BSSS Day 2 report

BSSS Day 2 - (sorry not a lot of pictures as just average size fish caught, lots of them and too busy chasing points for the comp - even forgot to turn my head cam on!)

Again up at 5:30am, wide open throttle by 6:15am (the deckie needed a hot coffee today!)
The species for the day were: mackerel, any trevally (Golden, GT, Tea-leaf etc all frequent Bynoe Harbour), barramundi, threadfin, and tuna. Now the tuna would be very difficult given time of year, but two species could be targeted in the same area, as well as two other. Flats for barra and threadies, reefs/rock bars for the macks and trevally (well GTs anyway).
We made for Simms reef for the macks of yesterday but frustratingly nothing for first 2 hours.

We saw a little splash on shallow side of Simms reef and after watching this for 10-15 minutes finally went over to get at least something even if tiny small as the splashes seemed to indicate.
However, once there, the water was excitingly boiling with fish and we had 45 minutes of fish after fish. GTs to 38 cm and queenies to 45cm mixed together in a patch of 2m deep water behind a sand/gravel bar. The deckie was really enjoying himself (so was I). The water tidal flow created an eddy as it curled over and around the sand bar and the fish were boiling the water with their feeding activity. There were some small macks too, but we didn't manage to get hook them. Once the water dropped a bit more (25-30 minutes later) the action died off just as quick. We moved  back to front to the occasional large slash of fish along a tide line but nothing consistent and for an hour casting no result.

The water on Sunday was mirror calm, no wind - making it quite hot. Something we hadn't experience in quite a few months. The sweat was beading down our backs as we were casting and trying all sorts of retrieves to entice the macks to bite. We saw one or two slashes of a fish or two behind the flies but action was very very very slow.

Given the ultra calm conditions we decided to head into wide open water to find some working birds.
We came across 10+ adult dolphins and one baby swimming with them.  We cut the motor and watched them for 10 minutes - so graceful sliding through the water. They were in about 4 metres of water harassing some quite small 30cm grey macks (which we could catch!), this dolphin food was skipping across the surface in 5-10m skips to escape the dolphins.

A little later, we came upon some sand/gravel bars way offshore that some large queenies were  patrolling- we got follows but no takes. Awesome to see such fish in such clear and shallow water, Must visit this spot again!

Later a massive black backed ray about the size of a dining table came by and I cast to it in hope of an accompanying GT, however the two GTs that appeared off the ray's back that chased my fly caused my knees to wobble. They were absolutely huge 90+cm plus versions. Massive in shoulder thickness and body depth. Again sadly only a couple of follows was all we got - no hookups.

The rocks and ledges nearby however were covered in fish - Stripies, Moses perch, Queenfish, and sub 40cm GTs. The deckie, thoroughly enjoying himself, got 10 or so GTs in 15 or so casts with a crease fly.  He also enjoyed a shark pinching one of his fish, after this he switched to one of my mega flies to target bigger fish. The little guys were very keen to slash at the mega fly but not the big fish.

this Moses Perch that was smaller than the fly it ate!

While he was casting around trying to catch a big one, I with my small clouser (orange over white) caught a cricket score - full of stripes, Moses perch, the occasional queenfish and small GTs - all racking up the points. I too had a large shark take a 30cm fish right at the side of the boat. While it hung onto the fish, it wrapped my fly line around several reef lumps before breaking off the leader. Luckily the fly line survived the episode without any nicks.

We had another mega GT visit working along the reef edge looking for a live meal and it also chase one of the small stripies I had on the line, but saw the boat and slithered away between the structure nearby. Peter again went to the big flies for a while, I was still catching heaps of reef species one after the other, a fish almost every cast not big but lots of them. I didn't  put them all on the scoresheet as they just keep biting and I kept casting with out worrying about the scorecard. In a moment of calm, I would write a few of the lengths of fish caught down.  We had multiple double hook ups. I really enjoyed Peter working the fish into frenzy with his crease fly and I would then cast behind the fish when the popper was removed - resulting in an instant hook up on the small clouser.

Working around the reef edges we found some queenies and macks of one reef point. The wind was picking up making it hard to hold our position. As the tide was rising, I parked up on the reef and we cast to the bubbling bait off the point. I managed to snag a mackerel in the top lip, giving me two species and thus into bonus points. Up to that time we were not comp focused, mainly enjoying a great hot bite and many species. Now things changed comp wise with two species from the list.

Peter was working his hardest to catch a mack but time was short to lines out and heading back to put scorecards in on time. Peter hooked up to something good and we hoped it was a mack but it was a 50cm queenie. Peter got all loud and excited about something. When he finally calmed down it I found out it was another mega GT that took interest in his queenie making - it look like a live bait, the GT was so large.

Peter quickly measured and released the queenie and cast back to where the mega GT had moved and instantly hooked up to it. Line tore off his reel, I put electric down, pulled plumb bob anchor in and gave chase to the fast fleeing fish. The fight was intense and just as we were getting close to the fish 20 minutes later the leader parted- BUGGER! To say the least!

Given that disappointment we motored straight to the ramp to get the score cards in on time.
Both us had a great day of sighted fish, peter a few big fish on and seen - something he had been working a while on that gave him great enjoyment. With my bucket filled scorecard I was hoping to move up a few positions.

A few of the front runners of Day 1 getting their 600 point or so, I was feeling confident with my 1300 plus points for Day2 (still wishing I had gone to the flats to get a barra or threadie). In the end I managed third for the comp and for Day2, which made me mildly regret my not so good fish wise Saturday . The two in front got three species and the subsequent extra bonus points and managed 1500 plus.  points for the day.

It was a great weekend, plenty of learning curve and a heap of fish. The sighted mega GTs and queenies gave me many hopes and ideas for future trips. My flies worked well, Everyone loved the boat boxes that were donated. Lots of positives.

Not to mention - great people to fish with, as too great accommodation and food at the Sand palms motel and pub
Check out the Mobs blog site for more BSSS 2014 trip reports.
here is five minutes of the small fish action along a reef edge -

BSSS 2014 - Day 1 report

BSSS day one.
Arrived 8pm Friday, given the low key nature of the comp, no real Comp info session.  After chatting to various BSSS SWOFFERs fishing the comp, it managed to swiftly tick over the clock and we were in bed snoring by 11pm.
Up at 5:30 Saturday morning, we launch by 6:10am (awesome morning by the way!)



The five species for Saturday were: queenfish, any cod species, bream (pikey version up here), javelin or ock ock, and lastly blue salmon.

I really like the manner of scoring in this comp. All fish caught are worth 1 point per cm, but of the chosen five species for the day, you multiply the top five lengths by the number of the chosen species caught. For example catch 3 of the 5 chosen species and all the top five of those species are multiplied by 3. Really makes you think about where, when and how you will fish to catch those chosen species drawn from the proverbial hat list of 20 or so species. Best thing is it is all new the next day with a new five species chosen.

So we planned to fish the flat behind turtle island first up.  As we saw heaps of blues on this flat two week earlier - plus barra & queenies. But like last time the fish that were on the flat were very touchy and not interested in our offerings of clouser, full blown imitative prawns, and every other fly we could think of to no avail. Result of Location one - no score
We planned to then chase blues in a deep hole in a creek nearby after that but the tide had receded too far and we were cut off by a sand bar form the deep hole that always has blue in it, so what now? Location two, again no score.

With the sea flat and almost no wind about we popped the 15 minutes over to Simms reef for a hopeful queenfish before find some filling creeks on the rising tide to target rock bars for OckOck, the bream and an estuary cod - hopefully!

At Simms, we found no queenies but plenty of small Spanish macks willing to slash at the fly (but sadly, not stay tight to the reel)
We lost more flies than when previously catching macks, but we managed to fluke two for about 15 or so flies lost. Great! something on the scorecard

By now the wind was steadily increasing as forecast limited possible fishing locations
We decided then to chase some cod. But risking winds would change our plans. There is a rocky flat NW of Knife Is near the Paspaley pearl work base I had caught cod before so we ventured to it with hopes high. Once there we caught a few giant trevally off rock structure. We had one large cod chase after a 10cm GT, that got us excited for a bit - but all to no avail with the larger flies we cast to it
We drifted over the many rock bars and shallow reefs in this area. The deckie got a great visual catch of a 50cm queenfish hiding between two rock bars that came up to take his fly.

On one little rock platform bear Knife Island, I managed a first of species since coming to Darwin of a 40cm barracuda, which was quite novel to catch.
(insert image of cuda)

We thought we would head right to back of Bynoe to some rock bars to find fish but by time we got there the wind was atrocious for the location we tried. Given the wind was still increasing and it had been such a hard frustrating day, we headed back for an early swim in the accommodation' spool
The deckie managed about 150 or so points and was in 11th place, While I got a few more points to be in 10th place. The front runners were getting 600+ points.

The evening seemed quite short after the awesome group dinner as most were feeling the long day fishing in the wind. After the five species for the next day were drawn, I crashed into bed by 9pm, feeling it to be much much later! (Old man syndrome!)

Despite a below average day - expectations were still high for the next day.
More to come!

final flies done - so looking forward to two days solid fishing..

Off to Bynoe Harbour (1.5 hours SW of Darwin) for weekend
Two days of competition and tow evenings chatting to like minded SWOFFERS

Just finished the last flies for the door prize boxes for comp

20 each of - Crease, Clouser MInnow, Pink Thing and Wild THing Flies

Trip report to follow next week
until then - tight lines! and fast fish!

 thinghs to the left of me

crease and clouser to the right of me

Into the Bynoe Harbour we ride!

BSSS boat boxes made - half flies to go yet

Boxes all been made, varnished and hinged

Half the flies done

Here's a glimpse - size is 420 long and 200 wide, 3 brass hinges, 1x clasp
inside is lined each side with 5mm black hi-density foam

Tying Pink Things and Wild Things for the BSSS boat boxes

So far in the flies tied for the BSSS Boat boxes, we've covered species who frequent the surface (Crease Fly) and the depths (Clouser Minnow Fly)

Now to cover the Barra, and Threadies

The Pink Thing has been an Australian SWOFFING icon fly, since the early eighties.
Origins spoken about a lot in fly fishing magazines - so wont go into that except the NT as being part of its development.

Basically a whistler style pattern - feathered tail, bushy feather based collar, and beadchain eyes
I tie this pattern all in rabbit fur more than I use a feather based traditional style.

However, for the flies to go in the Boat box being made up for BSSS, I will be using some awesome feathers off some full capes supplied for the purpose of tying these flies by NTFFSM founders (the imfamous Rodgie Dodgie and the famously and wonderfully talented Cathie)

So I will have to put on my tying helmet and ensure the "Fly Tying Stig" is up to the challenge of tying some good flies with these quality capes.

Both patterns are basically the same - the difference being primarily and obviously the colours

Lets start tying......
Start with matching up six white feathers for tail - curve in or out is a choice to make. When placed on hook curve out you can get an enhanced kick and flutter. However, for these flies I will tie it curve in. I suggest you take the paired feathers from one side of the cape for one side of fly and from the other side of cape for the other side of the fly - puts the tendency of the feather to sit correctly when stripped through the water.
Like always when tying a number of flies,  I set out all the materials, pre-trimmed of fluff etc, for the feathers I put them between two bits of foam and place a weight on them to keep them all in place

Tying sequence......
Tie on some flash material to go between the paired feather of fly tail
Tie in feathers to form tail section of fly - 3 on each of hook shank
Tie in a grizzle hackle feather each side
tie in a bunch of bucktail - helps keep feather from wrapping into hook bend
Depending on hook shank length, more so on longer shank hooks I would add some crystal or ice chenille for back third of hook shank - adds a subtle mini collar the main collar can flare over.
Tie in your eyes and V shaped mono weed guard now - I find it so much easier to wind the collar up to the eyes than tie eyes and guard in later
Tie in tip of collar feather and wrap around the hook shank flare the feather barbels, keep tying in more feathers until you have a thick full collar
Here, I am using high quality spey feathers from a cape, Spey feather make a collar a bit more sparse than other materials than i usually use. However a mate outfished me by a factor of 4 to 1 using a pick this with such a collar compared to my schapplen based collar at the time. other materials you could use are marabou, rabbit fur, schapplen hackle, normal hackle, even a self made dubbing brush can be used for the collar made from synthetics or natural or combination of both. Love using 'Bird Fur' feathers for this but haven't seen any anywhere for a while now.
I swap threads now and form a tapered thread head in a a hot shot colour - this case fluoro pink.

The wild thing is basically the same but in the colourings of that ever successful soft plastic, the Nuclear Chicken (just not coloured horizontally like the soft plastic) - fluoro feathered tail and hot pink collar.

Tying for Boat Box prize for upcoming NTFFSM - BSSS comp

Been tying furiously for the upcoming saltwater comp at Bynoe run by the NT Fly Fishers Social Mob on the 20-21st Sept - a week and a bit from now.
Not only for myself as I am also tying up 40 or so flies for each of the two boat boxes my woodwork students have made in elective class - they are to be raffle or door prizes at the comp

So far I have tied 20 crease flies, (actually 25)

10 each for the two boat boxes to cover surface action (last five are for me!)
Crease flies are a great surface fly for most NT waters predator species

These Crease flies are tied on O'Shaunessy hooks - these ones are 2/0 stainless
First step is to tie in a bunch of white fibres off the hook bend
Then for this version add a touch of green flash over the top of this
Tie a full length of thread along the hook shank to give something for the foam body and subsequent super glue to stick to.
I tie 10 to 20 of these to this stage before working on the bodies.

I find tying one fly at a time cumbersome, have to change tools too often. Rather focusing on - less tool changes means tying faster.  Before the actual tying of a number of flies of a certain type, I spend a fair bit of time getting ready to tie, like ensuring all material at hand, all the bits cut to size and shape, hooks de-barbed and in a piece of foam so they don't slide about the tying area and later are easier to coat in a batch with nail polish if needed, additionally that all tools in the right places, nothing else on tying area, etc (yes, I am sure I have some level of OCD!)

For the body I use a sticky sided foam I got from Clark Rubber, about 4mm thick and 35-40mm wide. Don't know what is meant to be used for, you can buy it by the metre off a large roll
I cut slightly diagonally across the foam to form a blunt wedge shape - normally for a 2/0 hook I measure the wedge - 25mm across head end and 10mm across tail end.

Now you are ready to take off the protective cover for sticky side and lay pre-tied hook shank along one the edge of the wedge - best about a mm or two from very edge of foam
Evenly fold over, sticky side in, so both edges of foam tape meet just past the thread covered hook shank.
Then hold the tail material out of the way and trim with scissors trim the foam at an angle, just past the hook bend
Sometimes you need to add a little super glue to the thread covered shank to get it all to hold together
If you squeeze edges together for a while it all holds - blowing on it seems to make it work faster - think it has something to do with the moisture in your breathe
Then add your choice of prism or 3D stick on eyes.
Then use marker pen for a black back (you could use green marker), a little touch of red underneath for gills. For the back markings I used to cover top of back in clear nail polish and while still wet dip the area into appropriately coloured glitter powder. Lots of options! Some tyers are now using small air brush guns to paint artistic and realistic patterns - art using the foam back of the crease fly as a canvas!

Now you can cover the join of the edges, the face of the popper and the eyes with epoxy but I find lately I use more often clear nail polish as seems to last as long but is much easier to apply. What ever your choice - cover eyes, front face of fly and areas of marker pen use - at least two coats of the nail polish. Plus nail polish less likely to turn yellow with age like epoxy does.
Be careful with the chemical interaction between marker pen and nail polish as it can 'bleed' the marker pen, I find a light coat of polish applied first without much over brushing then apply more nail polish later avoids this problem
 
Clousers now done - these ones have a white first layer then a sage coloured layer to provide a subtle colour change. For these clousers I have used large beadchain eyes but lead eyes or even plastic eyes can be chosen depending on the depth you want to fish the fly.

The tail material (DNA fibre) I used has enough flash material inbuilt in it, but if the material you use doesn't, add a few fibres of flash between the two main layers of materials - I like the flash buried in the middle of the fly as I feel it provides depth in the fly's appearance when in the water.
These versions for the prize box also have a hot spot of some hot pink heads (and some salmon coloured). I used to do this with some of my trout flies, so I am thinking it would work for saltwater species too (???), Also hoping it to be mistaken for an egg case or the like.
This is done by switching from the white thread used in main stages of making the fly, after fly is finished to your choice of hot coloured thread - fluoro orange and hot pink are my usually choices. Tie off and cut off white thread, then tie in coloured thread and apply a good layer of thread between beadchain eyes and hook eye before tying off. I then give the thread head and eyes - at least two coats of clear nail polish
I chose clousers for the boat box prize due to the breadth of species it can catch.

Got the Pink things and Wild Things to go
pics and tying instructions  to follow soon

Trip report Bynoe 7th Sept 2014.

Fog bound mornings are not my usually experience since moving to Darwin, but Sunday morning was just that on way from a mate's place at Dundee beach to one of the two boat ramps onto Six Pack arm of Bynoe Harbour. We used the one off Barramundi Drive, Don't like it (too steep) at bottom of tide but top of tide it's great. When it's steep the boat at front of trailer could be tied on and the back keeps moving around  especially if tide is racing by, quite difficult. You need to get the front on, move trailer forward a bit and the check all is in place before getting all the way out as the back of the boat tends to be at a different floating angle to the trailer.

High tide was just an a hour earlier than our launch time of 6:30am. The water was smooth as, and the pink sun just poking its head through the mangroves at the water edge towards the east
We headed at WOT to Simms Reef out front of the harbour hoping for some mackerel to be lurking near it
On the reef already, there was an a mate's boat from Darwin Fly Rodder club (who had their fishing competition on the weekend). We had a quick chat and moved away about 100 metres to do our thing.
They had hooked up to a few queenies as we arrived but there was zero visible signs of fish activity. There were some birds working a couple of hundred metres north of Simms but once we got there it was easily seen as just small 15cm Fringefinned trevally bursting at the water surface.
We preserved blind casting for a while but given the tide was half out we headed in fishless (so far) for the back of Turtle Island. The flat there was almost too shallow for us to fish so we had to travel too fast to get off it before it dried off and left us high and dry for four hours before the water came back.
Worse still it was covered in fish, big slashing queenies, heaps of small groups (5-25) of blue salmon, heaps of rays - we still caught nothing but it was awesome seeing so many fish on the flat - MUST BE THERE WITH 50cm more water next time!
Right up in the really shallow water - 20cm or less of water about three casting distances - there were occasional huge rushes of baitfish out of the water to escape predators (that we could see!)
We proceeded off flat towards the bays on the western side of Turtle island, we saw a few fish but again either we spooked them or they showed no interest in us or our flies.
Having had such an awesome day, water temp good, breeze gentle - we (I mean me!) were getting a bit frustrated. We thought we would give the flats opposite Six Pack Arm a few hours of cruising and search for species given the 2+m low neap tide meaning no chance of getting stuck on the mud
However, half way there from Turtle island we come upon some large slashes at the merest of sand points on an otherwise bare shoreline. We had found (stumbled on!) an area with some grey mackerel with varying in size queenfish amongst them.
But again while they attacked the schools of baitfish with abandon, regardless of colour, size and fly changes they showed rare interest in our flies. The deckie got one grey mack that cheered us slightly (I.e. Not me!)

I had a couple of quite large queenfish follow my Fleye Foil fly (I had made the week before) to the boat , shouldering each other to follow but even though they had some half hearted swipes at it didn't hook up. I had had so many 'almost' hook ups so far that day it was getting quite frustrating. I had made the 2/0 Fleye Foils quite long as in previous outings the macks had a preference for longer flies. Even trimming them on the boat - didn't help hookup the fish that were repeatedly swiping and slashing at the back of the fly.
We did have a mini worm hatch - well one at least - see video
This one worm was swimming along (quite fast too) just under the surface, in the middle of all the baitfish getting hammered by the grey mackerel - maybe I should have used a worm fly!

After that excitement.....
We chase the macks and queenies for a few hours as they disappeared and appeared, herding and attacking the baitfish - and we missed the bottom of the tide time we wanted to fish the flats. So headed round bottom of Indian Island and went over to Knife Island - a 'sure thing' location in the past. But here too we found nothing, yes a few occasional slashes but nothing consistent or interested in our flies. We did manage a few small queenies and one or two baby trevs but nothing  too exciting.
Until......
After being glass off with no wind for a few hours, the wind finally arrived which caused us to move round to the leeward side of Knife Island. Given water had risen to bottom of the mangrove lower limbs I switched to a prawn pattern (the BFCW) hoping for a barramundi hanging there in ambush. After 60 or so metres of casting to shadows under the trees for naught - not a scale or sparkle or flash. We were almost to the corner and back in the wind.
I should have been more attentive because a 70-80cm barramundi had followed the fly 5-6m from its ambush possie. Its head was just millimetres from the fly. I did a fast strip, it moved just as fast and again positioned itself just behind and close enough to be tickled by the rubber legs of fly. Pause, small strip, pause, and again the barra would copy the fly's movements - BUT NOT TAKE THE FLY!!!!!  Aaaarrrrgggghh!!!!
So all day I had follows, half takes and no hook ups! Maybe Graeme William's 'low tide at midday is no good' theory has merit - ???

We then worked the mangrove edges at the bottom of Indian Island while hoping for a barra. The deckie got a small Estuary Cod on a BFCW fly which changed things up a bit and gave him a new species for his 'all time capture list'.

To top of this type of day, we fished a mangrove flat right at the back of Six Pack and found nothing, but on last tree the deckie had a follow from a huge metre plus barracuda, thicker than my lower leg. Again, it mimicked the movement of the fly - fast or slow stripped, it stayed just behind and under the fly, Nothing we tried could induce it to take the fly. It travelled 20m from its snag as we drifted along with the current before finally fading away into the depths.

Seems all the fish for the trip had the same attitude, a bit like a hot chick at a nightclub- all follow and no take (i would have taken an ugly fish today given my poor form!).

I heard today only a few barramundi were captured by the guys at the DFR competition so maybe it wasn't just me who was frustrated by the fishing on the weekend and its uncommitted fish!
Hope the fishing is different in two weeks when we are SWOFFING at a tournament with the NT fly fishing social mob in the same area.