Anna Branch Catch

I took Pommy Paul out last night to catch some cherabin, and it turned into a great night’s fishing.  We got to Anna Branch at around 5pm with a kayak and pottered around, flicking a few lures and just generally waiting until dusk until the cherabin came on.  At around 7pm, I landed about 10 reasonable sized cherabin, destined for the fishtank along with a 25cm catfish I’d caught on a spangled perch live bait  at 6:00.  Naturally, 9 cherabin went into the bucket and one onto a 4/0 hook and into the water.  Within 5 minutes, the line was twitching and within 10 minutes I had landed a very nice 65cm barra!

I was ecstatic as it was my first barra for the year (with really very little effort), and Paul – who comes from the Isle of Man and loves his salmon fishing – was looking very excited and much more interested in catching a barra than catching a cherabin.  We fished out another cherabin from the bucket, and I rigged up his rod – which was pretty light-on with 8kg mono line – with some 80kg leader and another 4/0 hook.  Out it went… and within 10 minutes Paul was on as well!  He played it beautifully, with the drag a little loose because of the line weight.  It put on a great show, jumping three times trying to shake the hook before Paul bought it alongside the bank and I scooped it into the net (I’m not silly – we may have been cherabin hunting, but the landing net goes everywhere!).   Amazingly, we couldn’t even brag about who caught the biggest fish, because Paul’s measured exactly the same – 65cm!  So there we go – two barra caught on live bait from the same spot within 20 minutes of each other.  Paul can send photos to his family back home and is now officially part of the Barra Club!