Category Archives: TRAILS – Camping & The Outdoors

Channel Point adventure

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Decided to head down to Channel Point to go blue water fishing for the weekend, have a camp and two days of fishing. Got amazingly lucky with the wind, I did not realise how much the boat ramp is affected by the slightest breeze.

Got down there on Saturday afternoon and launched in around 12 knots which was difficult but not too much worries. After the difficult launch I realised I had left the sounder in the car so we got to go back in. I was glad I had a poly anyway. Tried to fish the low for some Jewies on the shelf but got smashed by sharks and catfish. Plus a goldie, which was borderline, but we were in 6 metres so decided to let him go. Mud got the best of the sharks. Headed to one of the nearby islands where Alice got smoked off a lure, but we were unable to get them to bite and we were fast running out of light.

Camped the night, it is a pretty cool place, toilets and some cold showers. Had a really clear night for the stars, I think it dropped to around 9 degrees, really enjoyed it getting down that low.

Woke up the next morning. While we were getting ready Alice decided to go for a wander down at the magroves, came back holding a sizeable buck. She’s getting pretty good at chasing and catching them, little did we know that would be the best thing of the day…

We just got nothing! Hit some structure, hit some reefs marked on the map, never got a single bite. Hit the reef at about 2 metres casting some lures, got nothing. Didn’t even see a fish, even a small fish. Went back and saw some birds working a section, cast some lures but they were 20cm Blue Salmon. The wind was totally dead on Sunday, it was such a shame that there weren’t any fish in the ocean!

Got:
Me: Lots of sharks and catfish, 1 goldie, estimated 30cm
Alice: Lots of sharks, blue salmon, 1 nice mud crab
Mud: The biggest shark, catfish

Story of the trip:
Getting so luck with the wind

Boat problems:
Motor was acting pretty funny at the end, though it was pretty low in fuel. Anyway I won’t be fishing for a while 🙁 so I am going to get it serviced.

Snap

One and half days on the Tiwi Islands

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Recently friends took jobs in the school on Melville Island. We decided to use May-Day long weekend as an excuse to go and see them, unfortunately Claire and I couldn’t get Friday arvo off so we had to get the Saturday afternoon flight over.

We got our permits sorted and headed over, on Sunday me and my mate spent all day in Shark Bay. He only got his boat in Easter so hadn’t really got his spots sorted yet, with that in mind it was a reasonable day. He got a nice 70cm barra for dinner and I got a lot of fish, but they were all pretty small. It is pretty eerie fishing in a location where you don’t see a boat for the entire day, and there are zero other cars at the boat ramp!

Some highlights include:
– tom hooking a huge groper and it getting itself wrapped around a snag. It was at the surface so we gave it a shot at netting it but it scared and ran, managing to break off his braid
– a kingfisher deciding to hit my lure, lucky I was running a weedless rig and it didn’t hook it
– the mist off the water on an untouched morning was pretty nice

While we were off fishing Claire went to a nice waterfall for a swim.

The next morning we headed to a billabong. We only had two hours fishing as we needed to get the ferry back. When we got there – devastation! The boat ramp had eroded so we couldn’t launch. Ah well, might as well cast from the shore. A few casts and I had a couple of tarpon. Then I hooked a small barra! I yelled to my mate, excited that there were barra there, and he came running with the net… looked at me like I was stupid when he saw it was 30cm.

But anyway… soon we were hooking barra each couple of casts. I estimate that most were between 25 and 40cm. It was amazing fun. I landed two thumping saratoga’s, check out the story of the trip. The biggest I would estimate to be 45 to 50… I was thinking of measuring him but got a hook in the throat so I really wanted to return him to the water asap, and the tape measure was in the car.

It is how I imagine Coroborree would have been before it became Darwin’s favourite spot.

They loved a new lure, and it gave me a chance to try some lures I’m not that familiar with, like vibes and poppers.

Got
Saturday
46, 47cm barra, mangrove jack, golden snapper, catfish, cod

Sunday
A few tarpon, 20 odd barra, two saratogas

Story of the trip:
Banks can be hard to cast from with overhanging trees. So I threw my popper out and accidentally cast over the tree, so before I could wind I had to get the braid out of the tree. Once I did I realized I couldn’t see my popper… had it sunk? Well, as I would up I discovered a saratoga had liked the look of a popper sitting there doing nothing, and had decided to hook itself!

 

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.