queensland Heartbreak at barra corner

[tiotony]

Headed down to Cairns Inlet monday night to fish the high tide. With the full moon it was a big tide and from past experience knew there would be fish holding in close to the rock wall. Started chucking gulp shrimp up hard to the rocks for absolutely zip, so changed to unweighted bits of king prawn under a float, drifting it along the wall. Would have preferred some live prawns but they weren't playing the game. This resulted in about a dozen pikey bream with four of them legal, a cod around 40, and a couple of bustups on suspected larger cod.

Tired of the weenie bream, changed back to plastics and headed down the wharf to the lit up area. Big tarpon were busting up everywhere so thought bugger it, I'll catch a tarpon. Am not a fan of tarpon as 1)they are ridiculously common in Cairns and am sick of catching them 2)They are annoyingly hard to hook. 3)They shred every leader without fail, and 4) They go nuts on touching dry ground making it very hard to release them unharmed.

Anyhow after about a dozen missed strikes landed a fish around 60, which did all of the aforementioned so I decided to vacate the tarpon zone.

Headed further down the wharf to what we call 'barra corner', and was immediately confronted by BIG barra cruising and boofing all over the place. This got me fired and knew I was kidding myself casting to them with 8 pound fireline around the pylons, so raced back to the car to grab the 20 pound. Tied on a mad mullet and sight casted to a metreish fish right in front of me. Instant hit and promptly wrapped around the pylons. 1 lure down. Then tied on a rio prawn, sighted a metre fish, hooked it, screaming run, then 30 pound leader parted on the gill rakers. 2 lures down. Pretty upset losing 2 lures in 2 casts so raced off to chuck the castnet for livies. Got a dozen herring and then rinse and repeat- sight cast to metre fish, hit, bustoff on pylons. Rerig, herring #2, sightcast to metre fish, hit, gill rakers parted leader. Right thats it, I'm gonna get one of these I thought, so raced back to the car to grab the 50 pound (which I had luckily brought, just in case I got some big prawns to drift under the wharf). Unweighted herring #3 on come-here-gear, bang, missed fish. Herring #4 did the trick and had a metreish fish wharfside. Murphys law then struck as my missus did an abysmal job with the lift net, resulting in the leader being wrapped around the handle and another lost fish. At this point went home disgruntled, and think I'll give the barra a break and go chase GT's or something.

[ryanyoung]

That is a heartbreak report mate, I feel for you!

Good to see a report from the north again though.

Cheers,

Ryan.

[eg_vtec]

nice report mate. sorry about the barra! better luck next time

[crazywalrus]

some heartbreak mate but there is some heart in the mouth action

[tiotony]

Thanks for the condolences guys, I've been having a shocker of a barra season this year