DION WINS A SHEEP STATION.....2014 BSSS

The track was light in the morning, and the wind didn't come up until late, but some of the runners were a bit the worse for wear because of a late night (early morning?).  It's hard to set the odds on the stakes because the scoring system puts a lot of runners in contention on the finish line, but in the end Dion managed to stay off a late charge from  a dozen others to take out the stakes and win the sheep station.....

Dion with his flock and some "Stig' flies to help keep the Station stocked.

.....it was close though, Kate was only just behind him, followed by Richard  and there were another ten or twelve right on their heels.  By only having five species, picked from a hat, and only five of each special allowed to be scored it keeps everyone very close in the race.

The top three runners

The Show Ponies

Jack, Hayden and Chris.

A couple who had good odds and were considered possible favourites were the Show Ponies and young Jack and Hayden, who but for another species may have had the closeted award.

They all got close .......but not close enough...

Crusty's trophy fish and the trophy..he also got a flathead!

Crusty (Show Ponies) managed to beat Lord Jim's 71 cm Golden Trevally with a 73 Giant Trevally to take out the Sand Palms perpetual trophy.   There were some monster GTs' out there too.

Peter Cooke (String Slingers) hooked onto one monster and fought it back and forward off the backing before it spat the hook. There were some that looked to be around 50kg, no kidding, chopping up big diamond mullet.  You would never have the time to pull them in?

Lord Jim with his 'Tuna'

Lord Jim (Jim's Boat) tried to pull a swifty with the Tuna species, he tried to claim a 6cm one with the fly attached.....John West's best tuna too.  Petey O ( Barbless) tried a shonky with a mackerel too, the fish jumped into the boat.

Mitchell ( Sand Palms 2) had the best story of a catch though, he caught a 74cm barra by hand! He was pulling up onto a shallow sand bar and apparently woke the fish up while it was sleeping in the shallows.  Instead of jumping out into the water the fish jumped onto the bank, followed by Mitchell who caught it by hand before it could slide back into the water.

The winning pair, in the smallest boat with a 2 stroke!

There was around fifty one barra caught, Wayne (Show Ponies) got three 68cms ( The biggest size landed) in a row and Jim had a similar size on the first day, there were probably more caught in the one and a half days, but only five were allowed to be scored,  however you could upgrade and a lot were not put on the sheets, but fifty one is the closest we could get from the sheets.  Crusty had an opportunity on a whopper but it wasn't to be his day, he had to be happy with a flathead.

There were big schools of barra around on the first day but they were either blind and deaf or just not interested.  Some of us cast flies into the perfect position and they would not take them.  It may have been that the flies were too big.  Dion and Kate used a small garfish pattern on a No. 2 hook and got a heap of fish.

Another boat fishing on one snag, where the barra seemed to be stacked up, coming out at times to follow a bigger fly, changed to a smaller clouser with a lot of success. You could 'dab' the fly up and down in the the snag and nearly every time have a 50cm or so barra, hit the fly or hook up.  So the smaller flies worked for most.  Now and then though we had bigger fish hit the fly only to lose them in the snag.  That's fishing, but it was fun.

Wayne and Cathie with some fof the barra caught

A lot of boats got some good numbers of golden snapper and threadies, as well. The snapper were up to 52 cm and taking clousers right on the low tide.

Fifteen boats launched at Milne ramp and we had two launching from Crab Claw so there was a good mob fishing out there, and some of the boats had three on board.

Captain Chris and the boys, Hayden and Jack

Later cooling off in the pool, with Leo and Pete (The SA connection)

The M & M boat, Amanda and Darren.

Richard and Peter on the rough water

The 'Brokenflagens', Jus and Marty

and of course...the 'Show Ponies'

Cliffy who has been camped at Sand Palms since around April ( has done this for the past few years) was fishing with Gary and some of the boys from NSW.  He was telling us that this year he had not seen the numbers of threadies around that we normally see, which some others have observed as well, instead of schools there is only one or two.  It appears however, the weather or seasonally change has kicked in somehow and there were a lot more threadies around.

The boys got quiet a few on Cliff's flat, and some saw them in Jim's creek ( which is every creek that Lord Jim fishes in) and Flog 'em Flat as well.   Apparently there were a heap of them on 'Birthday Flat' with schools of small barra too.  Dave, Pete and Leo were going to fish on this flat but couldn't find it in the directory.  They did have trouble finding the way home too, but that's another story.

Dont ask me where all these places actually are, because they wont tell me!!! and generally just wave their arms around in a sweeping arc saying...."out there" when I ask. I did hear that there were also schools of barra around 'The Bay of Big Mothers'!!!! 

I really dont think they know the actual names anyway!!

Sand Palms was, as usual, outstanding, Julie looked after us with a 'special' squatters meal of corned beef, white sauce and mashed potato.  Yum! Yum! Yum!!!!!... especially so with the corned beef being cooked with 'Cajun Swamp Dust'.

Julie and Tommy from Sand Palms (The shelter for the Homeless Mob) also donated a carved wooden barra for a perpetual trophy (won this year by Crusty).  Here is a photo of it, but originally it had a Rodgie Dodgie pink fly in its mouth, however Wayne (Show ponies) put a WW Dawn til' Dusk fly there and put the pink fly where he thought it was appropriate when Crusty won it!!!! (Boys will be boys).

Shaun the Sheep got out of the pen too....

Julie and her wonderful food

Some of the Mob arriving for the presentation

now the big question is, can you find the sheep dog?????

The 'sheep station' intrigued half a dozen kids down there, from all around eight yrs old, who poked and proded it, but it stayed together.  The kids of course got a heap of stuff from Cathie the softie, from the swags, pictures, hats, torches, coolers and binoculars etc, all courtesy of 'Coopers', the M & M boat, The Foam and Rubber Shop, Barefoot Safaris, and of course, "The Stig".

Can guess who stayed here......

Just a bit on the Stakes, next year the 26th and 27th September  (Full moon 27th)  or 10th and 11th October, 2015 looks the best (new moon on 11th) for the Sunday tides.   These dates also keep us out of conflict with other groups.

ENTRY IS FREE

The whole idea of the stakes is to allow everyone a reasonable level playing field by having five (5) species drawn out of a group of around twenty(at this stage) that is made up as much as possible of five of the most usual fish from the three different areas, that is, flats, rock bars and blue water.

The five species drawn out would be the main target species for that particular day. Another five would be drawn that evening for the next day.  Species to be chosen from are, at this stage, golden trevally, all other trevally, queenfish, golden snapper (fingermark), mangrove jack, black bream, catfish, cod, mackerel (all), blue salmon, tarpon, threadfin salmon, ock ock or javelin fish, spanish flag, barramundi and tuna (and more). 

Each selected species is measured per cm and  the sum of the measurements is then multiplied by the number of the selected species caught,  for example..

If you got one of each of the selected species (five species) and all were 50cm, the sum of the measurements ie 250cm is multiplied by the number of species, ie five, giving you a score of 1250.

All other fish caught (limit five of each) are scored per cm and the sum of these fish is added to the sum of the selected species. A copy of the scoring is this link.

Confusing, thats why Jim is the scorer, but it is clearer on the tally sheet.