When it comes to achieving repeat success, it isn’t just about finding the right location; you need to be there at the right time too. Roderick Walmsley explains.

We had put the boat in before daybreak and even though the tides were a bit larger than I would have normally been confident fishing; the calm weather was too good to knock back a day on the water. The clock was ticking and I had fished just about all the places I thought I would get a fish. All I had to show was one half-hearted bump.
As I looked down at the dirty water and my rods strewn across the deck with a varied array of tried and proven lures, I was starting to doubt myself. I lifted the electric motor for the umpteenth time and sat back in my seat. I was about to start the motor and run somewhere in the hope of a possible bite but instead I leaned over and picked up my lunch box. It was time for a rethink.
I sat there eating my lunch at 8:30 am, methodically working through scenarios in my head, when suddenly an image popped up of my two little boys holding a pair of cod up for the camera, fully rugged up in beanies and jumpers. The photo was taken at a similar time of year and on a similar tidal phase. I looked down at my watch and coincidentally the tide was now at a similar stage.
The spot in question was a fair run up the waterway but in the glassed off conditions wouldn’t take all that long in my little Tabs. I hurriedly packed away my half eaten lunch and told my fishing mate to sit down as we were going for a drive. He noticed the motivated look on my face and rapidly sat down as I hit the throttle on the Yamaha.
We wound our way along the waterway with the rev gauge creeping into the red as I pushed to get to where I wanted to be before the tide stage changed. As we neared the destination I pulled the throttle back and as the boat slid down off the plane, my sounder’s picture cleared up. I noticed a few fish showing up on the side-imaging screen so I spun around and idled back over the rock bar. The waterway was much wider here and the larger tidal flow didn’t have as much of an impact. The higher tide stage also seemed to help clear up the water. As I idled back the fish showed up again, but this time clear as day and they were barra. I let them be as I was sure I had spooked them with the boat coming off the plane.

A fish extracted out of the school of barra shown on the sounder

RIGHT PLACE, RIGHT TIME
I moved a bit further down the bank and started to pepper likely looking spots with a combination of plastics and vibes all the while slowly creeping back to the rocky area where the barra had marked up. Several cod found their way to the net and the mood was rapidly becoming far more jovial. I was soon within casting distance of the rock bar and fired off a cast in the direction of the spot that I thought I had seen the barra holding. The vibe fluttered down to the bottom and I hopped it once. Doink! I struck and the fish rocketed out of the water. No guessing what it was as the barramundi did its level best to dislodge the lure from its gaping mouth. Several minutes later Glen slid the net under 80 cm of gleaming saltwater barramundi. It took a change of lure and a more subtle plastic to get the second one, which proved to be almost identical in size. It played up just like its predecessor and once again Glen did the honours with the net.
The tide changed as we were dealing with this second fish and as it started to run back. The colour of the water immediately changed and became visibly dirtier. Several more casts with a few different lures proved fruitless, so we decided to take a chance and drive over the spot again; keeping a vigilant eye on the sounder. The fish had disappeared.
It didn’t matter; we had turned an absolute shocker of a morning into a relatively good one in the space of an hour. Making the right decision at the right time was the key in this instance.
Being at the right place at the right time is one of the most important ingredients to most successful fishing stories. The first question that many an angler asks when they hear of a good capture is, ‘Where was it caught?’ It still surprises me just how few fishos actually ask, ‘When was it caught?’ The stage of the tide or time of year will often have a much more important bearing on the capture than the spot itself. What I am trying to get at is that if you catch a fish in a certain location at a certain stage of the tide, or time of year, it was not a coincidence. That fish was there for a specific purpose and the scenario that you caught that fish in will repeat itself again at a later date. Fish are not as complex as humans and they generally only think about three things: comfort, food and procreation.

Sounder technology like this screen shot of a school of barramundi taken on a Hummingbird Onix- give us the confidence to fish areas that definitely have fish at different tide times to work out when the fish will bite.

COMFORT
Humans prefer comfort and it’s generally accepted that walking around outside in cold, wet and windy conditions is unfavourable. Fish are no different, but they can’t simply pull on some warmer clothes. Instead, they need to take more drastic action – like moving from one location to another. For example: in colder conditions they will try and find slightly warmer water – if they are a tropical species. Adversely, during extremely hot summers, they may opt to relocate from unusually hot water conditions to cooler water. How full their bellies are, may also play a role as warmer water will often help to digest their food faster and thus help to expedite their digesting process.
Fish don’t like to constantly fight the current and will position themselves in areas that they can exist in without constantly expending large amounts of energy. Current flow that runs extremely hard could force them into back eddies or similar places where they can rest and conserve energy, while on the flip side, ultra-slow tidal flows may force them into the mild current run to ensure that they are in close proximity to a food source.
FOOD
Fish live from meal to meal – its what keeps them alive. A large number of estuarine species are ambush predators and they will position themselves in an area that food will come to them or alternatively, they won’t be too far from it. Don’t think for a minute that a weed eating fish wont eat another fish or similarly that a predatory fish will eat something out of its usual diet. They don’t generally know when or where their next meal is coming from, so when they see an easy one, they jump on it. A good example of this would be luderick caught on lures simulating a baitfish or alternatively a carp caught on a live bait intended for something else.
PROCREATION
The urge to spawn in most species will usually override its other instinctive day-to-day actions. Once the need to procreate kicks in, the fish will move to areas to make this happen and then once the deed is done, return to their comfort areas and continue on with their lives. This doesn’t simply happen overnight and some species will travel long distances to spawn. They may also not all spawn at once, but often at slightly staggered intervals.
Moon phases, time of year and environmental conditions will all play a role in dictating when the spawn happens. Understanding these conditions and working out where the fish move to and from will help you as an angler or an avid observer to position yourself or your lure to intercept them on their journey to or from their spawning grounds.
Once you have started to work out the movement of your target species you will also notice specific times that certain locations will fire up. For example, a certain spot may produce several barra one weekend, and none the next. Often they will not be there but at other times, they will, but suffer from a serious case of lockjaw. Look at the tides you caught the fish during on the original day and then try to duplicate this timeframe later down the track, instead of heading straight back to the spot only to find nothing happening.
The technology that modern day sounders offer make it easier to confirm whether or not the fish are there but don’t want to eat what we are offering. For one reason on another these fish will have a preferred time that they will be more susceptible to a cast lure or bait. They can often start to feed in an instance, like a proverbial dinner bell has been rung.
Generally it ends as quickly as it begins so you need to capitalise on it when it happens. A shift in the wind, a change in barometric pressure, a stage of the moon or a slackening of the tide may be the impetus needed. Sometimes though it is more noticeable like a rock that needs to be covered or a mangrove root that needs to be exposed. These visual tidal stages could be the tell-tale sign that confirms the ‘right’ stage of the tide when your target species will be at its most susceptible.
Once you have identified these key windows and are confident they are the prime bite times, you need to try and stay away from these areas and only hit them during these specific ‘hot’ times. It takes a lot of self-control to do, but in doing this you will be in with a much better chance of positive bites and better fishing.

Night time barra fishing can often be a case of following the right phases of the moon to anticipate bite times. 

NEVER STOP LEARNING
When you get it right and a few fish hit the net in quick succession, it becomes worthwhile. Getting to know just how to ‘join the dots’ takes plenty of time on the water and as hard as we try to now it all, we will never stop learning. The real key is to take in what we do learn and build on it. One of the best ways to learn is to ask yourself ‘why’ every time you hook or land a good fish.
Think of why you hooked the fish there and ask yourself things like, why was it there? Was it there to feed? Was it there to spawn or was it there to be comfortable? Take note of the answers to these questions and if you are so inclined, make notes of what you find and then consult them again when the time of year, tidal flow or weather patterns duplicate themselves. You may well find that a similar fish is in that similar position at exactly the same time.
Being observant and having an open mind will help you to pick up the subtleties around each fish capture. Don’t be shy to go looking with no rods in the boat. Driving around, sounding and taking in the different areas you want to fish at varying stages of the tide may well lead to you picking up something small that you may previously missed because you were so focussed on trying to catch the fish.
Having a few close mates that you can share some of this information with is also a huge help if they are on the same page as you. At the end of the day though, you need to do the hard yards and when you do come across something special you will understand how it works, because you discovered it all by yourself. Those days are gold and help to make all the other tough days a bit more bearable. Good fishing to you all.

Roderick Walmsley is a professional skipper and keen amateur angler. He now works on the north Queensland coast.