EMILY MELVILLE COMPETES AT THE ANNUAL SECRET WOMEN’S BUSINESS BARRA CHALLENGE

Emily Melville (On The Move Caravans Brand Ambassador) was part of the Team Mercury Ratbags competed at the annual Secret Women’s Business Barra Challenge (September 2022) held at Corroboree billabong, NT, and we are thrilled to announce that were the Runner Up Champion Team!!  

We had been out on the billabong this year with no real luck and therefore had no solid game plan that we were confident with. We knew this years comp would be tough fishing. So Wednesday morning we headed out for a prefish and we ended up catching 5 barra and 5 good Saratoga, which if it was a comp day would have scored us nearly 1000 points which is excellent! We thought “We’re On Ere” – but then realized it was a bit like GGF dejavu where we nailed it in prefish and didn’t have much luck during the comp. We were praying that come Friday (Day 1 of the 2 day comp) that we could repeat what we did on Wednesday! 

We were up early making our coffees and preparing ourselves for what we knew would be a tough days fishing and by 4:10am we were on the road heading to the ramp. Lines in at 6:00am and it was looking promising, barra were boofing at our lures but just weren’t taking them unfortunately. Nevertheless we kept flicking and by 6:35am we had the first barra in the boat! Off to a great start!  

The fishing really slowed down, we weren’t even getting any toga hits which is unusual compared to previous years. But persistence beats resistance and day 1 we ended up boating 4 barra and 1 toga which saw us finish day 1 in second place.  

Day 2 we decided to repeat what we did on day one however the fishing was a lot tougher for everyone with only half as many fish caught on day 2 than day 1. 

We stuck with our game plan and we boated 2 barra and 1 toga which was just enough to hold our place and finish up as Runner Up Champion Team! 

She was a tough couple of days on the water with temperatures above 36 degrees and the extremely tough fishing. In comparison, last year there were 256 barra and 120 Saratoga caught over the two days and this year there were 62 barra and 72 toga! Nevertheless, we fished our hearts out and had the best time!! We even got up on stage and done a choreographed dance in our power ranger morph suits on dress up night!! Haha  

We would just like to take this opportunity to sincerely thank you for the sponsorship this year and the ongoing support, we really appreciate it as it goes a long way for us and we probably would struggle to compete without it! The wide bunks were enough for us to relax and have a great sleep, and the aircon AMAZING.. we even slept in on the Sunday morning, with the great blockout blinds. 

Photo credit to Nakita Pollock Photography.