Barra Bash battle

The Frenchville Sports Club Barra Bash was held during October this year.

So, Benny and I travelled to Rockhampton to see if we could find a barramundi or two.

We have fished this competition a few times now and agree that it’s the best-run event we’ve taken part in.

Even when the fishing’s tough, everyone involved has a good time regardless.

We hadn’t been to Rocky for a couple of years, so we headed off early to have a good look around.

We stopped in at Turkey Beach on the way through to see if we could catch a few reef fish.

The author hooked a 97cm beast during the competition.

Fellow Bush ‘n Beach scribe Gary Churchward met us bright and early at the boat ramp there.

Gary lives in Gladstone, so it was a nice quick trip down for him.

We punched out in less-than-ideal conditions and travelled to some good ground found on previous trips.

We got stuck into a few cobia, however a combination of pulled hooks, bust-offs and a dirty shark resulted in only one fish landed.

We finished the morning catching a range of small reefies before heading to Rockhampton.

The river had only recently recovered from a flood, yet while still a little brown, it was salty.

Blue salmon were everywhere this year.

Over the following days, we fished from the city out to the middle reaches of the river and found fish in most locations.

We had a good look around the city reaches the day before the competition started and found huge numbers of big and small fish.

Getting them to bite was the hardest part.

We landed one small barramundi but couldn’t get a bite from the bigger fish.

On the first day of the competition, we started out at Port Alma and found plenty of fish early.

We lost five before one decided to play nice.

The author caught a small barramundi while pre-fishing for the Barra Bash.

After a short but intense battle, a nice barra at 97cm was in the boat.

The first fish always takes a bit of pressure off, however we missed a few more shortly afterwards and then everything went dead.

We’ve found that, when fishing for barramundi, following the predicted bite periods is very accurate.

The next stint wasn’t due for a few hours, so we pulled the boat out and went back to the city reaches to see if we could find a few smaller fish.

We caught cod, threadfin, blue salmon and a dirty catfish, but no more barra.

Many teams did very well on the first day, so we had a little work to do.

Ben Monro landed a juvenile black jewfish in Coorooman Creek.

Day two was a lot slower for us, with only a few timid bites.

The fish were much quieter on the sounder and we only managed a mixed bag of blue salmon, cod, flathead and fingermark.

After day two, the leaderboard was starting to heat up.

For the last day of the competition, the live scores are hidden, so no teams can see if anyone is catching fish.

Once again, we didn’t trouble the scorers on day three, however in certain areas the fish chewed hard and a few teams cleaned up.

The numbers of big fish caught on the last day alone was incredible, highlighting why the Fitzroy River is one of Australia’s best barramundi fisheries.

A threadfin salmon ate a 95mm Zerek Fish Trap in the Fitzroy River.

The Barra Bash presentation is always a highlight and this year’s was no different.

Team Tupperware led the competition for the first two days but were run down at the end by a fast-finishing Bluefin Sports.

Nathan Archer from one of the Wilson teams landed the biggest barramundi of the event with a monster at 126cm.

Thanks to the Frenchville Sports Club for putting on another great bash.

They certainly know how to run a comp –everything always runs smoothly, with plenty of great food and drinks.

It was awesome to catch up fellow writers Sean Conlon and John Boon too.

Catch you at the next one.