My First Tripletail.

Hi there,

Not long ago I caught my first ever Tripletail (Lobotes surinamensis).
And this is the story of it.

I was very lucky to be invited with my friend and colleague Gavin, for one day of fishing on Peter's boat: Barradiction. Now every times that I went fishing on this boat, it has been from an angling point of view, absolutely memorable. This time it was going to be even better.

Our target for the day was to be the great Barramundi, and the location was to be some costal creeks not far from Darwin.

We sailed early in the morning full of anticipation, hopping for some good Barra action.

Sunrise on the way.

We arrived to our destination, and on the first snag, Gavin landed a nice little Mangrove Jack on what might have been his first or second cast. This was the first Mangrove Jack that I saw in the flesh, this could only be a good sign. I then missed a little Barra from the same snag, and Gavin got a little cod. Then I got a small Snapper from it. This was a great mixed bag in a very short time, from the one spot.
How promising was that!

My little Snapper.

I was very happy to have caught this little Snapper on a DUO lure that I was trying for the first time, it worked well.

The fish coming from that snag were numerous, but rather on the small side. So we left them biting, and went on the search of bigger prey.

Peter and Gavin and a few fishing rods.

We started to troll, and some blue salmon were quickly snatched from the depth, but like spoiled kids we wanted our Barramundi and nothing else.

Then a bump in my line, followed by tension and a bent in the rod, and a feisty little Barra started to jump at the end of the line.

Not even of legal size, but big enough to let us know that indeed, Barramundi inhabit these water.

First Barramundi of the day.

Sometimes little fish can be sweet, and this one was one of them.

Just after that I got a small Blue Salmon, so we knew that a lot of them were swimming around.

Blue Salmon.

Peter managed to get a good Barramundi not long after that. 

Peter fighting the fish.

And Boated!

Peter, then started to show us how it is done, and why a few years of experience always make a difference. 

He got a few Thready Buster lures, he offered the grey one to Gavin and took the pink one, I had another yellow lure...

Peter first caught a blue Salmon, then another one, Gavin and I got nothing...

Gavin being a man of science then asked if in the interest of science, he could have the pink one and Peter the grey one.

This was to prove a great move for Peter, as he used this grey lure to land the Barra of the day, a nice 95cm (37.401575 inches) Barramundi.

Pure chrome Salt water Barramundi.

This fish was as beautiful as they get, pure chrome in colour, fit and healthy.

I do not know if this was by pure unconscious dejection or by accident but not long after Gavin broke his fishing rod. Never a good feeling when this happen, either to you or a good mate.

I was then hopping that he would soon get a good fish to bring back a smile on his face. 

It happened, and what a fish it was:

A nice Threadfin Salmon.

Here was a very fine specimen of Threadfin Salmon (Polydactylus macrochir).

It went directly in the esky.

Not long after that I got my last Barramundi for the day.

Happy fisherman.

Yes I was very happy with this small fish, as it was my first Barramundi on a Reidy's Goulburn Jack a lure that I was testing for the first or second time only. I kept this fish to feed my little family.

Out the mouth of the creek, we saw some birds cartwheeling over the sea and went to investigate the commotion. Being a very keen spinner, I could not hold it very long and casted a chrome slice in there...

And a little Spotty Mackerel came back with my lure.

My first Spotty ever.

This was really a day of first, and the best was yet to come...

Pretty close to where this little Mack was caught, Peter being the good skipper that he is, noticed a few tree branches floating on the water.

He motored toward them, and gave Gavin and I a baitcaster each.

This was our chance to try for a Tripletail. We knew that the museum in Darwin would have been happy to get a new one for its fish collection, and I was super eager to catch my first one ever...

On my first cast we saw four of them swimming behind my lure, and one of them detached itself from the group and went for it. I was on! And what a surprise it was to see how easily it went back in the branches, like if the drag on my reel was just a minor inconvenience. It managed to bury me in the wood and to freed itself. I had though that because of the location I didn't risk to be snagged and hadn't put my drag too high. Realisation had been rapid and brutal, I should have got it a bit stronger.

And this I did.

We turned around the floating pieces of wood, and casted with not much success. So we swapped our hard bodies lures for some soft plastic ones, but that was not much better. And now we had a little shark turning around the boat, looking for a free feed.

Peter made us change lure once again, and we went for some scented Gulp, with relatively heavy jig head. The reasoning behind that was that we might have spooked them by now, and they might have got down a bit deeper in the water column, so we needed to get our lures in front of them if we wanted to have any chance to get one of them.

And this we wanted.

We came in line with the biggest branch, and I told Gavin: You cast on the right and I will cast on the left, so one of our lure is bound to fall on their nose.

That was a good plan, for me, as it was my lure that was nailed.

A short but fierce battle and Peter netted the fish!

My first ever Tripletail.

It was not only the first tripletail that I caught, it was also the first one that I had ever seen.

And because it was destined to the museum collection, it was also the first time in my entire fishing life that I had hooked on a fish that was going to end-up in a museum. Now this might sounds childish to some of you, but at the end of this great fishing day. Even if I had caught this one and only fish, I would have been very happy and that would still be one of my more memorable fishing trip. I had caught a fish for a museum!

Even if that meant that I would not be able to taste this fish which is supposed to be delicious, I was still  happy like a kid who just caught his first minnow.

It was then time to get back home.

Peter and I on the way back home.

It had been a great day on the water, with some very good company where once again, I learned a bit more about fishing.

Thanks Peter and Gavin for inviting me to fish with you.

Yes it is true, that now I dream of my own 95cm Barramundi, and of another Tripletail...

But hey, it could be worse.

Have a good day,

Me.

P.S: And don't forget my little competition to win a free lure, just click here to see it.

Upstream Of Goat Island.

Hi there,

It was 9:00am when I boarded the car of Arrabmundi, and we took off in direction of the Adelaide River. The plan for the day was to go and fish upstream of Goat Island, trolling deep divers over the rock bars.
The previous week a thread by Kai on the FFF forum, made Arrabmundi think that this could be a good thing to do. We were full of hope, and were not going to be disappointed.

We arrived at the boat ramp to be greeted by an almost empty car park, every body must have been at Shady Camp.
The boat was quickly launched and we started to flick at divers little creeks on our way to Goat Island, where we had planned to stop for lunch. Something I was looking forward to, has I had read and heard a lot about it but was yet to visit.
We did saw a few nice colours change but very little amount of bait in the water.
In one of these short stop, casting a B52's I got the first fish of the day. A very young and rather small Barramundi:

Autoportrait with a Barramundi.

This fish was only definitively undersize to be legal, so in the water it went back.

A fish this early is good augur I thought, but that was it for the morning...

We didn't raise another scale even at some spot that had been so productive a few weeks ago.

Had we made the right choice to come fishing this area at this time of the year?

The longest thing that my lure snagged this morning, was an eel... 

And it had wrapped itself around my line, the slimy thing...

It provided for some interesting times...

We passed a crocodile nest, sitting on the river bank, with the tracks of Moma Croc sliding towards the water just in front of it.

The place could have been fishy, but we didn't stay there for very long.

The Crocodile nest.

With Moma's tracks.

Coming from Europe, as a kid this is the kind of things, I would  have never imagined being able to see. We are very lucky in Darwin to be able to see such things not far from our homes. I do hope that my child will still be able to see them as a grown up.

Not long after Arrabmundi spotted a lure stuck in a snag, just out of the water.

It was a The Judge by Reidy's, he din't want it and gave it to me.

I was very happy, as it is one of my favourite +10 lure.

Thanks Arrabmundi.

Well we hadn't had lunch yet, and I was still full of optimism and confident in the ability  of my skipper to find some fish.

And talking about lunch, it was about time to go and get a little something to chew.

Kai had passed us on the river a bit before, and we had told him that we were coming and what we wanted to eat.

But as we arrived on the Island, he was still filling in the fridges that had been depleted the preceding night by some footy guys.

So we decided to go and have a look just upstream, at the places that we were going to fish in the afternoon while the burgers were being cooked.

That was just a very quick reconnaissance, and back we were, for a chitchat with Kai, and to eat the famous burger's from Goat Island. 

I have to say that this must have been the first time since I fish this part of the world, that I was able to sit at a table, in a fresh place, to eat a homemade burger, that tasted like a burger, while drinking a soft drink directly out of the fridge, and this is the kind of luxury I could quickly become accustomed to.

After that I felt refreshed and ready to engage with some mighty Barramundi.

And they were ready for us...

But before it all started in earnest we saw Moz, who was fishing solo on his boat.

Had a little chat with him and he had I think a 66cm Barra in the esky, but was finding the going a bit slow. 

At this point he was going a bit further upstream, while we were going back downstream.

We swapped information and parted route.

It started with Arrabmundi getting a 54cm (21.259843 inch) Barramundi...

1cm (0.39370079 inch) too short to be of legal size!

Arrabmundi first fish of the day.

We are not criminals, so this one was put back in the drink, to grow a bit more till our next encounter.

We had quite a few hits on a very short troll, with Arrabmundi getting the bigest ones. Some of them nearly ripping the fishing rod out of his hands.

But we couldn't stay connected to anything...

Then I got a good hit, followed immediately by another one, then the rod started to take a serious bent...

Arrabmundi who had seen all this happening said: your on!

Almost dejected my response was: No, I just got two good hits in rapid succession, and now I am snagged on the bottom...

So he put the boat in neutral so we could drift back over the snag and he started to get his own lure back. All the while I was just merely getting my line back on the reel thinking how unfair it was that I missed these two hit just to get my lure stuck at the bottom of the river. 

Then the snag emerged of the river full of life, trashing around and shaking it's head with my lure in it's mouth: Barramundi!

That how your pulse rate triple in less than a second and you start to think that you have just done everything needed to loose this fish, so there is no way you are going to boat it.

I tried as much as I could to stay cool, like if I knew all along, but the laughs of my skipper left me in no doubt that I had been an absolute goose.

Still he did  manoeuvre the boat to the centre of the river to give me a chance at it.

Every time that this fish jumped I could see my small lure a Poltergeist by Halco RMG in the Oz  Frog colour, deep in his open mouth. 

In the end the "snag" was netted, after a few runs and a few jumps. It was in fact the only Barramundi of the day, that would produce a few jumps, all the other that were to come, fought mostly deep down in the water column. 

This was to be a 73cm (28.740157 inch) Barramundi and was going to be my best of the day.

My first legal of the day.

Lure deep inside the Barramundi mouth.

I was so happy to have this fish, which I should have lost many times over. 

I now had caught a feed of fresh fish.

Not long after, I got another fish on the same lure, but it was too small and was released to grow bigger.

And then I had another very big hit again on the same lure.

This time there was no pretending, I knew from the start that I was on, and that bit was a good fish.

It was peeling line, going from one side to the other. Not giving me much time to think of a plan, he was in charge.

Once again the boat was placed in the middle of the river, and from there the fight had a chance to turn in my favour, as by doing this we had been able to get this fish away from the snags.

But even once I started to see some of my leader near the boat, it went again for a deep dive straight down. It took a lot of persuasion to get it back boat side, the leader came back in sight, this was starting to be tense and sweet, when the line went slack, and my lure floated back to the surface all alone... With one hook bent... 

Ho, how I could have then cursed the people who build fishing lures with hooks that bent... 

The positive in this was that it had been a very exciting struggle, and that this kind of outcome quickly puts you back in check and reminds you who can be the other player.

Yet... I would have loved to get this fish, that I didn't even got to see...

And then it was Arrabmundi hour of glory, with a brilliant trifecta, with a 74, 76 and 79cm (29.133858, 29.92126 and 31.102362 inch) Barramundi.

Here they are in order of arrivals:

74 cm of silver Barramundi.

76 cm of Lates calcarifer.

And 79cm of joy.

In between Arrabmundi very nice session we saw Moz again, coming down our way.

He hadn't found any fish upstream, so Arrabmundi invited him to troll along the same run than us as it seemed to be productive.

He did hook on a beautiful fish, but this one was not to be caught and buried Moz in the snags.

Has for Arrabmundi 79 cm Barramundi, it was released, with the hope that we could one day catch it again...

But not long after being released, this very fish was attacked by a shark and lost it's tail in the encounter.

Moz was then able to net it.

Here is an image of it:

Moz and the tailless Barramundi.

I did catch another keeper, a fish of 70cm (27.559055 inch) on the dot.

I kept it for my mother in law, as I am among the few blessed men to have a very good mother in law. 

This fish should keep me in the good books for a little longer.

Last fish of the day.

This was the last fish coming aboard for the day.

A day that will stay a great day  of fishing in my memories.

We did loose a few good fish, but got some nice ones too. It easily made up for the ones that got away.

Thanks again Arrabmundi for the invitation.

Yes loosing a good fish because of a weak hook was frustrating...

But hey, it could be worse.

Have a good day,

Me.