Another Port Hedland Barra Trip

[PilbaraBrad]

Here is another trip report from Port Hedland before i left WA, the trip was with a good mate of mine who used to make the anual pilgrimage up from Exmouth

cheers

BRad

What a battle this last couple of days was. The weather was very odd, we encountered squalls, hot still weather, rain, cloud and cold nights however we sailed on in search of some new ground. Adam arrived late in the afternoon and we set off pretty much as soon as we could after picking up a carton of beer and a few extra litres of fuel. We were racing the tide to a place neither of us had ever been to before, infact the whole purpose of this trip was to do some exploring, find some new ground in the port Hedland area. Anyway we got to an area and nosed our way in, only to realise that we had gone into the wrong creek. The tide was falling fast and with less than a foot of water we managed to crawl out and into some slightly deeper water near the mouth. The tide had by now dropped too much and we were stuck for the night. Well the spot didn’t look too bad so after gathering a few livies and cooking up a few snags we soaked a few. It didn’t take long for Adam to hook up, unfortunately we only had 25lb fluoro carbon leader at that time of the trip (don’t ask) and he was pinged. I hooked up almost straight after Adams bust off, a barra was tail walking in the moonlight only to have me bust off next to the boat (again we didn’t have any leader). Anyway we fished that spot and dropped about 4 barra. We did land some nice fingermark, jacks, threadies and other typical creek stuff. The next morning we decided to bite the bullet and return to the ramp so that I could pick up my bag of leader, we pretty much lost half a days fishing because of that. Not to worry. Once again we were on our way, this time to a different system in search of some new ground. We entered a creek later in the afternoon and sounded out some fishy looking water, looks promising I said to Adam, let’s fish here. And we did after some procrastinating. Anyway we got some good sized livies and after some more snags in bread we settled into a session. Adam managed the first landed barra after enticing a mid 70's fish out of the snags on popper and some dodgy 12lb braid. He was pretty stoked and I was too. After wasting the first day of our trip and dropping probably 6 barra all ready we had one in the boat. first fish of the trip the sleeping quarters popped bazz first of the trip. Anyway not long after that Adams livie rig screamed off. What followed was a pretty intense fight. The barra went hard and actually got him into the snags a few times. He managed to get it out but there were some pretty adrenaline pumped moments before this new PB went into the net. 101cm of barra, Adams first metery and as you can imagine he was pretty stoked. The beers flowed after that. 101cm a happy camper well we settled into a good little session, I dropped about another 2 fish before I landed one, Adam landed another two smallish fish but it was a good session anyway given the water temp was down around the 26 degree mark 89cm Anyway the next day was very odd, things were shut down and the water temp was down to 24 degrees. We ended up doing some more exploring since we had the time. We ended up finding a nice hole in another creek out of the wind. There were a lot of fish showing on the sounder so that is where we ended up fishing for our last session. Things were pretty action packed there for a while. We caught a heap of gold snapper, jacks, good sized threadies, grunter and a couple of barra on SP's. We also dropped another couple of bazzas on live bait. bazzas on the sounder more threadies Nice Jack Hungry Small bazz on an SP more threadies Another bazz on an SP Anyway we rounded up a pretty good trip and in 25kt winds made our way home. On the way out we saw something pretty amazing. A kangaroo was having a swim way out on a sand bar. Not sure if he new what he was doing but he did eventually make his way back to shore before the incoming tide got a hold of him too much. cooling off

[mottly crew]

nice well done

[kmcrosby78]

Some great fish there mate. My brother did a trip around most of Oz and stopped in Port Headland for a few months - loved it. Great pics of the skippy - any crocs around there?

[tugger]

Love these reports and pics keep em coming