Flying barra

Catching a barramundi on fly is on top of the goal list for most dedicated fly fisherman around Aus.

Just catching any type or size of fish on a fly rod is a great experience - feeling the fly line pull through your fingers after the strike and the feel of the rod as it bends into a fish - it's awesome.

Barramundi of big sizes were a little harder to find with fly fishing techniques before the impoundments were stocked in Queensland.

Now, with metre plus barra in large numbers in dams, the dream of landing a big barra on fly has become easier to achieve.

But it's still an extremely challenging goal - getting a big barra to eat your fly requires thought & effort.

Here's some tips that might help you achieve this goal:

1. Find a few spots that you know will hold barra - weedy areas, laydown timber, points.

2. Plan how you'll fish them - your fly choice, where you'll be casting etc.

3. When you start fishing, come in stealthy & make long casts to the area.

+ persist! This is one of the main ingredients of any successful idea.

The 112cm in the photo was captured after returning to a hot area the day after we landed around 6 barra up to 113cm in 3 hours of fishing.

We think we could have caught a lot more on lure but persisted with the technique for 2 hours until we had the strike.

After setting the hook, it ran out into the deep and was a challenge to apply pressure. It finally came in and measured 112cm - taking around 2 minutes to land from the strike.

It was awesome fun & an amazing experience.

BTW, the fly was a slow sinking Sal-Mul-Mac at about 130mm long - and was sunk down some weeds for 10 seconds, after pulling the lure out of some weedy strands.