 Josh with his 82cm barra |  Tristen with a lure taking Threadfin |  Tristen with a fat low tide barra |
 Double hook up |  Josh with a night time floodplain barra |
Have fished the last three days with Josh and Tristen from Sydney with some exciting results. Friday we fished the Little Howard River for a great result. We started the day fishing the mouth of Joes creek where Josh landed his first barra on a live mullet and at 82cm it was a good start to his barra fishing career. Once the tide dropped we moved to our chosen deep hole for the day. After collecting some live bait we settled in for the day. The live bait was proving fruitless only attracting sharks so we started to throw some lures around and thats when the action started. Over a two hour period we landed eight barra two threadiies and even a shark all on lures while the live baits still failed to produce a fish.
Saturday prooved to be a disaster. The day started with a bang after checking the crab pots we had left over night we had more crabs than we could handle, one pot had eight crabs in it and almost every other pot had two to four in them. After watching a floatilla of boats head up the Little Howard I decided to try Hope Inlet for the day. This proved to be a poor choice as we worked all day without a single bite from a barra just a got savaged by huge numbers of Bull Sharks.
Sunday we had planned to fish the Vernon Islands. We headed of early at 6am but by the time we had reached Gunn Point the weather had turned bad. As we stuck our nose out of the Gunn Point blue holes we ran into a huge storm so the decision was made to return to Shoal bay and fish for barra. With the tide still up I headed up to the flood plains were I thought I might be able to get some bait. We parked out front of a little gutter that was pumping heaps of fresh water where I netted a good haul of Silver Scats. This is a pretty good sign that the run off fishing has started, with the barra attacking lures with gusto and Silver Scats staring to show. We headed down to our hole early so we could secure our spot among the floatilla of boats. The results were the same as Friday only getting attacked by sharks on the live baits but landing four barra and losing several others on lures. At the end of the day we headed back up with the tides to fish the flood plains. Just on dark we set up in the mouth of a very snag filled gutter where we put the Silver Scats to work. We had about ten bait and in a hour and a half period the boys managed to pull out three barra from the snags and lost the rest of the baits to fish that beat them. All good signs that the run off fishing is under way which is a few weeks early for Shoal bay lets hope we get some more rain so it continues through till May.
Saturday prooved to be a disaster. The day started with a bang after checking the crab pots we had left over night we had more crabs than we could handle, one pot had eight crabs in it and almost every other pot had two to four in them. After watching a floatilla of boats head up the Little Howard I decided to try Hope Inlet for the day. This proved to be a poor choice as we worked all day without a single bite from a barra just a got savaged by huge numbers of Bull Sharks.
Sunday we had planned to fish the Vernon Islands. We headed of early at 6am but by the time we had reached Gunn Point the weather had turned bad. As we stuck our nose out of the Gunn Point blue holes we ran into a huge storm so the decision was made to return to Shoal bay and fish for barra. With the tide still up I headed up to the flood plains were I thought I might be able to get some bait. We parked out front of a little gutter that was pumping heaps of fresh water where I netted a good haul of Silver Scats. This is a pretty good sign that the run off fishing has started, with the barra attacking lures with gusto and Silver Scats staring to show. We headed down to our hole early so we could secure our spot among the floatilla of boats. The results were the same as Friday only getting attacked by sharks on the live baits but landing four barra and losing several others on lures. At the end of the day we headed back up with the tides to fish the flood plains. Just on dark we set up in the mouth of a very snag filled gutter where we put the Silver Scats to work. We had about ten bait and in a hour and a half period the boys managed to pull out three barra from the snags and lost the rest of the baits to fish that beat them. All good signs that the run off fishing is under way which is a few weeks early for Shoal bay lets hope we get some more rain so it continues through till May.