Really still not sure if Queensland is the tropics, but its a damn sight warmer than here so I'll go with it. A week in Hinchinbrook fishing with Dave Bradley and his crew Jon ("Snelly") Snell and Amos ("Famous") Mapleston. We'd hoped to chase permit but only had weather for it on day one. Ol mate Aussie Steve nailed a permit and a goldie with his first 2 casts!! I fished with Snelly and we saw masses of rays but didn't get a shot in on a target species all day. The rest of the week our team of 6 anglers rotated guides/boats and fished hard out for barras and a host of other species that exist in the mangrove swamps. I personally caught:
Barras
Jacks
GTs
Queenfish
Cod
Archerfish (yes! true!)
Grunters - gold and barred (some conjecture about whether a "golden grunter" is actually a species)
Perch of various sorts
To give an idea of what's available, we held an informal comp with each non target species worth 5 points, barra worth 20, goldie 30 and permit 50. Dion and I won with 115 points and no target species caught so that's 23 fish across a dozen species to hand. Its friggin unbelievable whats on offer up there compared to here.
Barra are tough to hook up on. Over the week I rolled maybe 10 and got hooks in 3. For a start they hang out deep in cover so you need to get your fly through a heap of trash to get at the fish, next they seem to attack the fly side on and slash and miss or fully engulf it rear on then exhale the fly in a second. And, you need to bash your fly into cover cast after cast, hour after hour so when one hits its a "holy fk!!" moment...
Anyhow I'll stick some shots up later on. I'd highly recommend Dave's operation (Australian Flyfishing Outfitters) to anyone who's keen for a real mix of action.