Fishing to the Max

Since leaving Perth in April I had been keenly anticipating spending a month with Linda’s brother Tom and his lovely wife Marion. Plan was that the girls would do girly things and Tom and I would camp and fish until we dropped.

Lets go camping and fishing!

Well the plan went to plan and we fished every creek possible within a 300 kilometer radius for Barra and anything else that we could temp with our lures and live bait.

We fished Carmila Creek, Constant Creek, Murray Creek, Sandy Creek, Wallaces Creek, Morrissey Creek, Baratta Creek and caught Barramundi, Estuary Cod, Mangrove Jack, Threadfin Salmon, Blue Salmon, Barracouta, Trevalley, Bream, Flathead and a half a dozen big fat mud crabs.

Blue Salmon and Threadfin Salmon

Every fish and crab was earnt with a typical easy day going like this:

- Up before 5:00AM
- Leave before 5:30AM and drive 100-200 kilometres to the chosen creek· 

The only bit of shade on the boat!

 - Launch the boat and cast lures continuously at every tree, snag, branch, stick, gutter, rock, mud bank that we could see as we slowly crept along on the electric motor.
- Continue doing this until it was impossible to go any further up the creek and then head back to the ramp against the incoming tide.
- Retrieve the boat and drive the 100-200 kilometres back home

Nice legal Barra

- Get home around 3:00 PM
- So in a 10 hour session 4 hours driving and 6 hours casting lures (in the full sun in an open boat).

One of many undersized barra

So yes – every fish and crab was earn't with blood, sweat and perseverance – and I loved every minute of it!!

Mmmm - tasty tucker!

Harder days included the setting and pulling of 8 mud crab pots.  If you have pulled a 10KG heavy duty crab pot against the tide a few times you will appreciate the effort involved – but those big buck mud crabs are a delicacy worth the effort.

Another highlight was seeing those monstrous mean crocodiles close up – kept you on your toes and out of the water!

Nice up the creek

On days where the wind and tide wasn’t favorable we would go fresh water fishing in the Pioneer River for those big mean black Sooty Grunters. Still getting up before 5:00AM but only a few minutes’ drive as Tom’s place is at Mirani which is on the River. 

Linda's nice Sooty

It’s a beautiful river early in the morning with Sooties smashing our little lures and the added bonus of platypus swimming past and eyeing us off.

Tom and best mate China

Thanks to Tom and Marion for making us so welcome and especially to Tom for driving both the car and the boat for hours on end, taking me to every creek that could have a barra lurking and retrieving all my badly cast lures out of trees, snags , banks, stumps and the back of his shirt.