A break from the office!

This past three weeks has seen me very much in work mode – heaps to do in the office / a quick trip to Brisbane for real estate training and a hectic week in New Zealand visiting my ladies mum had left no time for fishing unfortunately.

I spent most of the last weekend in the office, both here at Ray White and at home on Fishing Cairns book work catching-up. At About 11am on Sunday I got so annoyed and frustrated that I decided to just quit the book work and go fishing by myself.

I packed the boat and headed south to the Mulgrave River – I hadn’t been fishing for 3 weeks so was quite pumped to make the decision to “just do it”.

The weather was perfect, the water was a surprisingly warm 26+ C so maybe I could catch a few. With a low tide at approx. 2:00pm I decided to head upstream as far as my little 4 metre punt would allow. This tactic would enable me to drift back down with the still falling tide and fish the weed beds for barra. This time of year (dry season) the river was very shallow with little fresh to top it up – I carefully chose my upstream path but had to concede defeat well short of my intended target zone.

Beautiful Mulgrave River - Sunday 23rd August 10

Not to worry, I still had several kilometers of waterway to prospect.

I was again using the brilliant Leads hijackers and diving shads – these lures are just fantastic for tropical conditions and worked correctly with a stop / start / jerky rod tip retrieve are just dynamite. You can dig the shad down a few metres if required or work it with the rod tip up to stay away from shallow weeds and snags. The shallow running hijacker is the best surface "boofing" lure that I have found and worked correctly rings the dinner bell on old bucket mouth around the weeds. Take a dozen to Cape York if you can.

And the results speak for themselves - not bad for a few hours fishing.

Juvenile Barra on shad

Barra on Hijacker

 

4 barra landed, biggest at 56cm

Lost one approx. 80cm after 2 jumps – looked spectacular

Landed one jungle perch

Lost 2 jacks – biggest approx. 40cm

Barra & Shad

JP on Halco

And if I wasn’t so focused on barra, I should have switched to a smaller spin outfit occasionally and had a go at the many black shapes that I saw on the snags – sooty grunter. 

 
I pulled the pin at 5:00pm and headed home quite pleased with myself.

WHEN DID YOU SAY THAT YOU WERE COMING UP?

Regards, Les

http://www.fishingcairns.com.au/