Closer to Home!

For those who follow Fishing Cairns, I'm sorry for not posting for a couple of weeks - the reason is quite simple. I haven't had any images of fish to show you guys. Not for a lack of trying mind you as last week I fished the Johnstone River at Innisfail but got blown away by thirteen (yes 13) barra.

Now when your supposed to be a gun ex guide, this is not good.........I know, so don't rub it in. But that's another story that will have to wait for another time.

Closer to Home!

There is a little waterway just on the northern outskirts of town that I only fish at certain times of the year and that is just prior to our traditional "wet" season. The reasons being as follows

• At this time of year the waters are at their optimum as far as clarity and temperature goes
• There is a mix of summer and winter species patrolling the river
• On good tides you can travel quite a way upstream as well as right down to the mouth
• On some days (especially if it is quite warm) there is not too much boat traffic

The Barron River is much maligned and I must admit that being a guide for many years, I too am guilty of this "adverse" publicity. I did not like to fish this water often and preferred to travel the hour or so to either the Johnstone River system or even further away to the mighty Daintree. However, only having limited time to fish this past weekend, my lady Debbie, suggested we give the Barron a go.

Launching at the highway boat ramp is a breeze these days, its wide and stable with plenty of sealed parking for the vehicle and trailer - there's even a handy wash down facility if you bring along your own hose and connections. Something that I do more often these days and its good to clean the boat, remove the salt and head home knowing that you can just back the boat in.

Debbie and I pushed upstream as far as the rock bar at Freshwater Creek, just shy of the train line and the Kamerunga bridge and started to cast our lures to likely looking snags. The river is full of fallen logs and tangled timber and we were quite confident of hooking up to a few barra and jacks. I was using my favorite Leeds deep diving shad in cherry red, Debbie was using a green pattern. We cast and cast for about an hour, had a flash or two but nothing exciting was happening.

I was becoming a little frustrated by now, the tide was right (last of the run out), the water looked good and was a comfortable 26.7C - perfect for old bucket mouth.

Like all thinking anglers should do, if its not working for you, try something else. So we switched to the Leeds highjackers - Deb was using her favourte fluro green and I snapped on a gold metallic pattern with a shiny olive back. I had not had more than a few casts when Boof! I was on to a fiesty little barra. Deb missed one and all of a sudden we felt that maybe things were starting to happen for us. As we drifted slowly down on the falling tide I used the electric to keep us in the right position to cast to bankside vegetation / log piles and likely looking weedy edges.

Some places just look so fishy - you know you're going to hook up, and it was at one such weedy bank that Debbie dropped the lead blob and we cast to the edge. In quick succession I was on, I was off, Debbie was on, I landed one, Debbie landed two and I had another couple. Even though the fish were only rats, it was so much fun and after extracting 5 fish we decided to move on.

It was a magic afternoon. We were so close to the city but we might as well have been a hundred miles away. The sounds of nature, the calls of the many birds - sounds that you just don't get to hear even in the suburbs - it was pure pleasure as we drifted silently along. And every now and again we hooked up to more little fiesty fish. At 5:00pm we decided to pull the pin and head home for a Sunday roast - no joke!

As we zoomed back to the ramp we reflected on what had been a wondeful afternoon, in all we had landed 9 barra, a jack, 1 GT, a cattie and a cuda. Not too shabby for a waterway so close to a city suffering the growing pains of development / tourism / traffic and airplanes. It was a great decision and the only one little regret; that time had prevented us from travelling downstream to the mangrove structure areas where we just might have tangled with larger fish.

Now there is a lot of info in this little article for you keen anglers out there - read it again and take note, maybe you too will discover little treasures so close to home.

Great fishing........Regards, Les

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