Shallow jigs & barefoot kangaroos

Ralph and mark , an entertaining combo, one a music fan, the other a CEO for a company building rollercoasters and resorts. Fellas couldn’t be more different… but the fishing brings them together.

we fished for 30 minutes before a beach cook up. Leaving the ship, we had some marks off a headland with a tiny creek that was flowing fresh water out, over sand.

We sniffed around, trolling to start looking for some decent ground. All the shallow rocks seemed to be holding fish and had some tight fluff right along its bottom in about 7 metres of water. We kept trolling and picked up 2 barracuda… woo.. they say good crab bait right? 

Let’s look a little deeper i thought and as we pushed away from the headland the sounder blew up. Found the fish on the feed. 20m of water. Sounder lit , top to bottom. The bait was being held along the edge of the reef, and lots of squiggly lines indicating to me trevally.. meaning, reef species below.

Lads dropped a squidtrex and buffalo jig (cheers nomad) and both struck on the descent before hitting the bottom. Screaming reels, light gear, yewwww beauty. Using vanford 4000s, 30pd braid 50lb leader m, chaos endured. As suspected a beautiful golden trevally put up some stink, and  a table fish tusky were landed. Further more we struck gold, with a couple finger mark. 

With our drift line now settled, two more drifts with a 3 nanny and 2 more fingermark landed off the bottom. What was meant to be a little fuck around half an hour turned into some fresh fillets and a taste away from all the barras and jacks the fellas had been eating all week!

Once on the beach, Lead guide Rimbo (aka bush rat) and I grabbed our baitcasters and took off into the bush, in search of a fresh water creek we could see on the satellite maps. Gotta be barras living here. Bush rat, scurrying along at pace with his enclosed shoes left me for dead. Trying to keep up, I turned into roo mode, bounding along the grassy, prickly woodlands barefooted, exclaiming to the rat the less you touch the ground the less you are a chance or stepping on something to get stuck in ya foot. 

We found the hole, croc wary, had flick but no barras in sight. A quick cool off in the shallow rock ledge giving some relief after what seemed like a 700m hop.

Shooting back towards the beach we followed the creek jumping between mangroves and mud, finding a little pocket of fish. 3 barra landed, in which they were hiding in a dark , muddy part seeing them flash at the lure got the blood flowing. Gold bomber strikes again ;0