Now that the barra season is finally upon us, we can now target barra instead of jacks.

The big tides made luring a bit difficult on the high, because the fish were so far back, but there has been good fishing on the half tides, both in and out. Mulley’s Rock has been firing up on the low tides, with some nice barra hooked there.

Talking of rocks, Eva Rock fired up for David ‘Lumpy’ Milson and Graham Brake, who had some fun catching good size queenies and GTs on poppers.

Missionary Bay and its creeks have been really firing up on the half tides, with Simon Hallam hooking some good size mangrove jacks in No. 7. I was fortunate enough to be fishing the flats in front of the creeks when they went off. There were queenies, GTs chopping the large schools of bait that had come onto the flats, and barra and jacks boofing any bait that ventured near a snag. We managed to catch some nice barra and one or two jacks, but there’s a rather large barra swimming around with my B52!

The Dugong Channel is still producing grunter on a variety of dead baits and is still worth a troll for mackerel. We found some large baits schools in front of the flats near Macushla but they only produced large barracuda and small GTs.

Damper Creek is holding queenies, some of them on the big side. My good mate Johnny ‘Mudcrab’, who crabs in Damper, tells me he has also seen some nice sized barra on the drains and assures me it’s worth a fish.

The Channel proper has good legal barra on the snags and mangrove roots. Try fishing near the bottom of the tide until you run out of water. Now that we’ve had plenty of rain, some of the freshwater creeks are running well and could be worth a try as the fish move up to the lagoons. Already some of the creeks up Tully way are holding small dark barra, which are good fun on light tackle. The best lures for us have been gold Bombers, B52s on the flats and Flatratz that have some pink on them. I stayed with a Leads Shad in the traditional colours.

The first week of March hasn’t got much tidal movement so you’ll have to work hard for fish, but after that the tides get bigger and you should be able to find fish in all your favourite spots. Fish the half tides both in and out on the flats, and the drains on the lows. The drains and feeder creeks should be firing now, with all the bait being washed down with the fresh.

That’s all from me this month. Safe boating and I’ll see you on the water, and remember: ‘fish for the future, practice catch and release’.

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1) Graham Brake with a queenie from Eva Rock.