Practice for the Hinchinbrook Challenge
photos by Rod Collings photos by Rod and Kris Wright

Kris Wright and I had the chance to head up to the Channel yesterday to have a go at practicing for the challenge later this year. Even tho we compete against each other in the comp we lake to get together and fish as often as possible and this usually consists of a few laughs and some solid sledging as well as exchanging ideas and techniques. I thought I would throw together a report with a score comparison as if we were scoring fish in the comp to give you an idea of what score is possible with only a few of the target species. I managed to get 4 of the target species, 3 Barra – 4 Queenfish – 1 GT – 1 Cod. Also 1 Jack that was not quite a scoring fish being just under the 30 cm min size but still good to catch. This would have been a score of- 750 pts for the multi species bonus and 350 pts @ 1 pt per cm for length of fish. That’s 1100 pts for the day, not a bad score for a lazy days fishing and certainly could have put me in the running for a prize if I could have scored a similar result on day two. Kris had one of those days when it came to putting fish in the boat, this wasn’t through lack of trying, with a couple of missed bites and some hook-ups that just didn’t go his way including a spectacular bite from a barra that smoked him in some thick timber. He did manage to land a couple of good fish tho and most memorably a great Sickle fish in atrocious conditions on the flats. The Sickle charged on his shrimp fly and tipped up. They are a very cool fish and a worthy target on the flats in any ones books. He also landed a nice Pikey Bream and a GT, these fish would have put about 110 pts on the board for him. His score would have been changed dramatically if the Barra had come to the boat and also if the Queenie that swiped at his fly had have been hooked, not to mention the other fish throughout the day that hit his fly that we didn’t see Then his score could have been 3 target species 500 bonus points and fish length somewhere around 215pts. Possible total of 715pts. Another great days score. So this is a quick rundown on what is on the cards if you’re thinking of fishing the Hinchinbrook Flyfishing Challenge. Its not all about catching lots of big fish, the challenge is in catching a variety of species from the target list and being flexible enough to mix up your techniques and target a few different fish in this amazing area of  North Queensland. If your thinking about heading to Hinchy for the comp, give it a go, there are plenty of cool fish to be caught and as you can see sometimes just a few fish can get you in the running for a great prize.