North Australian FISH FINDER TM forums

Hey JJLure
I've just moved back to Darwin from Yeppoon.
Where abouts do you fish down there? Corio? Cooraman? The Fitzroy?
It's an interesting area down that way. Heaps of Barra around and those in the know make catching them look easy, but I found it the exact opposite down there.

I mainly fish the Fitzroy, Port Alma, Curtis Island, Narrows, Cooroman, Corio, Stanage Bay.

I have a 4.35m hornet with a 40hp 4str, huminbird fishfinder & a electric trolling motor.

Hi JJLure

I've caught most of my live bait in Cooraman of the pontoon at the boat ramp. Mainly greenback herring, but also mullet.
If you are fishing the larger tides in Cooraman, head right up the back and fish any drains, creek mouths, or still submerged snags you can find.
I found a lot of the locals fish what I conceive to be the middle of the creek. This seems to work for them. Find any drop off you can and fish your baits around that.
Also on larger tides, if you are having trouble finding live bait around Yeppoon, head to the Causeway Lake. Whilst your there, throw a couple of livies around in there. I watched 9 Barra between 80 and 95cm landed of the bridge there one day on the run through. Unfortunately I didn't have any fishing gear with me at the time. If you sound around from the bridge heading towards the boat ramp, there is a bit of a channel with a rocky gravel bottom. I found sitting just off the side of this out of the main current flow produced fish.
My advice for the Fitzroy would be to head out with Hooked Fishing Charters. They know the area well and catch plenty of big fish in the river and down at Port Alma.
Hope you start to catch a few. It's an amazing part of the coastline down that way!!

Don't know about barra but you've gotten a few bites on here.

Cheers, going to give this weekends neeps a go with livies.

Are fish in general harder to catch compared to 10-20 years ago??

I used to remember catching at least 3+ fish every time I went out when I was a kid, but now I go days without a bite. Have fish numbers decreased?

Have fish numbers decreased?

Fish numbers are always going up and down, a down cycle in the north the past few years but now going up again.

Also, researchers have confirmed that fish learn quickly and have long memories. So areas that are hard fished will have more cautious fish. Not only that, the dumb fish get caught, the smart fish live on to breed. As fishing pressure increases, this effect becomes stronger.

Ask anyone who has had the privilege of fishing a super-remote billabong ... they often mention that the barra were aggressive.

Going to try Connors Creek area of Port Alma this weekend, see if there's anything to catch in that area.
The tides look ok, got a new cast net.
Will try a variety of techniques including live baits and lures depending on the location, situation & structure.
Fingers crossed I might get something for a change.

Still at it I see JJ.

Happy to say we go one. Sadly I didn't get it, my wife Dianne got it on a live pop-eyed mullet fished near a creek mouth.
Undersized 47cm but it's a start hey.

My advice would be instead of trying a different spot every trip, pick one spot where others catch Barra on a regular basis and hit it hard until you work it out. Pay attention to what structure is around, what bait is in the area, and when it is in the area. Fish the one spot over a variety of different tides and times of the year. Fish the one spot long enough and you will start to put the patterns of Bait, Structure, Tides, time of year and Barra together and once you've done that for one spot you can start applying what you've learnt to other spots. Think of each spot like a jigsaw puzzle and all those factors i mentioned are the pieces. Each time you go out to a spot you get a few more pieces of the puzzle worked out. If you're trying half a dozen different spots your trying to do half a dozen jigsaw puzzles at once. Get one puzzle finished, take what you learnt from that one and then start the next one.

JJ

Instead of hanging around on here pretending to be dumb, do something useful.

Next saturday, there's a barramundi rescue activity underway at 12 Mile Creek near Marmor.

Lack of rain has changed the dynamics in the creek so that the dissolved oxygen level is going down rapidly.

There are about 500 tagged barra in there along with a couple of thousand untagged ones. Some have been found floating already.

So far, we've shifted about 250 (tagged and untagged) into the Port Alma saltpan creeks.

Turn up at 12 mile Ck complete with rod, bucket, water, hat and sense of humour early Sat morning from daybreak on.

There'll be about 15 - 20 others already there. Help shift some barra and then you can go back to your dumbo game.

Gee Ronje that's a bit harsh mate especially when your expecting the bloke to turn up pitch in and help.

Sounds like a great cause but that's certainty not how I would be asking for help.

Some lot of good advice here JJLure, I would take NTWombats advice about learning one spot and getting it wired. Focus on live bait to get the bite. I've always done much better on live mullet than anything else. Once you've caught a few on live bait you can try lures.

Hello Tristian.

Still at that other job?

Neither asking for nor expecting help.

Attempting to do him a favour actually. Idle hands sitting around tend to get into mischief which is the direction in which JJ has wandered. This'll give him something to do.

With the increased number of breeder barramundi here now and each contributing up to 2 million eggs we're talking billions of eggs per spawning . There have been 6 separate spawnings this season spread over 4 months.

A tiny, tiny % of them end up in 12 Mile Ck (on the Fitzroy delta salt pan near Marmor) which we use as one of the sampling points for annual recruitment estimates. There's probably 2- 3,000 little barra in the creek ranging from 75mm up to 500mm with the larger ones being spawning season 2016/17. 2 - 3,000 is not even a drop in the ocean of this season's spawning.

About 300 of them have been tagged. They'll head out into the river system next year adding to the available data base info on recapture down the track.

That tagging effort would be wasted if they all die.

In addition, the rec fishing organisation here has been given a " social licence" by the community to assist with the change from netting for profit to local management aimed at broadening the community benefits flowing from that change.

A community expectation that we'll do our best to help these fish exists. Hence our activities.

We've got a pretty good bunch of people involved. If JJ wants to move away from the idle hands/mischief mindset that he's currently in then he's welcome to turn up.

If he's genuine (and I don't believe he is), here's the best invitation that he's going to get.

Going to go try the Fitzroy River again one more time both this Sat & Sunday. Hopefully I'll have some luck.