Day 4 (last outing) of Father and Son fishing Darwin Harbour

So off early again but we were delayed by a flat tyre = well blown tyre that was absolutely shredded. after only a few metres of hearing the noise. As my normal rear tyres have worn down to slicks I replaced them with my trailer spares while waiting for some BF Goodridge all-terrains to be delivered - told none in town till December 16th = not happy!. Not sure what cause the blow out but it happened and lets get it changed!

So off the side of McMillans Rd we changed the rear driver side ute tyre - it was a bugger of a job as the mechanism that holds the spare tyre under the truck has rust up and it took quite an effort to get it loose - note to self: grease and check the mechanism from now on!!!!!

Finally on the way to ramp but not as early as originally planned.

the hooded father and son

Expecting the forecasted stronger winds, we hug the city cliffs looking for fish, we see the third giant passenger liner for the week docking at Stokes Wharf. The Darwin government should really make a priority the beautifying of this area for the visitors coming off these boats. That empty block of land in front of docking area is not exactly promoting Darwin as a modern tropical city.

The Latest Stokes Wharf visitor

We motor on out of the harbor and find some splashes near a yellow bouy out from the esplanade area halfway to Doctor's Gulley area. There were massive amounts of bait moving through the area hugging close to the muddy clouds in the water. As the bait got close to the edges of the mud clouds the predators would strike rapidly ( but the inconsistency in their arrival and location was impacting our efforts and success)

We caught several fringe finned trevally - again not very big. Would be great fun on 2weight rod or for kids learning to fly fish as the species is quite aggressive and very willing to take a small surf candy or white clouser, plus short casts as the species as not afraid of the boat nearby. Plus thousands of them at times.

We continued along the shoreline looking for activity. Which ended up being along the drop off of Kaitlyn Bay again. Same scenario as the yellow beacon earlier with baitfish hiding in the muddy clouds in the water. Again the predators were inconsistent. We increased our blind casing chances by casting along the edges of the muddy clouds. We managed to snag a few queenfish this way.

We noticed that wind had dropped to almost nothing and the harbour is mirror calm (again poor info from the BOM which predicted the opposite) Thinking that Weed Reef would be more exposed by now given the raging tidal flow on this side of the harbour, off we go expecting the conditions of Wednesday's awesome fishing.

on the way to Weed Reef - so smooth!

But on arrival the tide was hardly flowing at all and only the tips of the trees were exposed. Weird to see no tide flow here and yet only a kilometre away on other side of the harbor - a raging tidal flow.

Weed Reef  as smooth as - with just the tips of the mangroves showing

We hang round for an hour waiting for the action to start but no go. We speculated that the phase of tide combined with timing of sunrise on Wednesday were the factors of the awesome action on Wednesday. We saw a couple of slashes but that was it.

So no fish this morning at Weed Reef, so off to Mandorah to check things out. We found the tide still quite high but there were packs of queenfish working over the baitfish as they crossed over a sand/gravel bar 300m south of the wharf.
This was a heap of fun. We caught several queenfish before we had enough chasing them around.

East Point was the next destination. Here we found birds working in the same place as Wednesday. This in an area off the pedestrian viewing area of East Point. During a low tide earlier in the week we found a rock bar extending to middle of harbour from this point. Although not huge it seemed enough to hold the bait and thus the predators in the area. Still the fish were all over the place, rapidly moving about. Again they seemed to be targeting baitfish on the edges of the mud clouds moving along through the tidal flow. With the tidal flow quite fast we had to motor around to the front of the working birds and the fish under them, drift through the mayhem, catch a couple and repeat the whole process again. but frustrating as when you think you were up current of them and kill the motor only to them dive and come up a 100 metres to left or right.

they are over there now!!!!!!! )(&(^$*&^$(&^$!

But the queenfish were bigger here (like last few trips ) and worth the hassle. They also were really strong fish using the tidal flow to their advantage during the fight. Great fun!

We worked our way back to East Arm boat ramp, as the both of us were very tired after several early mornings, long days on the water during hot weather, lots of fish and late evenings talking and chatting - we called it enough and pulled the boat out for the last time of our father and son adventures on Darwin Harbour (this year anyway!).

Brad now is thinking about what he can fish for near home at Newcastle, but having now used a boat for his fishing he isn't interested in seeing fish just out of casting range every land based fishing trip.
I think he will just have to plan and work some overtime towards more fishing with his Dad up here in fishing paradise of Darwin, Northern Territory! - everything else, anywhere near the other capital cities in Australia just don't rate!

Next week it will just me on my pat Malone  - Monday and Tuesday are fishing days planned for fishing Darwin Harbour my last week of long service leave, and Sunday next weekend in Bynoe with its mid morning neap low tide with Canadian Pete.

Will put those fishing reports up as soon as they happen.
Off to tie some more silicone surf candies for the queenfish and trevally - used 40 while brad was here. maybe I should beef up my leaders (or cast less winds knots that weaken the leader!)