Darwin cup day

A public holiday in Darwin last Monday - time for SWOFFING!!!!

Had 20 grey over white clousers tied for the pelagics
Why tie one when you can tie 20..........
I tie these very rough and untidy - adds to the subtlety of the fly

Peter and I head off early for Dinah Beach ramp, on the water by 6:30am as sun peaking over the horizon - and then to Lee Point again (why not, as fish always there on dropping tide)

Forecast was for strong winds all day so we thought an hour at Lee Point and then onto creeks to try for some Barra and such on mud flats as last of tide dropped out. the low was just after lunch at just a little more than a meter so we would see a lot of structure we hadn't see before or for a while so a great opportunity to explore when the inevitable wind started howling across the harbour

However, the fish were all over the reef at Lee Point.
At first with so much water over the reefs (max spring tides to 7+m high at eight a.m.) the fish were spread out and tentative

But still we caught fish and were the only boat out there, other boats off in the distance but we had the whole of Lee Point close in reefs to ourselves

As the tide dropped the fish started to get more aggressive towards the fly and the bait hugging the reef

By 9am the water had glassed off (see video at end of this blog) and the fly fishing just got better and better. At times a fish a cast.
I needed a few fish for a school subject (dissection and identifying gut contents) and the variety of species proved fortuitous
Large stripies, goldens, GTs, grey macks, small narrow barred macks, queenfish, yellow tail pike, longtom and even one foul hooked garfish - a large one good enough to even fillet.

Till 1pm we had calm seas, mirror calm, and fish action all around us. Then in seconds the wind came up, shifted, and white caps pushed us off the reef

We then headed for the creeks, however with a stopover at Cullen Bay ferry ramp for a pit stop (me) and the most awesome hot chips i have eaten in a while. Which Peter's lovely wife brought to us. We headed back out to the wind towards the creeks and we heard a loud whistle.

Initially we thought it was the plethora of birds of prey (Brown Buzzards) swirling above us and the entrance to Cullen Bay Dock area, but it was Peter's wife again (man! Has she got a whistle) - in that wind, with us almost out of the small bay....

She had forgotten to gives us the prime reason for the stopover in Cullen Bay - the remote for the electric Peter had forgotten this morning. they live on the waterfront at Nightcliff but the water was too far out to get in to Nightcliff wharf, let alone the silted up boat ramp there.

Now off to the creeks....
Fairly slow fishing, tide was already rising - we had missed my favourite time of tide for creeks - the very last of the outgoing tide. Just love casting to the ends of 'snake' drains and the muddy plume that flows from them as they are perfect ambush points for the predators - namely Barra and Threadfin salmon.

For the next few hours we cast and cast but to no avail. We sighted a few disturbances of bait being harassed. But only had one half take from the boil, flash and location a Barra - my Barra nemesis issues continue!

Before we knew it it was 5pm and we had been going since hitting the water 6:30am
Long day. Lee Point proved awesome again! We learnt more about Darwin Harbour creeks - soooo much more to learn .

Trip Report 20141005 - Darwin Harbour

Quite surprisingly the wife let me go on another outing so close to the last. Problem was my casting hand had a few sore spots from all the awesome fishing last Thursday and my body hadn't recovered yet. Still a little pain isn't enough to stop me taking up the offer of more time for fishing!!

It was a very early start – why? Cause the deckie’s alarm went off an hour early and consequently arrived at my place early! In the positive we were on the water way before the sun peeked above the horizon. Stopped at Shelly again not sign of life.

Due to low tide at 9:30 we thought we would fish the last of the dropping tide for barra and such up West Arm. At first arrival fish were going nuts past the deep hole on the right arm. There is a rock bar extending across the river 300m past the hole. We cast around it for a while picking up various species. Got one good snapper, an ock ock (Javlin fish?), plus plenty of small trevally. I did see a huge flash of a lrge fish that followed the fly from the deep rocks to the boat before slinking away - could have been a barra given broad tail (the barra nemesis is still continuing to frustrate me!)

Also there were plenty of little sharks that kept distracting us till the tide bottomed out, then we moved out of arm to Weed reef. Here bait were boiling away but no predators. We did see a gigantic shark with its dorsal fin protruding the water - very pointed making us wonder at the shark species it may have been. There had to have been 2-2.5m between the dorsal and tail fin - so estimate it at at least 4.5 metres, the dorsal fin was huge like a sail sticking out of the water. It was just swirling around lazily in the one spot til we got too close and it slunk away to do whatever it is big sharks do.

Weed Reef proved vacant of fish as well – well fish that would take our flies at least. 

Next Spot was Mandorah, the little T bar rock platform south of the jetty was almost covered by water and a plethora small queenfish and trevally were swarming over any baitfish passing the rock bar. Even pulled a couple of nice stripies from the rock ledge.

We switched to poppers for more visual fishing but the fish didn’t want to travel too far from rock bar - so after one or two strips from rock bar the following fish would skittle back to the rock bar. We did managed one or two better fish on the poppers – I got the best fish of the day on a crease fly. The GT was very keen on the fly because he came  a long way from rock bar to get the crease fly! the surface strike was spectacular!!!!!

We popped back over the harbor to see if the goldens were still in Katlin bay area but alas no goldens. There was some ‘moving rocks’ in the form of schools of small trevally and queenfish harassing baitfish congregations. These keep us amused for 30minutes or so while we searched for the goldens.

So compared to last Thursday a very slow day, however we both caught 20 or so small fish with one or two bigger ones every now and then to keep us casting in hope of something larger. I only had half a day due to some work I had to do in afternoon , so we ended it there.

Weather was kind, wind light if there at all most of the day. The sunrise spectacular behind us as we headed towards West Arm. It is definitely getting more hot and steamy than last month - bring on the build up - let it get the fish biting freely!

My deckie just got us a new CB radio, so once this is installed we might be working more positively towards that hope for trip to Vernons. More updates and radio installation blogs to follow.