There are no roads in and out of this country, you've got to walk in (down) and out (up) with the help of a fit set of legs and a good topographic map.

As usual, topographic maps provided the temptation to test these waters. Take a look at the 1:100,000 Cashmere and Kirrama sheets to see what I mean. We’d fished the lower end of the gorge before, paddling and portageing the Coleman canoe into a series of deep pools and bouldery rapids. Schools of sooties, sightings of jungle perch, the odd barra and tons of tarpon kept us interested for days on end with all parties scoffing surface offerings in the heads of pools and the shady snags.

Access to the lower end was easy, so a trip to the `difficult bit’ promised and delivered fantastic fishing. To keep mobile, we’d planned a day trip only, walking into the gorge in the early morning and trekking out in the afternoon.
Parking the vehicle at Blencoe Falls, the river looked quite distant - mainly in a vertical sense, but the ambition to experience what lurked in those dark depths outweighed any second thoughts in of laziness and for the next hour we slid and scrambled down into the ravine.

Casting lures into likely looking lies drew a blank for a majority of the first pool, dispelling any illusions of fish-a-cast action for the entirety of the river. The head of the pool, as always, held most of the fish.

Heads of pools or areas of fast flowing water attract sooty grunter and jungle perch like a magnet.

Sooty spots are a cinch to pick. Find an imposing midstream boulder that provides a heap of shade, some shelter from the current and lots of nooks and crannies for the fish to hide and success is virtually guaranteed. The first sign of interest came from just such a spot - a huge boulder situated near the head of a pool sent a dozen sooties to check out the plug splashing down in their territory. The quickest fish grabbed it and during the fight, half of his buddies tried to snatch the offering from his lips. Half a dozen fish later and the school lost interest - a sign of uneducated fish. In the more heavily patronised lower reaches of the Herbert, the first fish from a school is a certainty, the second a possibility and a third a remote chance.

Setting the pattern for the day, the head of the pool held jungle perch and more sooties. Junglies beat sooties to the lure time after time, and were usually taken on the first cast into the rapids. Jungle perch seem to home in on the lure while it’s in the air, and crash tackle it the instant it hits the water while a grunter will act as soon as the plug splashes down. Junglies also learn quite quickly. Of the four or five fish that raced to grab the lure on the first cast, none would be back for the second.

And so it was that `next bend syndrome’ turned to ‘next rapid syndrome’ and we progressed upstream and deeper into sheer-walled gorge country.

Jungle perch will always beat sooties to the lures and in remote country like this, they grow large.

Our `turnaround’ pool must have been manicured, as it seemed to be built for the fisherman exclusively. An amphitheatre of sheer rock on one side and massive boulders on the other guided the flow of the river across a uniform bank of boulders, spilling a sheet of aerated water into the deep pool. Wading across the tail of the pool and clambering along the other side with the five-weight revealed a fissure in the boulders wide enough to accommodate a back cast right next to the rapids. Right on cue, a kilo-plus sooty (a class river fish), monstered the Clouser as it touched down. Life was good indeed.

With countless grunter and a few junglies released, it was time to attack the hard part of the day - the walk back out! Ascending over 400m of contours in less than a kilometre is a gruelling test in tropical heat, regardless of how fit you are, and the plateau was a welcome sight indeed.

What did we gain from the day? The satisfaction of educating just a few of a healthy population of Australian native fish, a couple of rolls of film and sore legs. I think that that is what Freshwater Fishing is all about.