28: Nicole's Birthday

9 May 2024

We were fortunate to be in such a beautiful place for Nicole; a beautiful person.

After the sunset tour of Yellow Water Billabong on her Birthday Eve, Nicole chose a Barramundi fishing tour on the billabong for the morning of her birthday. With a 6:30am start there were to be no sleep-ins.

We were on the water pretty quickly with only two others on the boat plus Gecko (Greg) our captain and guide, and Koda his deck hand. It is strictly catch and release in the National Park, and no live bait allowed, so we were using lures only.

We were all very keen and expectant of catching multiple barramundi, and all reports were that there were plenty in the billabong to catch and they were on. Unfortunately, we seemed to not be getting many hits.

One of the other guys hooked a decent sized one fairly early on, but tried to lift it out of the water (rather than let the guys get it in the net) and that’s all she wrote on that one.

We had told Gecko early on that it was Nicole’s birthday and that all she wanted was a Birthday Barra. You could see his shoulders slump a little with the pressure he had been put under, and he was then determined to deliver for Nicole.

Another of the other two landed a reasonable sized one, but nothing much else. The clock was ticking down, and Gecko was looking very nervous. With only 20 minutes or so left of fishing, Nicole and I both hooked up at the same time. Gecko went straight to help Nicole, while Koda helped me. Unfortunately, mine somehow didn’t make it into the net Koda was holding on my side of the boat but, really, all attention was on the potential Birthday Barra. Gecko was all over it and, I’m happy to report, the Birthday Barra was landed. Nicole was very, very pleased, and rightly so.