Daintree barra

 I posted this in another spot but it should probably go here.

I spent a day on the Daintree River in FNQ last week with Damon from Sublime Sportfishing. He's a great bloke a good operator too. He has an awesome 5.5m Galeforce centre console for the river and inshore, and a 40' Blackwatch for the reef and marlin fishing.

The Daintree is a hard river to fish, and it's generally quite shallow with a lot of underwater obstacles so trolling isn't worth it. The barra tend to sit in shallow beds of ribbon weed, except near the mouth where they live around the mangroves. We fished soft plastics rigged weedless. The angler's job is to land the placcie in a dinner-plate sized area right where the river meets the bank and retrieve really slowly and let the lure do the work. Too far from the bank and you get nothing so we cast into the scrub plenty of times! Retrieve too slow and you hit the weed and the fish and get nothing. Too fast and it goes over their heads and you get nothing. The aim is to be about 100mm above the weed bed which we ended up getting a feel for. At the start of the day my daughter couldn't cast within 5m of the bank and by the end, could nail it within inches. You certainly improve your casting quickly! The clear winner on the day was a paddle-tail placcie in chartreuse and blue.

The fish weren't biting well but we managed to land 4 small barra and 2 jacks. We lost a few that threw the hook jumping, and had quite a few hits that didn't hook up but that's fishing. We saw a bloody big croc of about 4.5m and one about 3m. All in all it was a great day out.

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NORUN NOFUN's picture

Posts: 1028

Date Joined: 15/08/11

Beautiful healthy fish in a

Wed, 2023-03-22 11:31

Beautiful healthy fish in a top location, very lucky and very jealous as it's been many years since I fished the Daintree, from memory the last fish I got there was a jungle perch. 

davewillo's picture

Posts: 2381

Date Joined: 08/09/16

 Yeah it's a special place

Wed, 2023-03-22 12:21

 Yeah it's a special place Scotty. I was thinking of hitting you up for some fizzers but ran out of time. According to our skipper the fish have to be really on for them to hit surface lures anyway.

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sea-kem's picture

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Date Joined: 30/11/09

 Nice work Dave

Wed, 2023-03-22 12:10

 Nice work Dave

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Love the West!

davewillo's picture

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Date Joined: 08/09/16

 Thanks Andy. Small barra but

Wed, 2023-03-22 12:22

 Thanks Andy. Small barra but bigger than I'll catch this week at work!

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sea-kem's picture

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Date Joined: 30/11/09

 Ha ha I hear that! I hoping

Wed, 2023-03-22 14:45

 Ha ha I hear that! I hoping to at least have a Herring bash this Saturday. Of course it's supreme boating weather this week ending on Sunday.

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Love the West!

davewillo's picture

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 Yeah I might try for some

Thu, 2023-03-23 11:43

 Yeah I might try for some whiting on Saturday. Hope you get amongst them Andy.

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Swompa's picture

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Nice work, Dave!

Wed, 2023-03-22 13:27

Nice work, Dave!

davewillo's picture

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Date Joined: 08/09/16

 Thanks mate. It's fun to do

Thu, 2023-03-23 11:35

 Thanks mate. It's fun to do something different!

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