It’s been a few weeks since my wife, Shelby, and I returned to Canada from our trip to Australia. In my last column, I told you about the great time I had fishing over there, competing in a few barramundi tournaments with Carl Jocumsen. It really was the best fishing trip I’ve ever been on, and I can’t wait to go back and do it again.
The organizer of the ABT Barra Tour, Steve Morgan, told me he fished with fellow Bassmaster Elite Series angler Gary Clouse several years ago, and Gary told Steve that if they had barramundi in Tennessee, he probably wouldn’t go to work. I’ve been telling people if we had them over here, I probably wouldn’t fish for anything else. The bites are incredible, they fight hard, can be very aggressive, and yet are challenging to catch.
Most of the barra we caught were on large bass-sized swimbaits. I fished the 6-inch Z-Man HerculeZ bait quite a bit, and we used several other baits that are popular in Australia. Our fish came from all depths, from 4 feet out to about 20. We also caught a few barramundi on jerkbaits, topwaters and jigging with these soft plastic Samaki “vibe” baits. The vibes are like soft lipless rattle baits that you jig. Instead of rattling, they vibrate. It’s a bait that we don’t really have over here in North America, but there are definitely some applications where they would be effective for bass and other species.
It goes without saying that a good reel with a quality drag is mandatory equipment for barramundi. They would destroy a low-quality reel in a trip or two. Carl and I were using higher-end Shimano Curado casting and Sustain spinning reels on this trip, and they held up just fine. The rods we were using were heavy bass rods. Even though the fish are big, you can’t use tackle that is too heavy if you want to get bites, which is part of the reason the battles are so crazy.
One of the things Carl told me we would do that’s different than the way we typically bass fish in North America was if we found a good spot, we would camp out. Barra move a lot, looking for food. It’s typically more productive to wait for fish to come to you than trying to move around and find biters, which is what we do most often when bass fishing.
This was a lot harder for me than I thought it would be – I just wanted to hit the next point, make a few casts and keep moving. It didn’t take me long to realize that Carl was right. If you had a good point or a patch of hydrilla that stuck out, you kept casting at it until a fish came by and you’d have a good chance to hook up.
This brings up the interesting use of electronics that I learned over there. These guys were more advanced than we are with the electronics, with nearly every boat in the field having multiple big-screen units on their boats. They all have forward-facing sonar, but it was interesting to see that many are relying on Humminbird 360 more than anything else. The fish are big and they show up really good on the 360, so when these guys are fishing, they can spot when fish are
moving through and then lead cast them in the direction they’re going. You could easily notice the head and tail end of the fish; it was pretty neat.
They are also using their forward sonar on a landscape mode more than we are, especially for targeting suspended fish. It was pretty impressive stuff that I got to see. Barramundi move really fast so it was difficult to stay on top of the fish with regular forward-facing sonar, which is why some of these other uses of sonar were so effective.
Around 40 teams competed in each tournament, and everybody was friendly. They truly wanted us to catch fish and have a good time. You almost had to hook eight to 10 fish to land a five-fish limit in the tournaments. There would always be some great fishing-losing stories at the end of each session, and getting to share those stories with some of the guys over dinner and drinks was one of my favorite parts of the trip. I made some great friends. A few of the anglers are planning to come over for the Bassmaster Classic in March to cheer Carl on, and I look forward to seeing these guys again. They’ll be a fun crew in Knoxville.
If you’re ever looking for a bucket-list trip, consider Australia. The fishing was excellent, but it wasn’t all I did over there. Shelby and I did some traveling along the east coast and took in as much as we could, including a flight over the Great Barrier Reef. It was way bigger and much more beautiful than I thought – I want to fish out there next trip. The food and coffee were phenomenal, and the people are awesome. I can’t wait to go back someday!
