Category Archives: Nothern Territory

Nibble, Chomp, Spit

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The tides didn’t really suit a harbour run, but I won’t travel to remote locations alone, and Marko was keen for a fish but due to time constraints could only do the harbour. But I took it as an opportunity to check out a lot of places I always thought “this would be great on a high”. We hit a small island first and there was plenty of life. Saw a few trevelly around, got one real good hit. Got a few small cod. Something was busting up around some rocks but we couldn’t get there in time.

Then hit snags around the various creeks I fish in across the spring lows. Got a couple of good hits early. As the tide receded I had a nice queenie grab and spit my zerek prawn with a jighead, as I wound it back to the boat it went at it a second time (where I saw him) but still wouldn’t hook. Just when we were about to quit I had something decent grab the same prawn and nearly pull it clean off the hook, but still, no hook up.

Got:
Me: 2 small cod
Marko: nothing

Story of the trip:
Sorry to say all the near misses. Especially that queenie, I had all the ingredients for nummus too.

Boat problems:
Nothing, pretty happy each time I take the bung out and don’t get water. I might have to get rid of this section with all the luck I am having… or will that jinx me?

Snap
“Better take a snap in case we don’t get anything else”

Little fellas on the bite in the Harbour

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Thought I might spend the high on a wreck fishing with bait, get a few fish, I did not realise how hard it was match up GPS coordinates. After a bit of stuffing around we bailed and went chasing barra. Should have been doing from the start really…

We caught 3 of them, but they were all undersized. Two of them were close though. A lot of life, mostly (what I think is) threadies feeding on jelly prawns. Would have loved a keeper over Easter, I think I need to do the time to travel… also my freezer is still full from Shady so I can’t complain too much.

Nothing worse than taking bait and coming home empty… bait or fish adds at least 30 minutes to my cleaning-the-boat ritual.

Got:
Me: 52cm barra, approx 30cm barra
callmejoe: 52cm barra, 2 catfish

Story of the trip:
The fuzz came by! Got a safety check by the police. Passed with flying colours of course.

Boat problems:
Nothing… and after adding that silicone spray it seems I can easily launch it myself

Snap
So close!

Kakadu Trip for Easter

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I wasn’t able to get home to Paradise Valley for my normal Easter Trip, so Claire and I decided to go away for the night and booked into Cooinda. On the way down we stopped at Ubirr. It was interesting to see it with a lot of water, it was extremely green. We also got to do a small creek crossing, just 40mm over a road.

We stopped at a few of the culverts and I had a flick. It was the middle of the day so I wasn’t very hopeful that we would get anything and we didn’t. But it was still good fun. In the afternoon friends of ours arrived (Renee and Mick) with their boat. We fished yellow water for about an hour and half, didn’t get a lot of barra, but got some a few tarpon, Claire was very impressed and took this photo:

I guess the other interesting thing was the sheer amount of dragonflies that were mating each other. Everywhere. All over the boat, a few landed on my rod and just started going at it. Good on them I guess. Had a few beers in the evening. Saw the eclipse or “Blood Moon” which looked great.

On Sunday we drove the full look and went to Ikoymarrwa for a swim. I was amazed about how cold it was, despite the opressive heat! Also only a few groups stopped off, the majority of the time it was empty, this being the only swimmable water hole in Kakadu on Easter Sunday. It just goes to show how much more you can get of things with a bit of research.

Harbour fails again

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The harbour is so tempting with its tiny travel times and awesome boat ramps. Since I only had about 4 hours of fishing time there were no options really. We went out and got nothing. I saw three size barra for the day

1) My third cast, he followed my zerek prawn by 1cm all the way to the boat but decided it wasn’t for him
2) I hooked a fish with my lucky lures (with new heavy duty hooks) but he spat it… I can’t help but wonder if the much smaller hooks would have stuck
3) A barra chased his prey right into my boat… literally the barra jumped at him, the prey jumped away and went THUD right into the side of the hull!

Got:
Nada!

Story of the trip:
Used the electric motor for nearly 4 hours, worked fine, which means the charging of the batteries has the boat running smooth, plus the pedal I ordered from the USA works great.

Boat problems:
Nothing. Though I have to moan about dinah beach boat ramp being full of tenders! Made it very hard to retrieve on the low.

Snap
Going home, still glad to be on the water

Shady Camp Madness!!

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The drought is over!

An insane fishing trip. We went for the day to Shady camp for the day, which is over 3 hours from my place, meaning we only had about 4 hours fishing in the day for a 6 to 6.5 hour drive. We hit the barrages… In about the first 5 minutes Mud had us a 62cm keeper. Great stuff. It got bigger from there. Mud got a 60 something one soon after. And then another. Okay, good stuff Mud. Then BANG I am on… I think the excitement got to me – soon I had reeled in a nice, large, silver… catfish!

Soon Mud had pulled in an undersized barra, and not long after I was on. I won’t play it up (that will happen later) I knew it was small as soon as I got him, a 50cm barra.

We moved about 5 metres down to give us better access to what looked like a hotspot. Mud soon hooked up a 70cm barra, which was great, but I was getting a mite frustrated. I was using the exact same lure, technique, and spots as he was, and not much to show for it. There was a 30 minute lull after that, but soon BANG Mud was on again… this time with a 74cm fat barra. I netted it (despite my urge to crack Mud over the back of the head an leave him there… outfishing the captain like that is plain rude) and soon lost my white squidgy.

I decided it was time for my “lucky lure” the gold Starlo hardbody with the terrible hooks that I hadn’t gotten around to changing. As well as my custom rod (a present from the fiancee) I had set the drag a tad loose as there weren’t any snags… what could go wrong?

I tried and tried to get something, 30 minutes later I was starting to lose heart, about 1 metre from the boat a massive barra inhaled lucky and started peeling off line. It had a massive run before I brought it back to the boat. Soon it went on its second massive run. At this point I realised the drag was too lose, so I thought on the third run I would tighten it. It jumped on the wind back and I saw the lure was on the outside of the mouth, and I hate adjusting on the run, so I scrapped that plan. Soon it was on its third run away, and I was thinking “man this is fun!”, you’ve got to enjoy these moments. I got it back to the boat for a third time…. it was off again of its forth run. This time I got back it decided it should hide under my boat, that made me tighten the drag, and the fish was spent. Booyah!! He straightened 2 hooks in one treble, 1 in another, but it held him.

(If you think this paragraph is a bit much for a single fish, read over what I’ve done this year to get him)

I was going to release it… I tried to revive it for about 5 minutes but it was done, it had given everything to the fight, ah well it will get eaten and enjoyed.

Oh yeah, we then hit the main barrage and had a crack at the huge school of tarpon there for some fun

Got:
Mud: 5 keepers, 3 rats, 62cm smallest keeper, 74cm biggest, 2 tarpon
Me: Catfish, 50cm barra, 72cm barra, 4 tarpon
(I won the tarpon-off at least)

Story of the trip:
My 3 goals for 2015 was to:
1) Get a metery
2) Bag out
3) Release a keeper (I never do that unless I have very, very good reason)

So that is item (2) done. Bagged out in 3 hours! Most people at the ramp said it was a poor day…

Boat problems:
Nothing. Barely used it though, went about 500metres

Snap:
Very happy (the red is from my esky)