52-ing the fresh

When heading down to the local lagoon casting for Barra I like to use the Sebile splasher 52, such a versatile little lure. Slow retrieve with heaps of splashing to imitate insects, large pops then a long pause to entice the barra out of the Lilly pads and the constant pop on a medium retrieve to cover the vast distances of water. A little walk the dog retrieve in an opening of water in a weed bed gets them all the time too.

The trip started as I finished school, after losing my last splasher the previous day my goal was to find a splasher and a landing net. This brought me to the local tackle store, they had a large number of 72 splashers but they just weren’t the same on the barra, so I got the one colour in the 52 they had, grabbed a landing net and headed on down. After a lot of rain the water level had risen covering the entire area I was used to fishing, but the barra didn’t mind the new territory. Every 15 seconds all you heard was “pop”, “boof” or “slap” as they hammered the surface.

Clayton Nicholls with a stunning 60cm+
Barra pulled from snags on 4Ib on the Sebnile Splasher 52

The first fish was taken by trying to imitate a flailing insect between two weed patches; this obviously worked as a barra snapped it up and ploughed through the water like a truck. The next fish was coincidently taken in the same spot; I cast out doing a medium retrieve and a slow pop with a pause, a little tarpon hit it and sent the lure to the area where the first barra had dwelled. A few more pops and the second Barra climbed on and shot off straight into the weedy bank, but this time I had my landing net, saving the lure and getting the fish.

The next fish was taken in an area where I could hear a loud smack every so often, just next to a water plant floating on the surface. I made the cast, let the lure float a little, then after two splashes and a long pause the mighty fish erupted out of the water, dancing on the surface then came crashing down. The fish was landed and hooked perfectly in the pin joint. The lure came out easily, and then the fish was taken out of the net and swum a little for recovery before a few happy snaps and on it went.

A slow twitch near some timber accounted for the last two in my area; I decided it was time to evacuate when I walked out of the water to find I had 3 big leeches on my leg. To my surprise after the amount of times tarpon hammered the lure, I didn’t even hook up on them, but the best part of a tarpon is their hit so no loss there.

The Barra In my little spot are not huge, so why use the common barra gear of 20Ib braid, 40Ib leader if the barra are around 60-70cm when you can have a lot more fun on 4Ib main and 4Ib leader. Yes, you may lose a few fish, but you actually get more bites and hook ups fishing light, and fishing this light puts you up for a long fight of hard runs and aerobatic leaps.

‘Fish light and get the bite’

Clayton Nicholls