2023 April 22 - prefish for DFR 2023 FW comp report

So regular early start, and fishing by7am

But water in the top end of the billabong was very dirty

Sadly, I dropped a medium sized barra about the 10th cast of the day 

           - was not happy!!!!*&^%$&&*

While Peter started off the morning by catching everything but the prime three target species

First a catfish, then the largest archer fish I have seen in a while, finally a good sized sleepy cod at 38cm

Generally in this dirty water  - no tarpon rolling, not much action and wind increasing quite early on. There were fish about - but none it seemed, keen for our usual efforts and flies.

Peter still managed to pull a great toga of 62cm out the weeds in this dirty water

A very thick shouldered and powerful fish Peter was constantly worried about it spitting hook

But is was pinned right through the tongue - so it wasn’t getting away unless the leader broke

Eventually, we ventured elsewhere in the billabong seeking cleaner water and finally found birds on edges of weed beds, tarpon rolling (but lots were small) and eventually some saratoga.

Old places were bare of action, tactics had to change mostly due to the lack of lily pads.

For a while we had a very calm large freshwater croc hang about between us and the weed bank that made things visually interesting 

I again tried various flies playing with colour and action but Peter stuck to his jelly bean - point is He doesn’t have that many left and better get tying some!

The wind was a major factor for low catch numbers in our post outing reflection on the drive home but we almost managed a line of tarpon each, and 9 saratoga between us for the day - but a long day with lots of fruitless casting periods.

Interestingly, we caught a lot less fish in our 2022 prefish outings, however, still caught a large quantity of toga over the actual two days that counted of last year’s competition.

S ogreatly hoping wind of this prefish is not about during the 2023 competition next weekend (29th-30th). It made fishing quite difficult in our last prefish for the 2023 DFR FW comp.

See you at 2023 DFR TFWFFO (Territory Fresh Water Fly Fishing Open)

The report of it to follow soon