queensland brisbane river fresh water

[jeff f]

took off out to twin bridges this morning armed with a couple of flick sticks,a baitrunner setup,a bag of lures,a can of garden wormsand a shrimp net. shrimp were few and far between and not real big so i stuck half a dozen on the bait runner un weighted und let the rapids take it into the deep pool downstream from the bridge.

i was just finishing rigging my ultralight setup with a lightly weighted sp when the baitrunner went off, i grabbed it and turned the handle and struck and all hell broke loose the water roiled up on the surface of the pool as something BIG rolled,dived and headed downstream,i didn't have a hope of turning it,it felt like it would have broken the rod so iwent bush bashing after it, swearing about oversized eels on steroids and miniature submarines.

after being draged through a hundred meters or so of long grass and lantanna i caught up with it. in a quiet pool on the surface taking a few deep breaths was a huge, atleast 1.2 meter bloody lungfish! so igave up trying to fight fair and handlined the dinosaur in on the 15llb braid and let him loose to terrorise someone else some day.

[jeff f]

kept fishing with the sps for a couple of hours for no result so i decided to give one of the new japanese poppers a swim just to see what they looked like in the water, surprise,surprise after a couple of casts there was a little boil behind it:) so i tossed i back to the same spot and just let it float there a while:huh: .....twitch:unsure: ... bloop-bang :woohoo: i'm on to my first ever fish on a popper in fresh water, a short tussle and i've got a little bass of 27cm in my hand.a quick measure and release.flogged the watter to foam around every snag and over hang and tree for an hour for nothing. sick of bloody casting i rigged for gar and swapped my can of worms for 18 garfish them went home. sorry no pictures havent bought a new camera yet and the oldone is part of roy roufus artificial reef:angry:

[Ash]

Well done man! Wild bass! What was that popper? how big are they?

How was it looking at there? abit low?

[James W]

a wild bass jeff! sweet!

[rayke1938]

Lung fish Wacko. Did it stink? the ones in the north pine are really on the bugle.

Ray

[werewolf]

geeze that lungfish must have been a bit of a battle:woohoo: I've seen stacks in the area while canoeing, never hooked one though.

You're gunna have to hurry up buying that camera mate;)

[jeff f]

hi guys, the lung fish was fun even though i've got a fair whack of cuts and scratches to show for it, got to be the strongest pulling critter in the fresh.it didn't stink,though it smelled a bit rotting leaves.

the waterlevel is a good foot lower than six months ago, heaps of snags exposed between twin bridges and the highway bridge and the second bridge chanel is barely flowing.

the popper was 40mm black back silver bellie with a white maribou tail bound to the rear treble and an extended angled cup face at the front bottom where a bib would come from. cant remember the brand at the moment but it came in a hard plastic buble type case with japanese writing on it. ill let you know what the brand was next time i go out to the shed

[Tim a]

Nice work jeff!

[Angus]

WEll done mate. Wild river bass are always a treat.

I hooked a lung fish below the wall at wyvanhoe one time. Awesome fight, i thought i had a toga because it jumped out of the water a few times!

Angus

[jeff f]

for those interested the popper was a bubblepop 45.

imported by river

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