Finding the Barra: our way!

It's all part of the adventure of life!

Sunsetting on a super hot & humid day...after I caught a barra!

We have been home, back in Derby, for over 4 months already.  We got off to a slow start on the fishing front.  Going back to all our old favourite spots was not working for us, everything has changed in the 3 years we have been away.  It was back to exploring and hunting out new holes.  Chuck in the fact that I work every second weekend, and get very jealous if Johnno goes fishing without me, so that cut our fishing times in half.  But a few months down the track and we are finding some fish again!

Johnno started it off with this beauty Mulloway.

As always we do everything the hard way.  Don't talk to enough people, like to work everything out for ourselves. Johnno is still hell bent on JUST fly fishing, but I twist his arm to flick with me every now and then...so he has caught a few fish lately as well ;)

Johnno joined me on the 'dark side'', flicking lures got him catching fish again!

After my big iMac died (for good this time), I was back using my 10 year old Laptop.  It didn't handle GoPro footage so well, well at all actually, so YouTube clips were out for a while. Then we got out of the habit of even wearing our GoPro's...

Once I finally decided, my new computer of choice has been a Windows XPS laptop...you never know when you will need to take your whole computer with you!!  It's taking some getting used to, and I still haven't brought a professional movie making program, just going with the very basic on photo's program for now, until I research all the new stuff out there.

So we started finding some fish.

Proper Dark Siding it!!  BAIT fishing!!

 My fish count has slowed down dramatically since leaving Exmouth, even though I AM counting catfish hahaha!  At the start of this year I did some goal setting: 8 goals for 2018  with one of those goals being catch 800 fish!!  In Exmouth this could actually be a hard, but still realistic target, I was at....I had to look up the number, and am a bit shocked!!  I was going to say over 300, but I was only at 262 when we left Exmouth in the middle of the year.  That number has jumped to 312, man I catch a lot of CATFISH!!! hahahaha
Anyway, for every 10 catfish we catch, we manage to catch some barra as well!  There's good days and bad days, like everyone's fishing...don't you have bad days??
I had a good day catching 3 barra while Johnno only caught catfish (oh yah, and that one barra at the start of the day 😜 ).  Then the table turns, the day I caught NOTHING, Johnno caught these 3 beauties within a couple of hours.

62cm dinner!

Long fight to get this Queenie in, even though there was some hard pulling to keep it out of snags and reef!

First Derby MJ

Then we have weekends like this one.  MAN ITS HOT!!  Barra like the hot we tell ourselves, so we will brave it out!  I had to work Saturday morning, so Johnno got everything ready and picked me up with the tinny in tow.  But as stated before, we are still exploring, learning where the Barra live these days.  So our first stop, where we had planned to fish all day, was a fizzer.  We got hot and bothered, and with no fish signs at all, decided to move on.  Second spot, too many people, obviously a good spot hahaha, but like it said 'we like to do things the hard way'!  3rd spot, so promising, but also so late in the day, we were a long way from home by then.

I pulled out this very dark, fresh water barra, late Saturday afternoon to save the day!

Hot and bothered after just a few hours in the mid day heat, we went home to plan better for the next day....we should have planned better!

Admittingly it was MY idea!!  Big low tides meant we would have heaps of time to WALK around the reef at Blue Holes.  We looked on Google Earth and were super excited...maybe two too many beers excited.

Sunday, up early, COFFEE!!!  Yah lets go, we got everything we need in the car from yesterday.  Grab some breakfast and lunch from servo on way past...should have stayed in bed!!  Man it we HOT and Humid today!!!  But trying to fight our way through the Mangroves, with a hangover, and 99% humidity (it was so), I thought I was going to faint!!  Anyway's, we made it to the water, and I caught a Barra!!  Wahoo!!!

Then the sandflies started attaching, and it was a mad, even more humid, dash back to the car!

I've been hiding in the aircon all afternoon, rehydrating!!!  My ankles and wrists are swollen from bites.   Oh but did I mention...I caught a Barra!!