Humminbird Fitzroy River Barra Bash wrap up

It’s been and gone once again and I’m pleased to report that the Humminbird Fitzroy Barra Bash, brought to you by the Frenchville Sports Club, was a huge success.

This year’s event managed to break a few records.

The first was how quickly the event sold out once tickets were available to the general public.

Everyone who participated in the previous year’s event scored early bird entries, so when the remaining tickets went live, they sold out in less than a week.

The second record broken was the amount of barramundi caught, which we’ll talk about shortly.

The competition was held from October 9-12 with fairly simple rules.

You fish in a two-person team and your biggest 30 barra over the two and a half days of fishing are your score.

 

If you catch 30 on the first day, you continue to upgrade until the end of the event.

If you don’t catch any barra for the first two days, you can still catch 30 on the last day.

When you catch a barramundi, you put it on the supplied brag mat with the required tokens and take a photo.

You record the capture on the scorecard and send it to the headquarter’s mobile number.

All your point scorers get tallied and put up on the scoreboard at the end of each day.

And there’s a scoreboard blackout for the last day to build suspense.

The weather forecast for the event was quite good – a few showers for day two and a slight change of wind direction but everything pointed to good barra-fishing conditions.

 

This year, we fished as team Humminbird/Dobyns Rods.

Our plan for day one did not go well.

I would say it was one of the most frustrating barra fishing days I’ve ever had.

We prepared well but luck was not on our side.

Everything that could happen did happen.

We ended the day with eight barramundi, which was disappointing for us, but it could have been worse.

Once the scores were updated, we were sitting about tenth.

 

Last year’s winner Mark Boss had a good day – boating 19 and claiming the top spot.

Mitch Anderson from Barra Mafia also had a quality day, which had that team sitting in second place.

We had a lot of catching up to do, so we decided to try an area that would either work well or not at all.

Unfortunately, it was the latter – we returned to the Fitzroy with no point scorers.

We ran down the river and just could not find our groove.

A squall came through at about midday and that made conditions a lot tougher.

It was the middle of the day and we were staring down the barrel of a doughnut.

 

We pulled into a spot that was all types of wrong – because it had waves crashing on it, I’d written it off.

My teammate Luke was more persistent and somehow hooked a legal barra.

I turned around and saw this barra wave surfing when it jumped.

I laughed and shook my head in disbelief at the rabbit Luke had pulled out of his hat.

After boating this particular fish, our nerves settled and we got down to business.

We fished our way back to the town reaches of the Fitzroy, resulting in eight all up for the afternoon.

It was a good recovery, however we were then eleventh on the scoreboard.

 

Mark Boss of team Tupperware had another great day, with a 4m head start on second place going into day three.

They were taking control and doing everything right.

Day three started well for us, with a 105cm barramundi hitting the deck only 30 minutes after kick-off.

That set us up for the day and we were able to put 15 on the board, which gave us our 30 barra bag plus one upgrade.

We would have been happy if we salvaged a top 10 finish.

However, some magic happened on the third day for the Bluefin team, consisting of Paul Thompson and Bryan Pasani.

They landed 13 barra for the final half day, which averaged 105cm, with their biggest going 123cm.

This rolled team Tupperware out of first place, which, after they showed great consistency, surprised everyone.

Bluefin’s total was 28 barra for 22.11m.

 

Tupperware got their 30 fish bag with upgrades for 21.26m.

Barra Mafia took out third place with 18.91m.

We managed to salvage fifth place with our 30-fish bag going to 15.71m, which we were stoked about, particularly after what had happened during the first two days.

The biggest barramundi went to Nathan Archer at 126cm and the biggest threadfin salmon went to Courtney Rideout at 137cm.

The final totals for the competition were 631 barra caught for a total of 37,200cm and 173 threadies caught for 12,999cm.

An outstanding event!

A big thank you to all the sponsors who make this comp possible, the Frenchville Sports Club, especially Dean Lill, for organising one of the best barra events in the country, and all the competitors.

Make sure you keep an eye out for the 2025 dates and register as early as possible if you want to be part of all the fun and excitement.