SEVEN!!! TWICE, BEFORE LUNCH.

Just back from Bynoe.  Its amazing the difference the run in the tides makes for the fishing as Graeme says in his post.

There was a good few of us out there, Lord Jim in the boat with all his friends, Pete O and a mate, Crusty and Wayne, Roxley trying out his new aircraft carrier, and Dave with Andy.  May have been more that I missed too, sorry about that.

Lord Jim and Cathie hooked and dropped a couple of monsters, which I'll fill you in on later in this little blog.

I heard Wayne dropped a couple of good ones too, so it looks like there's a few going for the nickname of  'Dropper' this year. (sorry about the sledging but I couldn't resist it)

The first day we had about 2.5m movement before the high and nearly 4 m after the high.  That's not a lot of run but it was enough for us to catch the old 'Seven Species' each on the Orange Marauder before lunch. The fish were not anything to write home about, all between 40 and 50cm. The mackerel were tiny, hundreds of them but this is a big one in the photo below,

While we were catching these little macs, which were mixed in with Tarpon, Blue Salmon and the odd barra on the edges, Cathie hooked a monster fish.  It ran nearly to the backing and she managed to get some line back on it, before it ran to a snag, put its head out of the water, shook once then broke the line off on the snag.   We could not guess the length because it only put about a foot of its head out of the water, but it was a huge barra that could have swallowed a rugby ball whole.  The fish must have been cleaning up on some of the smaller fish and took Cathies fly.

Lord Jim's story is even sadder.   We came upon him in a bay looking very dejected and he told us the saga of his dropped fish.  He was fishing near the mouth of a small creek when he saw what appeared to be a 'Queenie' bow wave coming towards him. He cast at the bow wave then all hell broke loose.  It was a barra, and a big one.   Apparently thinking that the bow wave was caused by the head of a queenie he had cast at the head, only to find out it was the dorsal fin of this huge barra, and as luck would have it, after it jumped a couple of times, and he had it to the side of the boat on two occasions, once on its side.  He found that he had hooked the monster at the front of the dorsal fin, so the fish was as confused as Jim was.

Now we come to the sledging part, Jim tried to net the fish, by himself as usual, only to have the fish get upset by the net and break the fly out of its fin. Cathie was a bit cruel when she said something about, "That will teach you to fish by yourself!" 

Jim said it was the biggest barra he had ever seen in his life, so no wonder he's on suicide watch as he puts it.

Two young blokes fishing near by had watched this fight with the fish and were still flogging the water in the area when we arrived, trying to find the monster. They did no good.

TIDAL NOTE: Jim hooked this barra and a couple more, on a tide that had only 1.3metres movement. 

As the tidal movement became less though, we noticed that the fish too were harder to find, except for the odd big fish lolling in the sun.  The fish also seemed a little less willing to bite, except when you got into the crazy schools of queenies and their trevally mates.  But if you ventured up into the creeks and fished on the more permanent snags, there were some good size snapper and jacks willing to take your fly.

Andy and Dave caught us in Andy's barra spot.

We ran into Andy and Dave, just was we were pulling in a fish at Andy's barra spot, talk about cought with your hand in the cookie jar.   The fish gods got us back though, we ran trough the shallow sand/mud with the prop and the rubber gave way in the centre of the prop.  thank goodness we had a spare prop because when that centre rubber goes, the prop just spins.

Just on props, we tried a smaller 12 inch pitch prop so the boat would get up quicker with a load, because Mario and Mark will be fishing with me in the boat in October and the 13 inch pitch prop takes a bit longer to get up onto the plane.  Now it got us onto the plane fast but that was the only thing that was fast.  Normally we do about 4400 rpm for 45 kph but on the smaller prop we were only doing 36 kph at 4500 rpm.   Too bloody slow, so I put the 13 back on and that was the one that the rubber centre went in.    Even with the 13 inch on, I was no match for Dave with is 90 hp who nearly blew us off the water as he went past us around 65 kph, then to top it off  Roxleys Air craft carrier does 80 kph. Made me feel as though I was driving like Jim does and never got out of third gear.

Darryl is fishing with Jim in October, so I better give the power prop to Jim or he wont be able to get up on plane.

Roxley with his speedster, (Alex and Jeff, the Nimitz has competition.)