by John Harrison, January 2002

Over the school holidays my wife and my 2 girls went on several fishing trips, we didn't catch many but had a great time trying.

On 2 of our trips to the same spot on the Mitchell River, near the boat ramp on the silt jetties, I had a light rig (split shot and hook) just off the bank, a story an old bloke told me once was that he always had a light rig just under or off the bank. According to him that's where he caught all the big ones...

Anyway I had been doing this for quite some time and finally I got the strike and hooked up with somthing BIG! It took off with a hell of a force and I had no time to let the drag go and snappo! Broke or bit off near the hook... Sooo, I dug through my tackle box and found an old surf rig (wire trace) and made up a fail safe rig, haha! Put it out again and waited... within ten minutes the same thing, whatever the fish was it hit with a hell of a force. Anyway I stood up and let the drag off, trying not to hold too much force against this beast!

With the drag going APE I thought I'd better start slowing it down so that I did, still fighting like mad I began to reel. No joke this fish was almost pulling me in and I'm not a small fella, then the same thing happened... snap! But this time above my fail safe rig. With quite a lot of cursing I packed up for the night but couldn't stop thinking about it so the next day at the same time we went to the same spot but this time with a surf reel and surf tackle.

I thought "I'll get you this time ya so an so! Hehe", all the time hoping if I got it on my line again it might surface, just to know what it was would have been great. And wouldn't you know it, within 30 minutes I had the strike and off I went again. Now don't forget this time I was using a surf reel and tackle, steel trace an all. The bugger almost broke the surface, shot up under the bank and snap! Grrrrrrrrrrr I was ropable!

Now I have gone through my mind as to what it may have been, my first thought was a large flathead because it cut the line near the hook... but on the second hook up I had the steel trace set up??? The line isn't old, and none of the carp that I have caught fought like that and I have caught some fairly big carp... conger eel perhaps? I have never hooked one of them before.

Anyway, thats my Fishy Tale... If there is a big species of fish in the Mitchell River that I don't know of, please - somone tell me! Best of fishing folks. Hoo rooo!

PS: The bait was pippi!