queensland Brisbane River Bass 23/03/2014

[cboy69]

I haven't targeted Bass much, and this was my third session out on a kayak. going for them. The previous 2 trips were the Albert river and the Brisbane river also.

We left in the darkness and arrived at sunrise at Shines Rd. After hauling the kayaks down the slope we noticed the fish were already quite active with swirls on the surface and the occasional splash in the distance. We took a rest after the kayak transportation and my friend tossed out a cicada into the middle of the river towards some surface action and slow rolled it in, on his second cast he immediately hooked up and I ran back to the kayak for a landing net. In comes a nice fat Bass, much bigger than I have seen in any of our previous 2 trips together.

So I quickly put on a Berkley surface walker in 'hooch' colour and after about 3 casts landed a PB of 52cm. I donated this to my friend as he was hoping to get something worthy to trial doing a skin mount taxidermy.

As the fish were scattered all over the river I decided to try a river 2 sea bubble pop 45 in the hope the noise would bring the Bass to me and was rewarded with a number of fish around the 35-45cm. On my 1-3kg rod with 4lb braid, it was great fun and for the next hour I just kept landing them with popper.

My friend couldn't resisted all the action on the other side of the river and paddled out to get amongst it. He landed a handful with his cicada until he was busted off then switched to Rapala minnows with continued success

Eventually the action got quiet on both sides of the river and I hopped into my kayak and we paddled upstream and back for about 2 hrs. In this time we only managed 1 palm size bass on a Pontoon 21 CrackerJack casting at snags.

So the total for the day was about 11-12 bass between 35-52cm.

Heres a video of the surface feeding, if anyone can identify what the bass were feeding on please let me know. I am pretty sure I saw something with a herring like profile, but I have no idea if they go that far up river.

/>http://youtu.be/zoQgqvEXLq8

Cheers

Chayya

[Glenn S]

thanks for the report, must get up that way again some time soon, you know your gonna be in for a good session when they are actively feeding like that!

Cheers, Glenn.

[Luvit]

I haven't seen bass feeding like that before, so was good to see.

Hard to believe you didn't get a strike out of those couple of casts. A good session on light gear makes even more fun.