South of no where

[Shane Doevy]

JD, Harmsey and I did a day trip to the South yesterday to see if we could get our February barra on the board.
Departed at 0300 and did a fuel stop at Coolalinga, saw a tow truck picking up a vehicle along the highway before the turn off to Arnhem highway - it had rolled - pretty straight stretch of oaod - maybe the driver went to sleep. Continued along the way and at the Scott creek crossing there were a couple of young blokes standing in the middle of the road with the road with their van in the culvert - they said they were ok and were going to walk up to the pub to get someone to tow them out - at that stage water was about 50mm thick flowing over the road so i guess aqua plane must have got them into trouble although he assured me he was only doing 100kmh i have my doubts.
At the ramp at around 0545 and the mossies were ferocious - dropped in and headed upstream. Fished a couple of creeks close by to get the gear set up and wait for the sun. As the sun came up we headed further upstream. Worked our way right up the top flicking at all of the run offs we could find - some had colour oythers were very dirty. Up near Reichardts we found a channel ot onto the flood plains which was pumping good clearwater and finally snagged a 55cm barra - beauty pressures off. Kept looking around and started to work back down to meet the push of the tide.
Ended up back down near Nourlangie and finally all the flicking produced a hit at one of the drains so we dropped anchor and then it was on. Harmsey landed a nice fish, then it was JD's turn to snag a couple of rats and then Harmsey and I got another couple - the fish bit right on the turn of the tide and then were goen.
We worked our way back up but couldnt locate the fish again so with the sun burning its way into us we headed home - had a flick at the culverts along the way but aside from a few tarpon there was nothing happening.
I think the south needs more water - or it needs to be higher for longer before it will fire - heres hoping we get more rain!! All the fish were taken on soft plastics - squidgies and Reidys rubbers and they were pretty keen to engulf them- no messing around!!
Still a good day out and Harmsey and I got on the board - just need to find one for JD now!! Jd landed a heap but none of legal size - oh well every dogbhas his day and any day i get more fish than him is .. is .... well it doesnt happen very often!!

Cheers
Shane

[justin]

thanks for the report lads . at least we know where the river is at at the moment.

[harmsey]

yeah thanks for a great day on the water shane and JD

nice stretch of river that and with only 2 other boats on it, made it even better.

worked pretty hard for what we caught but it was a hit a cast there for 30mins and you could see the fish moving up the river. pretty stoked about my Feb baz as i thought it was gunna be a hard one to crack. poor old JD got a 53 but no matter how we measured it we couldnt stretch it

i agree with shane although i dont know the river at all, i would say it need quite a bit more rain.

as for the fellas standing on the road looking at their smashed up van under water on the side of the road well, they where both fresh out of the pub and sure as hell should not of been doing 100 on that stretch of road lucky there was no one coming the other way one of the blokes had a set of black long pants with tassels and red and blue poofy sparkly things hanging off them, looked like something Beasty would wear

thanks again for good day fellas

[Kevin Kevinson]

looking at that last pic, it definitely needs a lot more rain out there

that is a bit of a worry actually

cmon tropical lows

[PilbaraBrad]

nice couple of fish there lads!

[Faulksy]

Good to see you found them for a while at least. It seems like hard work all round at the moment. not sure where to try and find a Feb fish.