HARD GOING ON BYNOE.

Just got back from Bynoe and the cold wind that blew up with the rain Thursday night.  We were entertaining some interstaters, and may have overdone the bragging a bit because of the fish out there earlier in the month when we we pulling in heaps.  The fish were still there I'm sure, but it was hard to find them in the dirty water and keep you feet in the wind on Friday.  Lenny and Cliff (NSW) found some clear water and got into barra.  But Jim, unlike earlier in the month, with Adrian (Vic) like us, had trouble finding a fish.  Some other interstaters went well out and got fish on reefs and big queenies were seen around Bare Sand and Quail. Graeme and a couple of other interstaters did well before the bloody wind too.  But compared to other times, for flats fishing, we found it very hard in the dirty water.

Phil Foster was out honing his skills.  He probably got the most fish for our little group over two days.  At one stage up behind a secret island location, we came across schools of barra which you could even make out in the cloudy water because there were so many of them, and in amongst them was the lone Huge threadie.

Phil is just learning to fly fish, and was using an inexpensive rod and one of those lines that come with the kits which usually cost about $30.  Well the whole kit performed to perfection, and while we were around one of the barra schools, Phil put a very accurate cast right on the nose of a metre plus threadie that seemed to be rounding up the barra.  The threadie drove at the fly (one of Phil's) but just as it was about to hit the fly, a little barra boofed at it and turned the threadie away. We kept trying to find them in the dirty water, but the tide went out and we had to get off the flat.

Adrian managed to get a threadie out from the barra, after hooking up three or four of them, but any barra that hit the fly took it right down.

Left the flats at low tide and tried Hut Point reefs.  Usually heaps of small queenies and trevours busting up there.  Yes, they were there, but they weren't busting up, they were jumping clear out of the water all over the place, because metre spaniards were chasing through them and chopping them up.  Phil managed to get bitten off by the big ones and a four inch  (100mm) wire trace didn't seem long enough for them because the spaniards were cutting 40cm queenies in half with one bite.

Later, on Knife Island, Phil hooked into a 50 plus golden trevally and while he was playing it a huge trevally started to swim with it before seemly trying to bite it.  I think those big trevally are resident around that Island at times because in the past we have have seen them belt into good size fish that we had on.

Oh, and did I mention the great red wine at Sand Palms?