BARRA Series presented by
Kicking off the 2022 BARRA Tour
The ABT BARRA tour is officially underway for 2022 with anglers making their way up to Lake Tinaroo in Far North Queensland for rounds one and two of the season. Round one was a two-day event from 4pm – midnight, giving the anglers the best of the day and night bite. Naming sponsor Wilson kicked in a few freebies for anglers to take into the first session, including a handy soft vibe box that may have been an omen for what was to come for the top of the leaderboard. Liam Robinson and James Wilson, better known as team Anita Barra/ Humminbird, won the Tinaroo all-nighter last year and got up to similar heroics this year, casually breaking ABT records as they went. The pair were able to set a new ABT record of heaviest 10 fish bag (2 x 5/5 fish limits) coming in at a massive 149.55kg – that’s an average weight of around
The Humminbird electronics on their tinny, which include four Helix units to facilitate MEGA Live, Sidescan/Downscan, MEGA 360 and mapping – were used to their maximum potential to target fish precisely. Scan the QR code to see the Winning team interview
“We would use sidescan at the helm to identify spots and when we found an area we liked we used the MEGA 360 at the bow to target the fish, watching them swim out and around the weed and putting their patterns together,” said Liam. “Even though we have Live now, which is unreal, and we used it to drop vibes on a few fish, I still believe 360 is the best tool for barra fishing,” he added. Once they found the
The field for the BARRA tour gets stronger every year with nearly 40 anglers making it to Cairns for the first round of the season. areas they liked, they popped them into the memory bank and kept moving, building a collection of spots to keep
Liam Robinson of winning Team Anita Barra/Humminbird pictured with one of their record setting fish. Over his left shoulder you’ll see the MEGA Live and MEGA 360 combo they used to leave no stone unturned. 15kg or 105.5cm on the ABT weight/length table. There were fish sitting both deep and shallow and with the shallow fish unwilling to bite, it was the fish in the 12-15ft range that they targeted.
on rotation. “We probably had 5-6 spots within a small area that we just hopped around all night to stay on active fish,” Liam told Steve Morgan. The boys showed the
field exactly why they have a Zerek Fish Trap colour in their name, with the ‘Anita’ coloured 95mm Fish Trap accounting for the majority of their fish. “I reckon this lure has caught over 15m of
RESULTS Place 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 104
DECEMBER 2022
Team Anita Barra/Humminbird Robinson/Wilson Wilson Fishing Luckus/Cornelius Casting Mayhem Mears/Press Venom Dixon/Meredith Fishing Monthly Morgan/Williams Family Affair C. Sohier/L. Sohier Tolga Traders Browning/Burns Compleat Angler Cairns Bezuidenhout/Bruggemann Imakatsu/Dobyns Rods Maclean/Slade Thumb Lock McLaren/Torrisi
barra the past two days,” said Robinson, holding his Anita coloured Fish Trap up to the camera in his winner’s interview. “I’m going to retire this one once I get home.” Short sharp hops are the standard retrieve and a light yet fast rod is preferable. Liam and James both run a Shimano Zodias paired with a Shimano Vanford 4000 and a braided main line with 50lb fluorocarbon leader. BIG SECOND SESSION FOR TEAM WILSON Apart from being the naming sponsor of the tour, the Team Wilson fishing boys are pretty handy on the tools as well. Kord Luckus and Jeremy Cornelius ‘Fish Trapped’ their way into second place with an 8/10 fish limit for 114.25kg. By the second session, they had refined their soft vibe bite to where they were able to fill a full limit and throw in a few upgrades, catching fish from the beginning of the session right to the end. “We figured out that the barra were feeding on red claw and, once we knew that, we just focused on the soft vibes,” said Luckus. “We did catch a couple of fish slow rolling the LiveTarget Gizzard Shads
before we fully committed to the Fish Traps as they were producing the better fish.” They favoured the sidescan on their Lowrance units over the ActiveTarget live imaging to locate fish sitting around the 6-7m mark, sitting just off the bottom. “The fish we saw on the sounder swim under the boat weren’t actually the fish we were catching, we weren’t really dropping down to them, we were catching them casting in the depth we knew they were sitting in,” explained Luckus. The flavour of the day was the 95mm model Zerek Fish Trap in GS1 colour – a pure black colour with yellow stripes. Black is favourable in deep water as it remains visible at depth, making it easier for fish to locate. The trick was to keep the lure as close to the bottom as possible and right under the fish’s nose. There’s a reason Wilson sponsor the BARRA rounds and that’s because their gear just works, as the boys proved. They used a bevy of Bone and Venom rods paired with ATC Combat V2 Baitcast reels, spooled up with PE 3 Venom V-line braid and a light, yet strong, 40lb Wilson FC leader.
Full results at abt.org.au
Fish 10/10 8/10 6/10 6/10 5/10 3/10 4/10 4/10 4/10 3/10
Weight(kg) 149.55 114.25 71.63 57.25 55.32 43.55 42.47 40.77 33.57 26.60
Payout $1650 $750 $500 MOLIX prize pack MOLIX prize pack PROLURE prize pack KEITECH prize pack TOADFISH prize pack TOADFISH Prize pack
