Was it a sooty trip?
Was it a day out?
Well..........all of the above!
And so Debbie and I headed down the Bruce Highway, took the Cowley Beach turnoff and arrived at the gravel ramp right on high tide. It was a big one of over 2.7m so an easy launch was had.
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| Liverpool Creek Boat Ramp - a dream at high tide |
Its still not the "wet season" as yet (hope I don't bring it on with these ramblings) so we needed the high tide to enable us to travel upstream. The Liverpool is not a big river and without fresh coming down or a high tide, its darn near impossible to travel far upstream. We were in luck....we zoomed along, crossing shallow sand bars, drowned timber and a few rocks and powered down. Lets have a few casts around here babe, there was a bit of bait flicking about, and on Deb's very first cast to the shallow bank a nice flathead engulfed her lure.
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| Debbie's flathead - the fish I mean (sorry babe) |
Its always a dilemma for Debbie as to which lure to use....hell I just pull out my "current" favourite....which happens to be the new Super Shad, Shallow design! Clip it on and away I go. But Debbie is more competitive than that. If she sees me catch a fish, she has to change her lure because hers is not working. Some days I have to wash and put away about 20 lures for her; while I have used 2 (maybe 3 max.) - a deep / shallow diving shad, a flat jack and a SR5. (read that again!)
We headed off again. This time travelling as far up as I dared in the skinny water. At times I held my breath as we crossed drowned logs but I have a fairly good sense of where the channel is so without incident I backed off and headed for a shady tree for a coffee.
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| How cool is this coffee stop! |
Now at this time of year I do a lot of fishing way upstream in our beautiful tropical streams. The rec. fishing laws are pretty specific in that you are not supposed to deliberately target old bucket mouth...that's why we try to catch Sooties, JP's, Jacks, tarpon and the like and up in the fresh is the best place to be. Surrounded by rainforest, whistling birds, swaying palms, lovely fresh waters, swaying ribbon grass....ahhhh, I love it.
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| Shallows upstream - Liverpool Creek |
But you can't stop a little juvenile barra from being competitive for tucker and we do catch a few of them. They are too small to be in breeding mode anyway so no harm done with a quick pic and release.
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| Typical juvenile barra! |
My efforts were rewarded however, with a magnificent fresh water jack...it hit like a freight train and turned, trying to bury me in the log jam. With locked up drag on my baitcaster, and deft use of the electric, we managed to back it out of there. It was a keeper....and it actually became my meal last night. Thanks Deb, it was delicious.
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| Now that's a nice fresh water jack! |
Back to the Field Test!
Readers will know that I have field tested a lot of lures for Mr Graham of Bransfords Tackle Shop over the years. And I can honestly say that this new shallow running Super Shad has fast become one of my favourites. Not all lures work in all situations so you must be a thinking angler to have consistent success. Use a shallow running lure in relatively shallow water situations - simples! (as the meerkat would say)
And as for colour choices, I am absolutely hooked on the new grey ghost colour (Ghost Flecto they call it). Debbie played with a gold one for about 5 minutes and after hooking up a small barra decided to change it.....again!!!! Why!!!!
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| Super Shad.....shallow running version! |
These lures have basically the same body shape, cast ability and hooks as the deep diving version, but a much smaller bib and hence, the shallow running ability. I love em!
Was it a sooty trip!
We actually didn't see one sooty all day....I did hook up to a couple of JP's but they pulled the hooks straight away.
Was it a day out!
You bet! And what a wonderful day it was. The river is magic as the picks hereabouts show. I was in great company, Deb had prepared fantastic food (that Kiwi thing) and we caught some lovely little fish. I can't wait for some more rain, the rivers flood and then I can really get up to some rarely fished country.
Bring it on!
Catch you on the water, regards Les
www.fishingcairns.com.au
Oh by the way.....we finished up back at the ramp on low tide. Debbie had a couple of casts to some mangrove snags and pulled out this little silver barra....darn, its supposed to be a jack or queenie or trevally or salmon or fingermark or cuda or something. Anything but bloody barra!
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| What you smiling at babe! |
