Went up to awoonga this Easter with a few friends to do the barra thing. We Left brissy by 3 on Friday morning and made our way up. By 10:30 we were on the water sussing the place out. After 5 minutes of casting my line came tight and I let out a quick 'yep' followed by 'I don't think its a barra' after a 10 second struggle up pops a catty. Oh well we moved to a likely looking weed bed dropping into deep water and resumed casting.
We eventually swapped to shallow runners and I put on a weightless 6" atomic jerk shad we had several hits from what appeared to be longtom. I watched my plastic as I twitched it rhythmically just below the surface as what appeared to be a metre long barra lazily roll past it giving it an enquiry nudge. This lifted our spirits for a few more hours but a move was in order.
We made our way up the borne river to cast at some likely structure. At around 2 o’clock I was rewarded with another catty. John also had a solid hit that failed to hook up again on a weightless plastic. This was the limit of our success on softies for the rest of the trip. By 4:30 with diminished spirits we decided to have one last attempt at enticing the barra for the day.
We anchored up on a spot shown to us by John Mitchell on a charter earlier that year and commenced casting. Our spirits lifted again shortly as mike felt a solid hit closely followed by matt hooking up and landing a healthy 80cm specimen. A few photo’s and the fish swam away healthily we recommenced casting and John hooked up. The water erupted and every one called at once ‘metre’.
After a few minutes John had recovered most of the line and the barra again launched itself clean out of the water not 5 metres from the boat. At this point we realised the shear size of this fish. I frantically began to clean deck space as matt and mike prepared to land the fish. After a fight that lasted well over five minutes we lifted the massive fish into the boat. And started taking photo’s it’s true measurement was never determined as its tail hung entirely over the end of the brag matt. We called it 130cm but after closer inspection of photographs it would appear that it was closer to 135cm(not bad for a first barra me thinks). The fish swam away strongly so it’s still out there for someone else to catch on a later date.
This barra was soon to be followed by mikes first barra measuring 102cm. Not until later that night did I managed to hook up and land a fish around the 70cm mark. So at the end of day one we had all successfully landed a barra this would be the end of the fish for matt and I only managing a few hits over the next two days and matt dropping a fish into the fight due to pulled hooks. The next day we developed a point system being 2 points for a metre plus barra, 1 point for a barra and –1 points for a cat fish. I had some work to do currently sitting on –1 points.
One of the highlights of the trip was Mike’s 93cm barra caught in thick timber caught early Saturday morning most of this fight was recorded on video camera. This was to be followed by another fish in the 60’s later that night and John landing another two barra measuring 108cm and 94cm. Sunday proved fruitless other than the odd bump and an aggressive hit on a fizzer late in the evening. But the scenery in the borne river and the fantastic sunset that evening more than made up for the lack of action.
At the end of the trip the score stood at 5 points to John, 4 points to Mike, 1 point to Matt and me bringing up the rear at –1 points. All in all a great few days on the water, we seemed to have done the best out of the other boats we talked to the better of which landing 1 or 2 barra for the weekend largely due to John Mitchell’s secret spot. All the fish were caught casting hard bodies and were released to fight another day.
I'm waiting for phot's to be emailed to me but i'll post them asap.
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Keep the reports coming as I live in hope. 
. Sounds like you a had a good time which was the main thing.
