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On Monday this week I fished a deep snag in the Boyne River and made contact with a big barra that came out of the snag and took my fly. Unfortunately the 24lb fluorocarbon leader wasn't up to the shock and as the fish took of in panic the fly and the leader parted ... what can you do.

Whilst the fish was I am sure momentarily spooked I was pretty sure that it would just retreat to its snag and sulk for a day or two.

Yesterday I went back to the same snag. Initially I prospected it from the same area from where I had touched the fish on Monday and then I gave the snag a two hour rest whilst I worked over some other structure up to 500 meters away ... nothing.

The incoming tide went to its ebb and slowly turned and along with just that little bit of moving water the water colour quite quickly went from relatively clear to a little milky. I moved back down to the snag and this time put long casts in keeping as far away as I could, allowing the fly to sink and then slowly twitching it back hopefully in an enticing way. I must have covered every inch of the snag and then out of the blue the line went tight and sped off to the right ... a good fish.

I quickly got the line back onto the reel and at the same time swung the electric so that it would take me away from the snag. It was a great fight with 4 fantastic jumps, well more like belly flops, out of the water revealing a fish, probably about the same size as the one I had touched on Monday. Whilst playing the fish I also put my net handy, the fish was never going to fit, even half, into my net. Thinking of options I put my boda grips where I could easily grab them and continued with the fight. The barra took a couple of big runs back toward cover but by then we were well away from the snag and in relatively open water so I let the rod and the drag of the reel do their work and just concentrated on not loosing touch with the fish as it desperately sought freedom.

The fight took about 10 minutes in total before I was ably to lip grip the barra with my left hand holding the boda grip and then hang over the side of the boat and get my right forearm under the belly of the fish and lift it into the boat ... didn't think I could do that but I was a bit pumped up.

When it fist showed itself I knew it was close to the magic meter mark one way or the other and whilst I could have been dissapointed when it only came up at 952 mmm I wasn't, I was chuffed as could be. A couple of quick photos that you can see above and the fish was carefully returned to the water, swum until it was ready to POQ and then released to grow that extra few mm.

The rod was my 8 foot 3 inch Redington Predator #10 weight rod, the fly line was my new SA #11 weight Tarpon WF-11-clear intermediate and the leader was 8 foot long and not the 24 fluorocarbon that I had used on Monday but this time was #30 lb Maxima Ultragreen. This has been my leader of choice for a few years and it was only in the last few weeks that I had swapped to the 24lb fluorocarbon hopefully to increase hook ups.

The fly was one of my 8cm prawns, this one had orange and black legs ... it's a ripper and whilst you can see in the photo it was a bit dishevelled by the action it easily was manipulated back into shape and ready for more action.

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