If we thought that the fishing was tough in the Barra Nationals then we were in for a big surprise. During this years Barra Classic an average of less than 1 fish was caught per 3 man team per day, The top placings were all dominated by 1 or two good sized barra and you needed to get one big bite to place. Team Humminbird ended up with 13 fish over the 5 days of competition but just couldn’t get the one or two big bites we so desperately needed to move up the leader board.

The highlight of the event was using the I-Pilot Link for the first time. I had not yet used this reasonably new technology and the main plus with it was simply that none of us needed to carry a remote with us on the boat. We had the 80lb I-Pilot Minn Kota on board the big Attack boat and this was fitted with a foot pedal. If we needed to get away from the bank quickly when hooked onto a barra we simply used the foot pedal, but for all the other settings pertaining to the electric motor we made use of the Humminbird 1198 on the dash. It was a simple case of deploying the electric and once the I-Pilot menu activated we could then select the “Spot Lock at Vessel” function if we needed to hold in a back eddy or alternatively “Go to Waypoint” function of we needed to move up the bank. All this functionality at the touch of a button on our sounder without having to go near the electric!

Our troll runs could be also be saved on the sounder after completion and then the I-pilot could replicate these same runs by simply selecting the function “return to track” In this way we could troll as slow as we wanted to under electric power and do the troll run hands free while concentrating on our lures.

There are numerous other functions with the new i-Pilot Link that we didn’t need to make use of on the river and I look forward to using these on my home waters on the Gold Coast – Good Fishing to you all.

Regards

Roderick Walmsley