Operation Shock and Frog - Part 1

[5Zigen]

Awoonga

The caption above my head when we first hit the water at Awoonga was a bunch of ????? . My last trip there was almost 2 yrs ago and I don’t remember seeing much surface weed at all. Back then, our most productive areas were massive patches of submerged weed, reaching up 6 to 15 ft below the surface – absolute barra magnets when other conditions were accomodating. Now theres surface weed all over the place. And its amazing how the shoreline can look so different when the water levels are different. I started to wonder if this trip was going to be an epic fail….

In any case, new trip, new water levels, new conditions, means having to sticky beak all over the place and just see what we need to do to find then hook some fish. As it turns out, the fish still like to hang around the weed, except now, we’re deep into the weed instead of being in the periphery. We still caught fish fishing the edges of weedbeds but as is often the case, a dominant technique/trend eventually takes over. First couple of years, the lures of choice were the usual soft swimbaits like the Panther Martin Phoney Bream and Slick Rigs, along with shallow diving hardbodies like the ubiquitous B52 (caught my pb with this trusty lure in really gnarly water) and various Rapalas amongst many many other hardbodies. This year, for us anyway, was the year of the frog. And pencil baits. Almost all fish were caught with frogs and pencil baits….pretty crazy and oh so different from past years.

So there we were, pulling fish from all over the place - huge fields of surface weed in the middle of nowhere, fishing weed right by the shoreline, fishing weed in small bays, fishing weed in big bays…you get the idea.

We ended up catching quite a few fish, but we lost way more. Only two of which were bona fide big’uns though, lost in, you guess it, under and in between abt 5 tonnes of weed. The ones we DID land, was only because we really horsed the fish in hard and fast, before it had time to turn us into vegetarians. We really got sick of seeing fish dive into, under then THROUGH to the other side of the weedbed.

Did I mentioned the rain? It rained practically every day we were there. It was fun in the beginning, especially since we were in CQ(begone damn drought!), where its all warm even when it rains, but the novelty wore off after 3 straight days. Lets just say the wet sack syndrome got old real quick…..

Darryl and his new boat,complete with Terrova and new deck



Darryl's PB,from a sheltered,secluded bay, right on a metre.This one was fatter than most metreys I've seen.


Everythings a blur to me now, I think this was my first fish of the trip




Had a stare down with Ferdinand over at Iveragh. This HUGE fella had evil in his eyes...



This fish swapped a partially digested boney for my slick rig. Doesnt pay to be greedy hey?Took a while to extract since it was all comfy inside a big weedbed.



This cute frog planted itself at our front door for a couple of days. Speaking of which, the Cane toad strike rate was abt 86/206378, not too far off our barra strike rate



When all else fails employ Crouching Dragon,Hidden Barra Technique,Matty style.



Darryl's Stick My Ass Out as Far as Possible Technique



Topwater anyone?



The line on my primary topwater rod (Branzino,30lb Toray) - result of many tows into all kinds of shite by recalcitrant barra





One of many many finning barra we saw,all casual like. One fish,we saw in the same spot,over and over again,day after day.Weird.




Night Fishing.

Holy cow! This is one way way cool time to fish. I’m a complete newby at this night fishing caper, not even for jewies here in Sydney, but boy, if I knew how much fun it is, I’d have started ages ago! Most used technique? Yep…frogs and pencil baits.

This one almost ate Darryl's rod tip



Night barra courtesy of my IKT Trairao



I'd post more pics but I've filled my quota...onto Part Deux for bass report...

Note:

Trev, thanks for the company and extra fishing spots with accompanying advice mate

It was nice meeting you Scotty (Vet)..those images of barra u showed us on ur Humminbird side scans were awesome. Interesting stinger rig u had there too Thanks for sharing....

[robersl]

great report and photo's good to see

shane

[Whale Bone]

Good report
those side scan images of barra sound interesting, are there any photos?

[A_DIFF_PERSPECTIVE]

Trairao, or Frairo, either way is it the same lure we used last time? The freaking' noisy one that sounds like a marble in a glass coke bottle?
j

[5Zigen]

Good report
those side scan images of barra sound interesting, are there any photos?

Interesting is the word WB. No photo's I'm afraid, Scotty was just cool enough to show us what he was seeing from his boat. Us plebs have to make do with 1 less dimension for the time being

Trairao, or Frairo, either way is it the same lure we used last time? The freaking' noisy one that sounds like a marble in a glass coke bottle?
j

Yep it sure is Johnny, its the distinctly unique sounding one u rudely cast one handed out in the middle of no where (or so it seemed) and caught a damn barra with it! U remember how the fish bent the tow point holding the front treble? Didnt happen again...which was a relief. The hooks got badly mangled tho...so some ST66s went on....

[Obi _ Wan]

Great report with good pictures, thanks for sharing.

Cheers,
John.

[Awoonga]

Blokes anytime you are welcome .The Panther Martin Phoney Bream in sliver that you gave me caught a nice lady first cast. The rest of the packets have now increased in value and l am sure JM will pay a pretty price for them.

[vet]

Hi Darryl and Matty, it was great to have a chat out on the dam, we seemed to be at the same spot at the same time all over the dam. Good to see you got a couple of fish. It is still raining. That fish in the foreground of your tailing fish photo looks to be exactly the same weed clump that I sight cast and caught a 107cm fish from on sunday morning. It was great fun watching their response as the lure swam past their nose until they ate it.
See you next time, scott.

[A_DIFF_PERSPECTIVE]

Funny report- great pics too. The photos tell of a good fun trip. I'm sorry we never sat down for a proper chat. Time races sometimes. Thanks for the lures. I will send you a thank you Pm soon.
Cheers,
JM

[Big_Ren]

Top report, top pics and top trip by the sounds.

It was sooooo easy to read. I was almost there with you.

Cheers
Paul

[5Zigen]

Blokes anytime you are welcome .The Panther Martin Phoney Bream in sliver that you gave me caught a nice lady first cast. The rest of the packets have now increased in value and l am sure JM will pay a pretty price for them.

I'll try very hard not to make u regret the offer Trev Glad the Phoney worked out well, the decent sized fish must've work ok in spite of the hooks hey?

Hi Darryl and Matty, it was great to have a chat out on the dam, we seemed to be at the same spot at the same time all over the dam. Good to see you got a couple of fish. It is still raining. That fish in the foreground of your tailing fish photo looks to be exactly the same weed clump that I sight cast and caught a 107cm fish from on sunday morning. It was great fun watching their response as the lure swam past their nose until they ate it.
See you next time, scott.

Heya Scott, we bumped into each other so much that we're abt to refer to u as the 7ft tall guy in the green poly! Our plastic boats must be subject to the same gravitational pullEven during the night sesh rendezvous, ur silhoutte is pretty hard to mistake lol. Thanks for the offer to camp out nxt to you when u found the fish that night too, it was tempting but the last we wanted was to elbow in on u...

Funny thing those finning fish. We actually swam lures past these fish a few times for nada, and then pitch one in real close for nix again. I actually dropped one in right on its nose and it could've cared less.

Speaking of which, barra can be quite duh sometimes. On the 2nd-3rd day we were there, we leccied right up to a weed bed, nudged the boat into the edge, proceeded to cast around when I looked down and saw a 'hole' in the weed in the shape of a fish(a la flathead lie), with an 80cm barra right BELOW the gunnel,almost nosing the hull and casual as can be.It was completely oblivious to leccy,boat and fishos...should've taken a pic b4 I dropped a frog on its head...

Thanks for the lures.

You're gonna have to outmuscle Trev for them now J If ur unsuccessful, just contact Ben and I'm sure he can send a few packs your way

[SeekingBarradise]

A great trip report fella's, nice to see some new ones on here with a different style of report.

Good to see you got to catchup with some of the helpful fella's up that way.

Thanks again for posting and all the best on your next trip.

Cheers Lyndon.