape! and I got about 30 of them in the one cast, I put as many as I could into the bucket before they died. Stoked a bucket full of stoinka mullet, one and final cast of that bloody net. It has about 60 bucks worth of leader holding it together I think it has done its job, safe to retire her I think. Finally something was going our way.

Well it was time to set a few out, as soon as we set the pick the boat just up river was on to a double hook up of barra. Then another, and another and well another... We landed a solid queenie and a thready but no barra. I couldn’t figure it out, we were in a great spot that had produced many times before. I think the other boys were up to seven then we finally got on to a run. Muz was first then me then muz then me again. Before you knew it our luck had changed and we had boated 7 or 8 barra while only dropping about 2 or so. The biggest of which went 93cm. During that time the other boat didn’t get any, isn’t it funny how this thing works out sometimes...

The first of a good run, and finally some good luck!

my 93 odd cm barra, released

Sweet, well sorry I dint post all of the photos, these are all off the point and shoot, I am saving all the "good" ones for an article I am working on. Hope you enjoy the read, was good to get some reward in the end...