AdventureSquires opened his latest creek session by laying out exactly the kind of weather most anglers would have stayed home for. "Conditions are terrible. Tides aren't great. I've got the flu. It's raining," he said as he wrestled the fibreglass boat off the trailer in driving wind. "Let's get them."
The plan was simple — "today it's all about find where there's no wind, get deep up in little creeks, and we'll see where we go from there" — and within minutes of finding a sheltered drop-off he was on the board. Not with a barra, however. "Wow. Look at the size of that flatty," he said, lifting a heavy lizard into shot. "That's a really, really good size flathead. Wow, that's a good start to the day. I'm stoked with that." The fish was photographed and released, a decision he would later second-guess.
The creek then turned on a surface session that ran most of the morning. The first hit came on a Z-Man goat-pattern soft plastic. "Oh, what a take on the surface. He's not even very big. Hearts pounding. That was cool," he said as a legal mangrove jack — "roughly around that 40 cm," hooked perfectly in the corner of the jaw — went into the ice box. "Mangrove Jack is in the ice box. See if we just can't do that again."
The surface bite kept producing. A chunky barra annihilated the lure boat-side a few drifts later. "Holy moly. I cannot wait to see that. I can't wait to go home and see that boof," AdventureSquires said as he scrambled to get a net under what looked like a legal fish. The measure said otherwise. "He's only 57 cm. He's thick as," he said, holding the barra up to camera. "That's a 57 cm fish. But look at the size of him. He's as chunky as they come. They're a healthy breed of barra this stream, I'll tell you that. But I can't take him home. He's 1 cm under size." The fish swam off strongly on release.
After a battery change, the wind had teeth and the channel turned ugly. "This reel desperately needs a service, but I'll get to it one day. It's still catching fish," he muttered after a small rat barra came over the gunwale on his electric-motor session. Five fish on the first battery, all but the flathead on topwater. The conditions, however, were starting to dictate the trip. "I'm just out in this wind. I don't have a spot lock. I don't have a spot lock on this electric engine. So when I'm constantly driving against the wind and current, I'm not concentrating on the fish like I should be."
AdventureSquires retreated to the small creek that had fished well at dawn. The bite was lower-grade — "Out of nowhere. Well, hurt my goat, too. GT, everyone" — but a stickbait worked through a snag in the back of the creek produced what he believed was the legal fish he had been chasing. "That's a bigger fish. Much bigger fish. Oh, this is going to be dangerous of all this. Oh, that's a legal. Oh, he's off, too. He's off right there. That hurt my feelings," he said. "That was a 65, 70 in the tight water."
The session ended where it began — wind blowing him into the mangroves on the way out, no fish in the esky except a single legal mangrove jack, and a quiet acceptance that the morning's flathead would have eaten better than anything else he landed. "I do wish I kept that flathead this morning since I only end up getting one legal jack in the end," he said. "That last big barra, that would have been really good. But anyway, still a good day. Lots of fish. That surface action this morning, I can't wait to see that when I get home."
For anglers fishing small mangrove creeks in autumn, the session is a clean playbook in miniature: pivot off the channels when the wind comes up, work surface in the first and last light, accept that under-size releases are part of the picture, and never assume the explosion at the lure is the fish you think it is.