Always Have a BACKUP Plan!

With nothing better to do, Debbie & I headed south last Sunday, just to check out the rivers (Yeah Right!) The Mulgrave was OK as we crossed the highway bridge but we decided that we should try something different today so a Russell River trip was the order.


I could have driven past Babinda to check it out, then backtracked to launch at either Bellenden Ker OR Babinda Creek..........BUT at the last minute I decided to go down to the Russell ramp. As the tide was still rising there might be some cleaner / salt water pushing in I thought.

First sight of the river and the hopes sank a little, not too bad though, still fishable provided we could find some drains flowing or clear patches amongst some weed beds. But after heading upstream, the tide was suppose to be coming in remember, the water flowing down was becoming redder and dirtier with every passing bend.

Back to plan B!
We tried the bank just down from the ramp for a couple of small jacks........still too dirty I advised.

Plan C!
We zoomed down to Russell Heads and tried our luck amongst the mangrove roots. At least the water was relatively clean down there and we had several quality barra around the 70cm mark lazily swipe at our lures but fail to hook up. Four of the buggers in fact........soooo frustrating.

Plan D!
Head upstream on the Mulgrave, fish the gutters and weed beds and hope "old bucket mouth" was on the chew up there.

In hindsight we should have just launched at the Mulgrave, as the pictures attached show the results of a great days fishing.

It sure was a strange day apart from the varying water quality and the miles travelled - even the drains in the upper Mulgrave were working in 'reverse' with the river rising and the water draining back into the side drains and not coming out of them as is normal / expected.

I was bitterly disappointed when I first noticed this after several fruitless casts to one of my favorite spots........nothing, not a follow a flash or anything. But a long cast right up the drain and a few short cranks of the rod to make the lure 'boof' on the surface and the best barra of the day crashed my hand painted Leads Highjacker - Just check out that lure in the photo, it's a Les Marsh special. (Well it had to be that way as all the standard paint had worn off and the lure was just too darn good to throw away, so I painted it myself). Worked a treat too.

We were also drenched to the bone when a severe tropical storm descended down the valley and dumped about 50mm in an hour - but 5 minutes later and it was all gone with clearing skies and a pleasant trip downstream.

It was a fairly long boat trip back to the ramp in the Russell but upon reflection........Debbie & I had had an absolute ball. Landing 4 jacks, a gold spot estuary cod and 8 barra.

NOTE - During the downpour my electrics must have become waterlogged.

When I tried to activate the bilge pump I blew a fuse. Guess what......here we were sitting up a river, 10cm of water sloshing under the floor, unable to get up on the plane due to the dead weight of all that water and having to pull over on the bank and hand bail the tinny.

And all because I hadn't kept a 10c fuse in my tackle box - I had about a dozen of them in the glove box of my Colorado 4WD, but what's the good of that?



Happy Fishing, Les

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