Friday night, 11pm and I can’t sleep, what else to do but load up the yak for an impromptu barra session on Kinchant dam. A 40 minute drive and I was on the water just after midnight. The moon was nearly full and shone brightly as I pushed off into the glassy vastness that is Kinchant dam. Immediately the telltale boofs were all around with lots of surface action in the shallows. It didn’t take long for my unweighted SP frog to be engulfed by a good sized bucket mouth in amongst the lily pads. Now I hear a lot of people say that freshy Barra don’t fight as hard as salties, all I can say is that this fish never got that memo taking me into the weed then out into open water where he went aerial against the backdrop of the moonlit night. The fight was intense as he tried everything to rid himself of that frog but after two missed net attempts I slid him onto the yak. The 84cm fish is by no means a monster for these parts and no PB but I was feeling grateful for my insomnia none the less.

The rest of the night yielded no more fish although two brief hookups and countless boofs and follows behind my lures ensured that I will be burning the midnight oil at Kinchant again very soon.

“Fish vs Sleep?……. No contest!”