Mullet on the Adelaide River

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grumpy
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Mullet on the Adelaide River

Post by grumpy »

I have been looking back on some photo’s and it reminded me of a trip we did in the Blue Moon (houseboat) up the Adelaide River back in late May this year. :idea:

The reason for the post is we stumbled on a Barra session that I have never seen before in all the years I have fished the Adelaide. :uhh:

With the house boat anchored up on the well known S Bend rockbar above Manton Creek it was coming onto low tide at 9pm, mum and I were kicking back with a coldie when I heard this weird noise moving towards us from up stream. The noise got louder and louder and as it got within 50 meters I put my spotlight on in the direction of the movement and all hell broke loose. Turns out the noise was being created by millions of mullet moving down towards the rockbar and the spotlight set them into a frenzy. I would guess that the school would have been two hundred meters long and stretched right across the river from bank to bank.

Well I don’t need to tell any Barra fishermen what happened when they all stopped and begun mulling on the bend above the rockbar. I jumped into the Topender and spotlocked her at a good point to begin casting as the Barra begun smashing mullet everywhere. I can only guess the number of big Barra that turned up for an easy feed as being upwards of a hundred. :catch:
I began casting a big black popper (sorry it has been in the tackle box for a hundred years and I forgot what make it is)with propellers on the front and back and had an absolute ball for an hour with fish smashing the lure so hard it was flying 6 foot into the air. I landed a few solid bricks around the 70cm mark and lost everything else as they were hitting just so hard.

Don’t know if anyone has come across this before but is goes to show you can fish the top end rivers all your life and not see it all.

The day after we just missed out on a nice fat meter Adelaide Barra with it falling short at 97cm (damm). Few pictures and she was released to fight another day. :fishy:

Cheers grumpy
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Re: Mullet on the Adelaide River

Post by Anon »

Awesome... Love it when things go your way abd something amazing happens. Makes all those hours on the water worth it.
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Re: Mullet on the Adelaide River

Post by Nika »

I have been up that way when they were so thick that my mate was using a hand spear to catch them for Sh!ts and giggles, awesome sight.
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Re: Mullet on the Adelaide River

Post by cuddlescooper »

Never seen it on the Adelaide but certainly a few times on other rivers. Crazy when it all comes together.

Had a 70 odd fish 3 hour session on the Daly once between 2 of us. Caught a fish every cast or every 2nd cast and not one fish was under 70cm with the biggest going 104cm.

On another occasion at the South I saw the same thing with pop eye mullet getting smoked by meterys all day long and didn't boat a fish out of it no matter what lure we cast at them. Funny how it works. I later worked it out and came to the conclusion the fish were smacking a whole school of mullet at once and not targeting individual baits. 2 days later the bait thinned out and the fish started towling us up through the trees. Boated a couple but dropped a heap.
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Re: Mullet on the Adelaide River

Post by Bellfish »

the lure looks alot like a starlo and bushy stiffy
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Re: Mullet on the Adelaide River

Post by Tap'n'Zap »

That's what dreams are made of, well done.
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Re: Mullet on the Adelaide River

Post by Nika »

The Adelaide goes off but you have to spend a LOT of time up there to learn what goes on, I have spent the time and it's a gold mine. Here are two pics from 2 nights fishing up there, one day after the other.
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theodosius
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Re: Mullet on the Adelaide River

Post by theodosius »

That would have been an awesome sight! The mullet were like that below the shady barrage last week, minus the barra. Should be great at the barrage on high tide at night though now!
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Re: Mullet on the Adelaide River

Post by cuddlescooper »

theodosius wrote:That would have been an awesome sight! The mullet were like that below the shady barrage last week, minus the barra. Should be great at the barrage on high tide at night though now!
That's if you can cast a lure without hooking a live mullet rig!
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