water and find active fish again . A keen eye on the sounder at all times ensured we were ahead of the game here and didn ’ t waste any time in the cooler creeks . This system really is a fishing paradise and with a little bit of thinking a lot of fish can be caught by employing the right techniques at the right times to capitalise on opportunities . The flip side is a lot of time could be spent here fishing fruitlessly at the wrong times .
The number 1 factor was tides . With such a huge expanse of water , we found on the top of the tide the predatory fish moved well up into the fringing mangroves following bait . We could hear them boofing bait in the shallows but couldn ’ t get to them . We found fishing the last half of the run out and the first half of the run in was most productive regardless of the time of day . We ensured we were on the water in time for this every day . We knew the action was about to start when mangrove jack and barra could be seen and heard smashing bait in the structure just under the mangroves . This tide also worked for barramundi in the drains and around points where the current flow was interrupted or created a dirty water line . We had our best barra sessions by looking for bait being pushed up onto the points by fish and spot locking on the area and working it over with hardbodies .
One more factor that we found to play a big part was water temperature . Being September the water was only just starting to warm and we found some creeks were a lot cooler than others at certain stages of the tide . As soon as we saw water below 24 0 C the fishing would slow down so we would move to another area with warmer
Hopefully this will help get a head start for anyone planning a trip to this magnificent area .
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