Fishing was tough but we did a lot better than most at the camp and worked hard to get results. The mangrove jacks were a bit of a let down. I'd imagined they'd be brawling mongrels but in reality they averaged a kilo and weren't a problem on 6 kg line. Just about ail the jacks we caught were around weedy areas up Batten Creek. Being from NSW we don't own a cast net and catching live bait was a problem.
Cast nets are a top idea for collecting bait and virtually all the serious fishos had one.
As a general rule the live baiters were doing it tough but occasionally they got a nice fish. Estuary lure tossing tactics that work around the NSW mid north coast were dodgy on the McArthur. We tossed lures at some incredibly fishy looking water but found the small to medium creek mouths to be the best barra producers, especially on the runout tide. One thing that takes a bit of getting used to is the amount of time it took for a barra to hit a lure. Unlike bream bass or flathead, where the first well placed shot is more likely to produce a strike, we could hammer a creek mouth and surrounding hole for 15 minutes before a barra crashed the surface.