Rats!

Dave and I braved the rain today and headed into the creeks for a lure session. With most of the water falling to the North of town it was a no brainer to head South! But yesterday afternoon guys at ProTackle were not as convinced as I was. "The rain is moving South" Terry said. But it turned out to be a good move, water was running fairly clean and we only got a couple of slight sprinkles all morning.

We launched early and decided to head to the mouth for the cleaner salt water, but it was slow going. I worked a Flatz Rat for a while and Dave waved around a really long rod with a strange bit of fluff attached to the end! We managed a couple of looks from small Barra, but nothing was keen enough to engulf our offerings. So we changed over to the plastic fantastic. It wasn't long and we had nailed a couple of absolute stonker Bream and a nice rat Barra. But it was hard work, so we decided to head up river.

We headed right up into the freshwater, hoping the big girls might be up there feeding in the run off. Our first stop was a set of snags at a creek junction. It looked to good to drive past. And sure enough within a few casts we had nailed a couple more massive fat Bream. But not what we were looking for. Up further we went.

From here we worked some drains and snags right up the top of the creek. Still slow going, we managed a small Jack, more bream and another rat or two.

But then we got to one particular set of snags that seemed to be holding some bigger fish! Unfortunately we spooked them on the approach, but after about 30mins we came back to the snag for a more stealthy approach. It took a few casts but Dave was first to have one of the bigger Barra have a go at his prong. The fish hit, ran, and spat the hook...all in the blink of an eye! But we did see a flash from the fish as it took off, no doubt in the 60's. A few casts later and it was my turn. But this fish hit and ran straight under a bit of timber. The first we saw of the fish it was surfacing a 90 degrees to where my line was going! On 8lb, this wasn't going to end well!! The fish had taken me all over the place, I'm guessing through at least 3 sets of snags. I managed to unravel form the first two, and could still feel the fish surging on the other end. How a 60-70cm fish hadn't broken through the line I will never know, but it didn't matter in the end. The tangled mess was too deep for me to do anything about it and I had to break off. We worked at this area for a bit longer for another couple of rolls before we moved on.

One last set of snags before heading home and I managed one more rat Barra.

We had had a good day all in all. Plenty of rat Barra, big bream and 'the one that got away'...