North Australian FISH FINDER TM forums

Shot down to Corroboree today for a bit of a looksee. Boy it certainly has had a flush out. In the five years I've been living here I hadn't see it so bare of lillies. Of course this meant a change of strategy was needed as I've always just fished weedless lures amongst the lillies. So for three hours we putted around throwing plastics at anything that looked like it might hold a fish or two. Not sausage. Plenty of small tarpon around but couldn't even manage one of those. We worked our way through just about every style and colour of plastic in the tackle box for absolutely nothing. So what's left to do, changed to hard bodies of course. An hour later we had boated seven Barra, three tarpon and three Powertail. Who would have believed it. The Barra were only small, around 35 to 45, but they changed our day from being pretty ordinary to not too bad. I did take a few pictures but the fish are so small I couldn't bring myself round to posting any of them (although I did enter a 42 in this months Barra and jewfish round).

Good to hear it has had a proper flush!

Those barra will grow fast enough

Weeds being flushed out is good news for fishing.

Went out there on Saturday, (May 13) and there were oodles of little buggers. We landed 8 but again, nothing over 45cm. Dropped a heap as well. We used both hard bodies and softies and they didn't seem to mind. Mate hooked a nice size fish but lost it pretty quick. Was at least a fun day catching those plus a heap of tarpon. There were about 15 - 20 trailers there when we arrived at sunrise....getting popular.

I spent last weekend (20th - 21st) out there with two mates from down south. Heaps of tarpon in the open water, got half a dozen small barra and the same number of saratoga out of patches of lilies and weed. Biggest toga went 54cm. Should've hooked up to twice as many fish, but one mate kept trout striking with his fly rod and the other isn't a fisher of any description.

Went out there last week too ..

All the people who I talked to were struggling to find a legal one , they'd all just got rats .

Biggest one I got was a piddly little one : 48 off the rockhole's main rockbar.. but did lose a few rippers casting tight into the submerged roots of the pandanus holding the barra which were using the shaded sections for cover.
( no pics or gopro footage today and I had the 50lb braid so pulling hooks and straightened out trebles were the order of the afternoon )

Risking it all was the only way to get a strike as they didn't want to move far from the timber to hit the lures.

One's that I lost were only hooked lightly in the cheek or side from short striking at the yozuri. As previously mentioned it was a good day out regardless just being out there in such a magnificent bit of the territory is a blast and catching the odd 80cm 25 lb plus fish are a bonus.... It was amazing to be able to take some of the old shortcuts due to the biggest clear out of the lotus lillies I've seen in ages... didn't even need the cutting to get through the rockhole's first billabong.

With the big flush out you gotta go back to trolling snags hard up against the banks, what was the norm 20 years ago before the lilies took over........