Freshwater Barra on Plastics and Fly

I have just gotten home from a great afternoon working the freshwater reaches of a southern river. With the wind blowing all weekend, I didn't see any other option than to hit the fresh. I had not been back that way since before the floods, so I was pretty keen to see how things had settled. And we were not disappointed.

We left home a little after 2pm, and were fishing by 3. Ward got off to a bit of a rough start, hooking trees, snags, rock and all sorts of inanimate objects with his fly line! In fact, I think he had lost 3 or 4 fly before he even got a proper cast in. But he soon settled into a rhythm and was hooking into a few nice Sooty Grunter.

It was a little early in the afternoon for a hot bite, but we were consistently landing Sooties, and getting hits on most casts. But it wasn't too long before a small Barra or two was landed. I even managed to drop a nice one that might just have gone legal.

As the sun set a bit lower in the sky the Barra started to come on and bite much better. In a short 20-30min session, we landed several nice fish, the biggest of which were 57cm and 59cm. These put up a great fight on my Sustain 1000 and 8lb braid! Just proves you don't need big heavy baitcasters to catch Barramundi.

We left a little after 5pm, having caught countless Sooty Grunter and 6 or 7 Barramundi. The best plastic for the Barra was a Squidgie Pro Fish 65 in Grasshopper colour. Fished on a 1/8 jig head. All fish were released unharmed.