Top End Barra Series Round 6

Round 6, the final round for 2014 was held at the mouth of the Adelaide River.

I had fished this system a few times over the last couple of months so had worked out a plan of attack for the weekend.
Headed out on the Friday mid morning and as expected the Gunn Point road was in its usual rough condition, luckily arrived at Salt Water Arm and launched boat with no damage to trailer.
I expected most competitors would be fishing the Wilshire Creeks, so headed straight there to check out a couple of spots that had held fish on previous trips.
Friday afternoon proved to be successful, resulting in 3 barra in the 60's landed and 4 similar size dropped, so things were looking good for the weekend.

 

 As in previous trips the lures of choice were Reidys B52 and Classic F18, with the Classic producing most hits. Well it had been a pretty tiring day so headed to the mouth of W2 to set up camp and retire for the night.
Saturday morning woke to smooth seas and another beautiful Territory day, packed up headed back to SWA to pick up James. When he arrived he had one of his daughters in his arms, so assumed things were not going to be as planned. Seems he had a really bad toothache and was going to try find a dentist and get some pain killers so would not be fishing today. Organised to pick him up the next morning and headed back to the Wilshires.

I had decided to concentrate on one stretch of the creek for the entire day and this proved to be the right decision, landing 8 barra over the day on F18 lures, the Chartreuse Bling being the stand out lure. This gave me a full score card of 5 fish being 51,55,62,64 and 70cm with the following day to hopefully upgrade some of these.

   

 

 

Decided to camp in Salt Water Arm overnight as I was picking up James early next morning. Seven am found me at the ramp and once James was on board we headed for the Wilshires again.

 

This morning we tried trolling up one of the other creeks first as the day before the bite didn't really come on until the incoming tide.

Not quite as successful, however I did manage to upgrade a couple before heading back to the stretch I had fished the preceding day.

Managed another 3 fish to give me 5 in the 60's and a 70, with James scoring a 56 and a 62 before it went quiet, fished for another hour with no results and so decided to head back to the ramp.

 

This last fish must have had a hard but lucky life, his back had suffered trauma quite some time ago and his tail had a piece missing which had been very recent, had not healed yet, so I returned him to the water to live on, who knows, maybe I will catch him again one day should be reasonably easy to recognise.

 

After two days of heavy traffic the road back was even worse and unfortunately just before the end of the dirt a u-bolt holding axle to springs gave way and front axle shifted back to jam tyres together.

Luckily there was a similar u-bolt on my extendable drawbar and so a temporary fix was possible to get me home, heard later that at least 3 other trailers and 1 car also suffered damage on the road.

 

Results came back and surprisingly I had won the round, beating second place by 10 points, in fact there were only 30 points between 1st and 5th.

Approximately 120 scoring barra were entered and no doubt quite a few others which were upgraded during the round, so the area is in pretty good condition.

 

Once the overall results were tallied for the whole year and every one dropped their worse round James finished up 11th with 577 points and I finished 12th with 560 points so a successful year for me, beating my placing last year.

 

This was my third year competing in TEBS,

 2012 I managed 29th with 187 points,

 2013 was 17th with 468 points and winning the Daly River round,

 2014 was 12th with 560 points and winning the Adelaide River round.

 

Already entered in TEBS 2015, can't wait to see what the following year has in store.

 

Until next time,

Tight lines.

 

 



Top End Barra Series Round 5

Round 5 was held in Bynoe Harbour.
I headed down late Friday to have a quick look around and then joined up with Craig and Dan for an enjoyable night.
Up Sat morning and back to ramp to pick up James who due to a slight miscommunication arrived late after checking out a couple of the other Bynoe boat ramps.
Fished a few places where I had caught fish on other trips, but it wasn't until we headed into Phoenix Inlet that we started to find some fish.
By the end of the day I had a 67cm scorer and James a 57cm.

After along day, we headed out to the mouth of Phoenix and dropped anchor for the night.
What followed was an epic 15 boat raft up with music, tall tales, copious amounts of alcohol, someone falling out of their boat only to get back in , fall over and end up with a lure attached to their rear end and lots of laughter.

The next day was much the same as before except I could not land a barra. James increased his tally with a 53cm and a 51cm.

Over the round 95 scoring barra were landed.
Overall results placed James at 13th and myself at 23rd.
One more round to go, the Adelaide River mouth, one of my favourite spots, so hopefully I can do well and better my last year placing of 17th overall for the year.

Until next time,
Tight lines every one.

Top End Barra Series Round 4

Round 4 Darwin Harbour.
James and I had decided to fish West arm for this round and unfortunately it turned out to be a hard round with few fish for us.
James ended up with 2 scorers, a 68cm and a 50cm, but although I caught 3 barramundi they were all smaller than the 50cm required to score.

68 cm

James had organised to go to a rodeo that night so I dropped him off at the ramp and headed to the raft up for the night.

 

 

After a relatively quiet but enjoyable night, I picked James up and headed back to West Arm, but despite all our efforts could not land any scorers.

 

Over the weekend 87 scoring fish were landed.

After all the scores were tallied up James ended up 14th in the overall series and I dropped to 32nd, so I will have to pick up the pace in the final 2 rounds. 

 

Until next time,

Tight lines all.

Top End Barra Series round 3

Well, after round two's donuts I had dropped to 32nd in overall series with James placing 43rd so we were looking forward to this round to hopefully move back up in the rankings.
However with strong winds and neap tides the fish once again proved to hard to find and so after two days of trolling, casting and many lure changes I ended up with one 55cm and one 34cm (non scoring) and James with a 57cm, we also both dropped 1 other scoring fish each.

James 57cm

Public boat ramp

one of the local residents

 

 Luckily, we were not the only ones having a hard time as the following stats show.
The 89 anglers competing in this round caught 50 fish, 2 over a metre, 9 in the 60cm range and 39 between 50-59cm.
So despite only scoring 1 fish each, James and I managed to climb the overall scoreboard, with myself going to 20th and James to 25th.

Next round is Darwin Harbour on the last weekend in August so that gives me a couple of months to check out where we will be fishing that round, starting with a kids day on the 22nd June.

Until next time, tight lines all. 

 

Top End Barra Series, Round 2. Upper Adelaide River.

Saturday 22nd March, after a 3:00 am pickup we were on the water just after 4:00 am and heading downstream to Black Jungle Creek.
Daybreak, we arrived at Black Jungle and started casting around the mouth.

 

It looked good at the mouth, with a nice colour change and bait moving around. We had only been there for a little while when another boat arrived and headed upstream, we had been getting a few touches so continued at the mouth, slowly working our way into the creek and upstream.
After I dropped two rats and James one, another boat (Tackleworld) came past, so we decided to head up and check out the top of Black Jungle.
Eventually found both boats tied up opposite a feeder, but there being insufficient room for a third boat we headed back to the mouth and back upstream in the Adelaide.

Black Jungle Creek

 

 

To cut a long story short, what followed was unspectacular to say the least, we spent the rest of the day working our way upstream, checking any likely looking creeks from Black Jungle to the  rockbar past Manton Creek including up Scotts Creek and the top of Marrakai and despite numerous lure changes and trolling and casting did not get a single touch.

So it was that after over 12 hours on the water, covering around 210 km and using about 125 litres of fuel, we decided that the Adelaide River had defeated us and we headed home.

Round two was a failure for us, we can only hope to be more successful in the future rounds.

Round three, the Daly River, scheduled for the 7th and 8th June is next, hopefully I can get in a few trips before then.

Until next time, tight lines all.


Top End Barra Series, Round 1, Shady Camp.

Friday 7th March, finally time for the opening round of the Top End Barra Series 2014 at Shady Camp.
James rang around 2:00 pm to let me know he had finished work and was ready to go, so I loaded up and set off to pick him up and head out for round 1.
A good trip out saw us launching at the barrage and heading for the mouth of Sampan by 05:30.
Arriving at the mouth we saw the sea wasn't too choppy and so headed straight out and across to Tommycut where we were planning to fish for the weekend.
On arrival at Tommycut, decided to troll in, so connected a Deep River Slim and cast out. It didn't seem to take long before I was on and after a short fight had a nice 83cm Tommycut barra in the boat, what a great start to the weekend.

83 cm

 

 

evening troll Tommycut



evening troll Tommycut

 

 

After a few more trolls with no results we headed upstream to set up camp for the night.

 

Saturday morning saw us up after a quiet night and following bacon and eggs brekkie we were trolling the mouth by 07:15.

 

The Deep River did its thing again and I was on to a good fish just after 07:30, this one gave a good account of itself but after about 10 minutes James netted a great 96cm barra to open my account for the competition.

96 cm

 

It looked like it was going to be a good great weekend.

 

Continued trolling the mouth for a while with no success and there didn't seem to be many others catching fish either, so decided to head upstream and try some spots that had held fish the previous week.

Fished for most of the day upstream for no results and finally headed back to the mouth for a final couple of trolls before calling it quits. Finally, just before 7:00 pm James hooked up and landed a 58cm barra.

As we set up camp that night things weren't looking all that good, but we had noticed that most were doing it hard during the day,

 

Sunday morning dawned and we were back trolling the mouth. There seemed to a lot more action this morning with quite a few fish being caught all around us, unfortunately we could not seem to get any joy.

After about an hour of frustrating trolling, we decided to start moving upstream, Dean Blackman told us he had been getting a few just up from the mouth, so I tied on a Deep River Mugil and took a run past the spot to hook up and land a nice 62cm barra.

62 cm

 

 It seemed as though the fish were coming on the bite and so instead of crowding Deans spot, I decided to head back upstream to see if they had come on there as well.

Not long after starting upstream, I hooked and landed a good 73cm barra.

73 cm

 

We had found a patch of fish at last and over the next hour James landed three barra, 55, 61, 58 from the same spot before it went quiet again.

55 cm

61 cm

58 cm

I was starting to think I had passed my mojo to James and when my next hit was a mudcrab  caught on the troll with a big B52 I guess I was right.

Unlucky muddy

 

 



Once again it had gone quiet and so we continued trolling upstream trying to find more fish. After about an hour, James had another hookup, and it seemed to be a good fish going by the fight it gave him, it didn't jump at all but took a few deep circuits of the boat before finally allowing me to net it, a really nice 83 cm barra to give James his first five fish tally for the TEBS comp.

83 cm
 

Returned to trolling for about another hour, as we had decided to head home around 12:30, without getting any more hits.

The seas out the front were once again only slightly choppy and so we made good time with the crossing and back to Shady for a quick retrieve and uneventful trip home.

 

Scores have been posted for round one, resulting in 605 points for 12th place for me and 485 points and 26th place for James.

 

A great weekend and satisfactory start to TEBS 2014, Round 2 is just around the corner, fishing the top of the Adelaide River, so until next time, tight lines all.