goood stuff you lot, top piccys and a weekend you wont forget in a hurry,looks like ive got no excuses left for the next trip, need to juice up the tupperware, so will be back very soon i think....well done...(jealous)..
cheers deano...
God put me on earth to accomplisha certain number of things,right now i am so far behindi will never die.
Great work Nath & Paul. Sounds like it was a top trip for all regardless of the fishing (though that seemed pretty good as well!).
Nothing like putting someone who is dear to you onto their first barra, hey Nath.
Paul can't wait to hear the full tale. Please go easy on Ben....
How is it that a pic of Brian seems to get into eveyone's galleries?
Pete
Paul and Nathan, great pictures guys, thanks for sharing them. - RC
Great reads guys, thanks for sharing.
Cheer's Pete.
To all you lucky buggers great reading and fab pics, now you have me keen again
Shane
Fellas Fellas Fellas.
Brian, Paul, Ben, nath....all you buggers!!
WWOOOOWWW what an awesome read...awesome job done!! great catches. great stories and great photos!!!
I am now even more dissapointed that I couldnt get up there!! bloody work!! Sounds like one of the best weekends ever!!! I had a brief chat to Lyndon on Monday arvo, and he told me you all did well.!!
So well done again....I love the action pic of brian with the Aussie flag on the boat.....thats No 1 on the water to me baby!!!
cheers
Stevo!
Ps went up last night 4pm to 8pm....landed a 92cm on a hybrid flaps head with some unknown brand (mabey a sunami??) tail...very happy with that....and lost another on another hybrid Storm susp shad head with shadalishous tail....they have the best action ever!! lost it with the fish......bad knot!! poor work in the dark!! I will post the pics of the lures later....didnt take a camera with me...too rainy!!
Going JACK fishing today and tommorrow with Spud-a-lishous..let you know how I go!!
Awesome read guys!! Sounds like it was a fantastic trip!!
Cheers Kim.
Live your life in such a way that when your feet hit the floor in the morning, Satan shudders and says...
'Oh Shit.....she's awake'
Silver Back Gorillas, A Wet Ass, Good Company and Donuts Galore.
With the help of Scotty and his old man we got some trailer maintenance done before we left. Then the trailer lights didn’t work. There we were in the rain, at night with hardly any light fixing the trailer wiring. We jumped on the net to get the colour and number codes for the wire layout and proceeded to use the American version which resulted in nothing working. (Idiots). We were just about to make a trip to boooonnnnninggss late at night, but decided to double check the layout on the net. Sure enough we found the Aussie version, and it worked first go. It was now getting past 8pm and it was going to be a slow trip. We arrived at 2am it rained the whole way from Brisbane, so much so that we were driving at less than 60km per hour in the 110km zone it smashed down delivering wet swags a guaranteed wet arse for this trip. Hopefully we would catch fish.
In the tradition of cruising the barra highways I made sure the Aussie flag was attached to the boat for the trip. This should be standard issue with the IBD crew if you are travelling to a barra dam.
Arrive at Mondy: We saw a flood running between the big tree and the projector screen so we rolled the swags out in the camp kitchen. Well mine was wet so I rolled out a blanket and slept on the postureopedic concrete for all of 2.5 hours before the early birds (campers) started to hover around us while having their brekkie. Yep we started the trip hammered and didn’t get a freshen up for the rest of the trip.
Set up camp: Met my brother Justin who had 1ft of water running through his camp. We had a laugh watching him dig a mote around his camp. We met Whitto, Nath and Graeme who were camped next to Justin. We parked our tent in the less wet looking area. Right next to a meat ant highway, beside a green ant colony and on top of a Singapore (small ant) ants nest.
Cow, Bird and Sausages: There was a fair amount of cow packed with justin bringing a rib fillet roast, rump steak and sausages. I packed a 5kg corned meat & snags, Stott packed steaks and his smelly tuna, Whitto, Nath and Greame packed snags and steaks with Nath cooking a roast up that looked awesome. Oh i nearly forgot, Justin also purchased a whole chook to roast up. I left the metamuesal at home so the prescription for the weekend was a good case of house brick gut. Sort of like when a python eats a whole wallaby etc.
As good blokes do, shit was flying left, right and centre. Camaraderie was alive and well. Justin and Whitto hit it off straight away, Nath just laughed at both of them, Scott chipped in from the sideline, Graeme was sitting down shaking his head at the clowns and I did the usual drive by’s where I’d chip in a comment to stir them then take off.
This is where “number 1 on the water baby” started to fly around, and “we smashed em” also got a run a few times. We smashed em was used a lot in our trips to Awoonga last year. Looking up at the power lines we also gave “Hows the serenity” a run or 2” (The Castle)
Those bloody tent pegs: Soon after setting up I saw a classic scene. Scotty (Potatoe man from the Fishing Monduran DVD) tripped over a tent peg and cord. I seized the moment with the first “You Idiiiiooooootttttttt” of the trip and quickly backed it up with one of my old mans favourites while we were growing up “Watch where you are going”. I laughed thinking it was going to be one of those trips, and I was right.
Justin knows how much I love Aussie gear and he zip tied a boxing kangaroo on the front of the boat which looked awesome. Good old skip stayed on for the entire trip and even made it home. I love this country and was so proud that Aussie gear sold out everywhere I looked. I saw more flags than ever before and felt pride knowing the younger generation would fly our countries flag with pride for generations to come. Apparently it was a record in Flag sales since the days of winning the America’s cup.
Supplies: I called in to the Kiosk and said G’day to Rob & Kelli. The book had almost sold out which was great to hear, so I gave them some more copies. In amongst the books was the Taylor brothers signed copy which luckily was not sold. I’ll post it up soon guys. We then stocked up on ice to keep the food & drinks cool, while taking note of some good plastics in the tackle bin.
Fishing tackle: Rigging up is always an exciting time, as it’s fuelled with the anticipation of the first days fishing.
Aussie Culture: While doing this Nath decided to go down to the stream running through the camp and cast lures which I got on video and camera. He didn’t catch anything!!! The 2 silver backs (Junior & Senior) left camp with 100-200kgs of food for the session. Nath, Scott, Graeme and I were not sure if this was enough so we packed extra eskies in case they needed a snack out on the water. Stuff like 5kg corn beef’s etc. Scotty packed his tuna tins and left the boat smelling like a japanese long liner by the end of the trip. I should have thrown another potatoe in his swag to ferment over summer.
Tackle Talk: I was trialling twisted leader, wind on leader and straight 80lb leader. 5 rods each rigged with 5 different concepts on each. 3-5 different retrieves on each rod for approx 10 mins or 20+ casts a rod. I was using a baitcaster and 4 spin reels and Scotty was using all baitcasters with one spin reel. A good combo with all different ratio’s pitted with different rod compositions and heights/tapers.
Line: We had 20-30lb loaded on most of our gear with one 50lb rig for crazy timer stuff if it was needed. It was rigged on the heaviest rod.
Lures & Plastics: A day box was sorted on what we thought was needed that day. Extras were also packed in case we needed them.
Simple terms: e.g. curly tails, suspenders, rattlers, specific food items, size differences, wood, foam, metal, paddle tails, flick baits and even spinner baits. Surface, mid and low water column specific & weighted etc.
Simple Upgrades: All lures that went in to the day box were upgraded with hooks & stingers back at home with the hooks sharpened. On this trip stingers were added to a lot of our presentations as we were experimenting, which is always fun.
Where We Fished: We fished the southern arm of B and anchored in a nice bay after drift slowly casting the point. We rotated all presentations and I got a quick, hard hook up where I was able to put good quick pressure on the initial strike only to have all the pressure let loose in a split second. The leader was chaffed and it looked like I was done by the gill rakers.
I couldn’t believe it as it looked like this barra had inhaled the plastic which was covered in more spikes than a cactus tree to ensure a hook up. To be done like this was not cool as every barra counts. Missed opportunities hurt travelling anglers. Especially when most of the fish in this dam are over a metre long and 20kgs in weight.
Summary: We picked the area correctly which is half the equation, got the speed and presentation of the retrieve correct, only to be done by one of the tricks barra have up their sleaves. Probably 500plus casts, rotating areas with water current starting at the 20ft marker and working in. Scott got a bream type bite which gave us an idea that when all the boats are on the water the barra might be getting a bit gun shy.
Scott did the pausing work and bottom bouncing work as well as the hard body work etc, I used a variety of plastics paddle, curly and flick baits with one hard body which was the opposite to scotts in sound, composition, style and depth and retrieve speed and technique.
· We worked opposite retrieves at all times & opposite presentations for about 120 casts in each area. More casts if we thought the area was really good.
· Longest pauses were 10 seconds.
· Shortest pauses were 2 seconds.
· Slowest retrieve was 1-2 mins
· The fastest was a partial burn during our standard retrieves.
· All in all about 10-15 combinations with slight speed differences between 1st and 5 the gear in plain and simple gearbox speak.
· The water was worked from slightly further out than usual and we anchored or tied up when we didn’t have very slow drifts.
· Motors were switched off 500m out from fishing areas if possible.
· Sounders were switched off once we got the lay of the land.
I'll post some pics to explain the above and break up this report to make it lighter reading.
AND THEN !!!
Give a man a fish & he will eat for a day !
Teach him how to fish
& he will sit in a boat - & drink beer all day!
TEAM MOJIKO
Man i don,t blame nathan for fishing that stream all that fresh going down the barra are sure to come up looking for frogs lol
Waiting for the next best thing nagg lol. You missed some stuff you could use in the report above. Think back to your tip with Trev. Remember?
Yes Robersl Nath was hoping to catch something. I reckon everyone in the park thought he was crazy. The little tackers in the camp site had a ball playing in that puddle over the weekend which was great to see. Nath has to be one of the most relaxed guys in Qld. Awesome to be around the campsite with and on the water.
Number 1 around the campsite - that's Nath.
Cheers lyndon.
Originally Posted by Peter4
Im a blow fly mate!
mate you want to stop using that pheormone on your lures to stop attacting other fishers to yourr boat
shane
Funny Stuff
· Scott sweating bullets for an hour with his birds nest during a period called angry heat way up the back of nowhere at Monduran. While he was doing this I nearly hooked up to that huge fish which would have rightly peeed him off big time…
· Scott spending half an hour to get the fire going when I had 10ltrs of petrol right next to me. U idiooott stimpy.
· Brian calling a 13 hour day a short days fishing. The guy is crazy.
· Kids playing footy in the mud and flowing stream at the caravan park.
· Kids playing cricket in the same area.
· Kids playing the good old game of spotlight. A little tacker about 5 years old was having trouble tracking down her playing partners and said “ I give up ”, until I suggested she turn off the torch and sneak up on them. It goes to show that even the big kids know some good tricks. This one seemed to work & she managed to get away from being it.
· Meeting Paul, Navi and Vinnie at the ramp with Vinnie helping out with a classic aussie lean while pointing instructions.
· Chewie’s lean in the camp kitchen exuded leaning experience. His lean was close to some team orange lean’s I’ve seen over the years.
· Meeting Ben, Nath and Victorians out on the water at the cut off (shortcut) for a yarn on barra. A classic scene where 3 boats are pulled up comparing notes on barra. We don’t get enough days doing this.
Whitto & Justin busting to go at the same time. I think they must have eaten a couple of koalas’ the night before that didn’t go down well. They both ended up parked on separate logs up on a hill (Silver Back Hill) with wet dunny paper that had to be squeezed to remove the water. U R kidn fellas. I’m glad I didn’t see that with the camera.
Whitto & Justin busting to go at the same time. I think they must have eaten a couple of koalas’ the night before that didn’t go down well. They both ended up parked on separate logs up on a hill (Silver Back Hill) with wet dunny paper that had to be squeezed to remove the water. U R kidn fellas. I’m glad I didn’t see that with the camera.
Some things are best left only to the imagination mate
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