G’day all,
A mate of mine from Mackay and I finally made the journey up north in search of our first barra. Neither of us had any experience with this sort of stuff, as both of us grew up on the Darling Downs. After I flew up to Mackay, we made the 6hr journey north to Cardwell, which was to be the base of operations for the weekend. We stayed in the Lyndocks Motor Inn which is at the cheaper end of accommodation available in the area. At only $70 per night for the room it wasn’t going to break the already limited budget.
We arranged a guide to show us the ropes for two days. At $440 per day for the boat (which included food and gear) it was money well spent purely for knowledge gained. We opted to buy our own gear (reels and line) and saved a packet by buying brand names off eb@y and the internet. We also purchased a myriad of lures, which ultimately proved unnecessary but more on that later.
So on the first morning, with excitement levels through the roof, our guide “Jimbo” as he calls himself (see pic) motored through the maze of creeks arriving at one of those typically tropical estuaries you see on TV – the ones where you expect a croc to be lounging on every mud bank. Jimbo rigged a Bimmini double in the 30lb braid and attached 55lb leader to the double with an Albright. I had put in some casting practice prior to the trip and figure that if I could land the lure within 1 metre of where I wanted it I would be o.k. …. How wrong I was. But Jimbo showed us the way and we soon found ourselves casting to within 10cms of our target from about 10 metres. Not bad for a few amateurs. We mainly targeted snags and drains where a simple pause-twitch retrieve through the snag was employed.
We fished like this for 2 full days and managed a few barra, countless Jacks, cod, and trevally. It was winter which made things pretty tuff. We were told that if we went in summer, we could pretty much triple our total catch (which was about 50). Being beginners, we raised and hooked more barra than we landed, but that will come in time. All up the trip was well under $1000 each which includes gear, accommodation, food, travel etc.
The whole trip saw us only use two lures. Tilsan Barra’s for the deep work and gold bombers for the shallow stuff. Being from the south (where snags are at a premium) I figured we would lose a lot of lures to the trees. But up there, where there is a decent snag every 10 metres, we simply motored in and retrieved the lure without worrying about wasting the opportunity.
All in all it was a top trip, and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed telling it.
Cheers Dave
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