My smallest Barramundi ever

Hi there,


Yes I was invited by my friend Carl to go on his boat to fish for some Barra at Shoal Bay.
He called me and said, I need to test my old boat and motor, not really sure if every thing still work, so will go and spend a day at Shoal Bay to test it... Dave would follow us in his good boat in case we run into some trouble. Do you want to come?
I said yes, and started to think about all the things that could go wrong...


But every thing went very well, mostly...


We were soon on the water, launched at Buffalo Creek and off to some rivers of Shoal Bay.
And when I say some rivers it is not because I want to keep the secret spot a secret, but because I honestly do not know the names of the places where we went to. Apart that it was part of the Shoal Bay system.

One of the rivers of Shoal Bay.

The only little worry we had on the way, was that the fuel stopped to get to the engine, so he had to change the little piece that connect the petrol tank to the tube that go to the engine, the thing with a ball bearing in it, and off we went again.
(Do you start to get some clues on my mechanic lack of expertise?)

Then we stopped at a little creek on the big river, where they wanted to catch some live bait.
I had my new cast net with me, the one with a ring on it, ant it worked very well: I too was able to catch some mullet!
But the annoying thing that we saw on the bank there was a gill net half hidden in the bush, (I had never seen one before).
That got my two fishing mates pretty upset.


Then we moved to another spot to try our luck, and in the drink went a few littles livies.
With not too much action happening, I started to cast some lures around.
Shallow lures, till 5+meters lures, but to no avail either.


There we saw the water police, two of them on a tinny, they came towards us and asked us a few questions. We told them about the gill net that we saw earlier and they asked where it was, as they wanted to go and investigated the thing.
It doesn't look like a bad beat for a policeman to go and hang out on the river on a nice and sunny day.
I guess that some of them deserve that once in a while.
And no, they didn't have any fishing rods with them, we asked.


So My skipper said lets go to this spot where I always catches fishes.
We went there, and caught nothing again...
But I got two hit on the lure, one of them just at the boat as I was taking the lure out of the water.

Landscape on the river.

So we went to explore a bit more of the rivers and went upstream.
We stopped at another junction and tried to fish it for a few minutes, and no action at all one more time...
So Dave went a bit further upstream, and we decided to go after him and see what was up there.
He came back and said to us: "it's not worth it, to much rocks over there".
So Carl said "lets go and have a look"
And this is when we went for gold...
Or at least plated gold, as it was no big fish, but a lot of them little ones.


Has we arrived Carl told me, "The current is really strong, but I am sure that all these rocks are good Barra country, you should try a few cast with your lures"
Not wanting to loose a good (read expensive) hard body lure on the rocks, I started to cast a soft plastic in the stream.
And second or third cast, I was on! But lost it before the boat.
Seeing that Carl quickly tied the boat to a tree and put a lure on his line, and we started to cast and got two fish in no times.
Both too small to be keepers, but we finally had some action, and they were using the force of the current at their advantage, so it was real fun.
Then Dave arrives and said: "You guys are wasting your time there, lets go back somewhere else".
To which Carl responded by saying that we just had two little fish in no time at all, so we were not moving, and that he Dave should anchor below us and start to get into it too!
Which he did reluctantly, but was on so quickly that he started to smile. 
And for about one hour, the last hour of fishing of the day, between all of us we finally boated between 15 to 20 little Barramundis. 
Not a single one big enough to take home, but great excitement nonetheless!
And all on lure after trying with live bait for most of the day...


As soon has I saw that this little stream was full of fish, I changed my one hooked soft plastic for a Junior B52's with two treble.
This increased my catch rate dramatically, but as they were all small fish, I decided to try to go for a B52's and put back the Junior in the tackle box. 
And this is when I got... The smallest Barra of all times caught on a lure...
What went trough his mind when he attacked the lure, must have been a very determined: I Am The Alfa Fish!  
So as a lot of people brags about their biggest Barramundi, I present you my smallest one ever:

A greedy little fish.

The only good fish hooked during this short session was by Carl, but as the fish was just a few meters behind the boat still fighting hard, something big came a just boofed it under our eyes! And we weren't sure of what it was, but we all agreed that it was not the time to fall in the water...


But it was really fun and exciting to catch all these little Barras in such a short time, all in the same spot.
It was like if two team of kids were pitted against each other. As this is what we must have looked like, screaming and cheering as we were on them, kids Barra, and sometimes with double hook up. The three of us casting in the same direction, all hoping for the big one that didn't came.


After that we went back, and got stuck on the mud a few times, but finally made it to the boat ramp in the dark.

On the river at dusk.

So it was basically the first time that I hooked  and boated so many Barramundi, but I could not bring back a single one home, as none were of legal size.


All in all, there was no fish to eat in the evening, but that was still a great day on the water.


So once again, I came back home without a feed.


But hey, it could be worse.
Have a good day,
Me