Flyfishing Therapy -
Fishing the Burdekin with Ward and Dave
Its simply been one of those years, and the last couple of months have been pretty stressful, so what do you do when it all "hits the fan"? Go fishing, and take a mate to annoy with your ramblings, that's what! I was keen to continue my recent obsession with local sweet water targets - Sooty grunter this time, and Ward wanted a flathead. So that made our decision easy, as we headed south towards the Burdekin. We would fish the out-going tide at one of the more popular beaches, and then head upstream to see if we could coax out a sooty or two.
The hours drive south enabled us to have a good chat, and to solve the world's many social problems, and my head was aready in a much better frame of mind than when we had set-out in the morning. After running into Bob on the way in, we arrived to find quite a few fishos already set-up at various vantage points on the beach, so again our decision was made easy to work the flats between the two groups.
Despite the apparent lack of tide, the runout was quite strong, particularly through a number of pinch points, so we were quietly confident of hooking into one or two flathead. However, despite looking the goods, and even sighting a number of potentially feeding fish, just one take over the 2 hours we were there resulted in a nice flathead for Ward. SUCCESS... and then after the fact we realised it wasn't on his Top 10! Just remember Ward, once the list is in and accepted, no changes are allowed :p.
The hours drive south enabled us to have a good chat, and to solve the world's many social problems, and my head was aready in a much better frame of mind than when we had set-out in the morning. After running into Bob on the way in, we arrived to find quite a few fishos already set-up at various vantage points on the beach, so again our decision was made easy to work the flats between the two groups.
Despite the apparent lack of tide, the runout was quite strong, particularly through a number of pinch points, so we were quietly confident of hooking into one or two flathead. However, despite looking the goods, and even sighting a number of potentially feeding fish, just one take over the 2 hours we were there resulted in a nice flathead for Ward. SUCCESS... and then after the fact we realised it wasn't on his Top 10! Just remember Ward, once the list is in and accepted, no changes are allowed :p.
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Time for another drive, and more of a chat... rationalising to ourselves why the fish weren't biting, where they might have been, and what other tactics might have worked. Despite flathead supposedly being one of the "bread-and-butter" saltwater fly species we both seem to struggle with these guys for one reason or another. Anyway I digress....
The drive to the sweetwater spot was relaxing, and having never fished this spot I was eager to listen to anything Ward had to offer. The creek's morphology has allegedly changed a lot since his last visit, but it still looked good enough for a prospect. The creek itself was largely very shallow, with a few deeper holes and snags hopefully providing cover for our quarry. We started at a nice deep hole at a creek junction, but despite the flow, and the numbers of baitfish holding at the bottom of the drop-off there were just no sooties at home.
The main creek consisted of generally shallow aters, with plenty of riffles, pools and snags hopefully holding fish, and it wasn't too long before Ward broke the duck with a nice Spangled Perch.. about 19cm, which is a pretty good size for these little fellas. We continued along, working alternate snags and runs, I think Ward landed another spangledy before I got hit on a good drift passed the top of a log in the middle of a run, and I was able to land a palm-sized sooty grunter. Of course, Ward had to have the final word with a similar sized fish being landed shortly after.
Time to call it quits, and we slowly wanderd back to the car on a higher bank, where we had the pleasure to watch more small sooties, spangled perch and banded grunter holding hard against the banks and fallen timber.
The drive to the sweetwater spot was relaxing, and having never fished this spot I was eager to listen to anything Ward had to offer. The creek's morphology has allegedly changed a lot since his last visit, but it still looked good enough for a prospect. The creek itself was largely very shallow, with a few deeper holes and snags hopefully providing cover for our quarry. We started at a nice deep hole at a creek junction, but despite the flow, and the numbers of baitfish holding at the bottom of the drop-off there were just no sooties at home.
The main creek consisted of generally shallow aters, with plenty of riffles, pools and snags hopefully holding fish, and it wasn't too long before Ward broke the duck with a nice Spangled Perch.. about 19cm, which is a pretty good size for these little fellas. We continued along, working alternate snags and runs, I think Ward landed another spangledy before I got hit on a good drift passed the top of a log in the middle of a run, and I was able to land a palm-sized sooty grunter. Of course, Ward had to have the final word with a similar sized fish being landed shortly after.
Time to call it quits, and we slowly wanderd back to the car on a higher bank, where we had the pleasure to watch more small sooties, spangled perch and banded grunter holding hard against the banks and fallen timber.
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