Kyle & I hit Monduran from 11 - 18 September. We spent over 70 hours on the water and fished all over the system from Bass Straight and Bird Bay all the way up to F.
We fished shallow, we fished deep. We found warm water, clear water, murky water and cooler water. We worked banks, points and drop-offs. We fished tiger country in the timber and open water creekbeds. We threw plastics, shallow hardbodies and deeper hardbodies. We twitched, we paused. We fish slowly and passively and we fished fast and aggressively...
We tried old favourite spots and many new spots. We found lots of birds and lots of bait - sometimes blacking out the entire sounder. We travelled over 200klms by boat. I broke a runner on one of Kyle's rods, I dropped a concrete block anchor on my toe and our backs and shoulders ached from ther effort. On the last day our Minn Kota decided it only wanted to go straight and refused to turn left or right! We got sunburnt and we got windburnt. We had southerlies, westerlies and northerlies...
The result? Six catfish (including one huge monster), half a dozen tentative hits and one huge boil behind a gold Xrap for me. A shitful trip/result for me...
Kyle managed five hook-ups and half a dozen boils. The first hook-up was at C and and lasted for seconds only. The fourth was similar.
The second was early Wednesday morning in south B. An aggressively worked Richos Extractor was hit. After a couple of metres of pulled line and a screaming drag the hooks pulled. The third hook-up was 20 minutes later and the best.
Using my S10 and Hyper Custom Certate, Kyle was very aggressively working a slickrig 110 evil minnow, using a Matt Fraser prototype jighead fitted with an under chin #4 owner treble stinger. Three (yes, that's right THREE!) barra came from the depths to attack this lure. Two shied at the last moment but the middle barra crunched it two metres from the back of the boat.
I threw the tie-off rope as Kyle got into a long battle with a good sized barra that only jumped once. After nearly five minutes and some 30m from where he hooked up I managed to get a deep net shot at a barra that just refused to surface. Fortunately it was a good net shot and our only fish of the trip - a 96cm beast - came aboard, pinned in the corner of the mouth on the stinger only! A few pics and she powered back into the depths without needing to be revived.
The fifth hook-up was near No Secret point in north B in atrocious conditions. Cool water, low cloud, 20+ knot southerlies and a broken Minn Kota. Kyle's favourite bomber gets monstered by a big fish in tiger country. Against locked drag, line starts peeling off at a huge rate. As I throw the tie off rope, Kyle free spools as she goes around a tree. Five seconds later it was all over as the face hooked lure is wiped off against a tree...
And that was it. Not a donut but very close. Despite the tough fishing we had a great time and learned a lot about what is now a huge and different body of water. We have also marked some very likely looking spots for the Mondy ABT event in November...
Regs
Pete & Kyle
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