P44 - FISH & BOAT, February 2019 Fishing A lovely sweet water jack takenon the Bassday Sugapen.Pushing Boundaries By Luke Galea pushing the mind and body to the brink of exhaustion. The results can be, and often are, well worth it. Iam a firm believer I’ve found honey-holes that seldom few people in walking the walk. would have ever seen, let-a-lone fished and let me just What I mean by this, say the beauty of some of these spots would rival loca- is donning the trekking tions seen in National Geographic magazines or At- boots and setting foot in tenborough doco’s. a meandering freshwater The slightly elevated river level was now riveror creek that you’ve at the perfect height to allow for a long and taken the time to iden- tify using Google Earth unbroken kayak trip downstream with the or Google Maps. Trek- flow. The time was now, and I was pumped. king for miles upstream, negotiating rapids, wa- Recently, I made the plan to trek a 10km section of terfalls, dense vegetation river that I had my eye on for quite a while and always and all the wildlife that wanted to explore. The problem was, over 150mm of comes along with it is rain fell a few days before the trip was planned to take all-encompassing –often place. Hell-bent in not letting the rain completely ruin the trip, I postponed the trip by five days and waited for the flow to subside a little and for the water clarity to return. Keeping an eye on the flow is made easy by P8 Braid visiting the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) website ™ and negotiating to the “rainfall and river conditions” tab. Here, any one of the hundreds of State govern- ment owned and operated gauging stations give you near real-time data on exactly what the rivers are doing. I find the BOM site to be just as essential as Google Earth/Maps when planning a sweetwater trekking mission. I literally could not wait any longer. My annual leave was quickly coming to an end and despite the water level not being quite as low as I would have liked for a trek, I opted to take Plan B – a kayak mission down the same stretch. The slightly elevated river level was now at the perfect height to allow for a long and unbroken kayak trip downstream with the flow. The time was now, and I was pumped. Planning Planning was relatively involved as there is a mul- titude of factors that need to be in your favour when attempting a long kayak fishin’ mission such as this. As mentioned earlier, water height is critical. Too much flow will limit your time in the strike zone, and not enough flow will see you dragging your kayak through the shallow riffle zones. Dragging your canoe SUPER STRONG & through some shallow zones will be inevitable, how- ever, continually having to do so can soon get pretty old real quick as well as extremely tiring. SLICK AUSTRALIAN gerous and limiting your time in the strike zone, higherIn addition to too much flow being potentially dan- MADE 8 CARRIER flows will obviously also bring discoloured and turbid water which is far from ideal in this sort of scenario. It is worthwhile keeping a record of the water level BRAIIIIIIIIIID from the BOM site on a day where conditions were fa- vourable so that they may be replicated on future trips. If you do happen to go on a trip where the water level was too elevated or too low to be ideal, then also take note of this and adjust future trips accordingly, so the same mistake is not made twice. Another important part of the planning process is to predetermine your safe entry and exit points and make them on public road/bridge crossings or reserves. Some private property owners don’t take too kindly to random people traipsing around on their land. ADVANTAGES OF Know your limitations based on your own level of physical fitness and don’t choose to kayak a stretch PLATYPUS P8 BRAID that would be too far for your own ability. If you plan on kayaking a long stretch of river, it is • 8 carrier Braid advantageous to take two vehicles so that you can park • Actual unknotted breaking one at the entry point and park the other at the exit point. This is the best way to do this. On most occa- strain on label sions, it will be impossible to paddle back upstream • Super Slick against the flow. On this particular occasion, I was unsuccessful in rustling up a mate to join me which • Not weakened by sunlight meant I had to walk/jog the agonising 8km back to • Phenomenal sensitivity my car via road at the completion of my 10km paddle. I needed that like a hole in the head let me tell you. from near zero stretch Continued next page • 100% Australian made, Barred grunter were everywhere. owned and operated Pretty little fish though and not shy to smack surface lures. Platypus P8 Braid™ is available in 6, 8, 10, 15, 20, 30, 50 and 80 lb in 150 or 300 yard spools.