I Haden't Fished In A Long Time.

Hi there,

Yes For multiple reasons I had been in the absolute impossibility to fish for a very long time.

Well, to be honest mostly because I went on vacation overseas...

But I am back, and more eager than ever.

•               First time in a long time.

•               We fished on the Elisabeth River.

•               We got fish and crabs.

I was still jet lag and rather tired when Brett called offered me to go fishing on the Elizabeth River.

I immediately said Yes!

He asked if I didn't need a bit of time to be sure of my answer, so I thought about it for about one or two seconds, and said Yes! again...

Yes I was sure that I wanted to go fishing. So sure in fact that on the fishing day between the excitement and the jet lag, I woke up at 2:00am and could not find sleep again. 

So I drove my car to the boat ramp a bit earlier than planned, and started to wait sitting in the car, listening to the radio. 

After a little while, slowly but surely, I could feel myself falling asleep.

There was just one thing to do, get out of the car, and take some pic of my close environment to try to keep awake. 

That is about then that Brett spotted me. He had arrived a few minutes earlier, but was parked on the opposite side of the parking, we hadn't seen each other, and were both waiting for the other one, on the same parking...

This could have easily make us lost some precious fishing time, lucky that it didn't.

Once we had caught up we quickly launched, and made our way toward some little creek and mangrove to try to find our old friends Mr and Mrs Baramundi.

Mangrove lined creek.

This was a nice and quiet place, I started to attach a lure at the end of my line.

Brett told me: "Flick your lure just over there."

This I did, making my first cast of the day where I had been told to. Reeling in the lure, I was looking at the water, the trees the sky and everything in between, thinking that the holidays had been great, but that I had missed the noble art of angling, and more so, catching a fish.

This is when I felt a little bump like a dead weight on my line and started to think, oh no, I just arrived, first cast and I am already snagged, hopefully it is only in the mud...

Well it wasn't in the mud...

Because the water erupted, my line went out of my reel instead of coming back on it and a nice little piece of piscatorial chrome started to dance over the water. Doing numerous jumps and all. I was on! On my first cast of the day!

Oh yes I got excited, I wanted to laugh and be serious, I wanted to get this fish to the boat.

And in the boat it came.

First Barramundi after the holidays.

It wasn't a monster, but it was a sweet baby. It not only made me happy, but to me it proved if needed be, that Brett who will start to be a fishing guide next month, will be a very good guide. 

The fish was one cm too short, and was quickly put back in the water.

Our spirits started to fly high, we were in for a good day.

Well it did take a bit of time after that, before anything happens. 

But eventually, Brett started to scream Muddy! Mud Crab! Give me the spear!

It went a bit like: What where is the crab? Just give me the spear! Ok.

And voilas! Brett speared the beast and got really happy to have his dinner sorted out, with a nice big full Mud Crab.

Now, if only I could catch myself a fish big enough to eat...

Well it didn't take long after that, I got on my second Barra for the day, and once again simply by sending my lure swimming where Brett told me that it should be a good ambush spot for a Barramundi.

Second Barramundi of the day.

This was was of a better size, and as such it was not his lucky day, head first in the esky it went.

We both had our dinner in the cold box, from now on it would be just fun and games.

Well lucky that because the water started to be too low, the fish had disappeared and we couldn't find any more of them to play with us.

But the command for the spear came again and this time I knew what to do.

Even if I got a bit slow, and the crab nearly eluded capture, it was in the end harpooned and Brett had now not one but tow big crab for dinner.

Life was beautiful, we had been on the water for about three hours, the change of wind and the tide made us decide to call it a day. 

Low tide on the mangrove.

We headed for the bridge and the ramp:

The bridge over Elizabeth River.

This had been a great morning, and I was able to go home and nurse my jet lag with a good nap.

Thank you Brett for inviting me on your boat.

So yes, I had outfitted my skipper and this is a pretty rude thing to do. But to be honest, I got the fish, because he pointed them to me. Without this help I could very well have come back empty handed, like I have more than a few time in the past...

But hey, it could be worse.

Have a good day,
Me.

2016 Top End Barra Series Round 3.

Hi there,

A week ago the third round of the 2016 Top End Barra Series was taking place at Bynoe Harbour, here comes the tale of it.

• It was very hard fishing.
• I fished from two different boats over the weekend.
• I didn't come back home empty handed.

For the first day, I was fishing with Jason, who had never fished on Bynoe Harbour before.

Luckily for us, Brett gave us all the good information on how to catch a fish over there.

And did we put this knowledge to good use?

No we didn't...

We arrived early and full of confidence, to see a beautiful sunrise over the harbour:

Sunrise at the boat ramp.

From Six Pack Creek, we launched.

Zooming to our first point of attack. The place was already occupied, by some really keen anglers, who had beaten us to the spot.

We stood to the side and tried to get a fish, with no success. 

We moved from one spot to the other, but could not get a fish.

We finally went all around Turtle island, but for no results, once again.

Jason fishing at Turtle Island.

From there we went to try our luck in one of the numerous creeks of the harbour.

Where we didn't get anymore chance than before.

It was great to catchup with Jason, to enjoy a calm day of fishing, even if the day was hot and humid. 

The water was real flat, like a mirror.

Living the life!

the only fish I got on the day, were three little cods.

All released to grow bigger.

With not much to call home about, we decided that it had been a hot and long day, and to cut it short.

So at around 3:00pm, we were off the water, starting to roll back toward civilisation.

And just then, the rain started falling...

At this time of the year, we should have had a nice and cool weather, it should have been the dry season...

At home in the evening I called Brett, and told him how the day went.

He said, that tomorrow was going to be a day with some fish.

So Sunday, one quarter of an hour early, I was in front of his home, texting him to ask if he was still sleeping. Yes I was keen to go back on the water for a revenge against Mr and Ms Barramundi.

Light at the ramp was even better than on the previous day.

View from the boat ramp.

Once the light started to shine, we could see that the water was still like glass.

Not a ripple in view.

Cruising in the clouds.

Being a bit early for the Barra, we decided to go and try to hook a few Queenfish behind a small island.

There we didn't really see as many Queenfish as expected. But the light show was worth the journey.

Rising sun over Bynoe Harbour.

Brett and I had nearly as much trouble to find the fish than Jason and I had on the first day.

Yet we finally found some, hiding in very skinny waters, straight against the bank, between tree roots.

The first fish to swallow a lure, had grabbed Brett's offering. And what a show it gave us!

It was all over in about one or two second, but it will stay etched in my memory for a very long time.

The small lure swimming towards the boat.

The Barramundi following it, and engulfing it very close to the boat.

Turning straight away and breaking the line nearly at the same time.

The line clacked in a very sharp way, and I thought that the rod had broken.

Thankfully it was only the line.

Never had I seen that before, it was pure raw force. It didn't even look like the fish had made any effort, yet the line had broken like if it was made of the most fragile material.

On this, Brett decided to put a stronger leader on his line.

And it did pay off, for the first Barramundi of the weekend was caught.

First Barramundi of the weekend.

With Brett on the board, it should have been my turn to catch a fish.

But he had other ideas, and while I was constantly putting my lure in the trees branch, or snagging the tree roots. Because, yes, by this stage, I was getting too excited every times that we saw a fish. Sight casting to Barramundi, can be really entertaining. So while I was busy catching trees, Brett caught his second Barramundi:

Brett's second fish.

And the fish disappeared, and the action went down.

It started to look like I had totally missed my chance.

Slowly we were on the way of the ramp.

Casting lures towards any bank where we could see the bait being harassed, by what we estimated to be Salmon. 

At one stage right on the bank we saw once again the bait being very nervous and the splashing of a Threadfin Salmon.

We sent our lures flying in the direction of the action, for no avail.

Halfhearted I flicked my lure, and thought that it had fallen in the water way to short of where the commotion was taking place. Just reeling in the lure in a slow roll, I suddenly felt my line tense, and saw the rod bending. I was on, I had the Thready! Fighting the fish and reeling in, it was only once it was near the boat that we saw it and realised that it was a Barramundi.

I was so surprised that I nearly lost my ability to reel.

But after a little while, the fish was in the net, and all the effort of the weekend forgotten.

My Barramundi of the weekend.

Just like that, along a muddy bank, without any structure or snag, I had caught a nice little Barramundi. That little fish made me very happy, and by now I can also tell you that it tasted very good.

Alas, as it is often the case when fishing the time flew quick, and it was time to go home.

Boat going for the ramp.

It was a great weekend of fishing, thank you to Jason and Brett for having invited me  on their boats.

Leaving the fishing grounds.

Yes, I do hope to fish Bynoe Harbour again in the future.

This is the kind of place that can turn magic, when the condition for great fishing all aligns.

So as it has been said in the past: I'll be back.

Now it is true that I was thinking at the beginning of the weekend that I would have caught a lot more of Barramundi... Yet fishing is sometimes like that...

But hey, it could be worse.

Have a good day,

Me.

My First Two Deep River Lures.

Hi there,

I just received two very beautiful Deep River Lures.

• They are Handmade from timber.
• The two are very different from each other.
• I won them on the FFF.
• I intend to use them to fish.

Look at what I received:

Two Deep River Lures.

So, how and why?

Well, it is pretty simple in fact.

If you post on the great fishing forum FFF, and at the end of your post use the #DeepRiver, your post could be chosen as the lucky one for the month. And you would be sent one or two lures, directly from the man who makes them himself, Mr Barney.

And boy oh boy, they are nice.

So now that you had a preview of the lures, and know how I got them, lets look at them a bit closer.

First is the Slim.

A very beautiful fishing lure, that I will use mainly in the pursuit of Barramundi.

The Deep River Lures Slim 100.

To me, this lure has Barramundi written all over it.

From the shape, the colour, the fins and the shallow bib, just like I love them.

Here is a portrait of it:

Portrait of the Deep River Lures Slim 100.

This one is the shallow version. Which to me is great, as I mainly fish shallow waters.

And now comes the Mugil:

The Deep River Lures Mugil 70.

Now if this is not a really good looking little lure, I don't know what this is...

It is well finished, with an interesting shape. I think that it would be a great lure to target the Mangrove Jack. I can't wait to see it's action in the water.

And talking about the finish, look at the bib:

Pinned bib for extra strength.

This is one of the reason I personally would feel confident to target Mangrove Jack with this lure. The bib seems solid and well attached to the lure body.

Deep River Lures are handmade in Queensland, Australia, by Barney.

There is a great selection of body shapes and colours have a look at their range. (The link is at the top of this very post, in blue)

Thank you to Barney and the FFF for organising this friendly competition, and sending me these two beautiful lures.

Here comes one last photo, for the road:

Little lure for big fish.

Now it is true that when I receive such beautiful lures I usually keep them for the collection.

But this time I will actually fish with them.

Even it they will certainly end up with a few scratch from the carnivorous fish that swim around in Darwin's waters...

But hey, it could be worse.

Have a good day,

Me.

2016 Top End Barra Series Round 2.

Hi there,

Here comes the long awaited story of the second round of the 2016 Top End Barra Series.

• It was on the Daly River.
• The water was very dirty.
• The fishing was real hard.
• The camaraderie was great.
• I fished it with Jason.

This year the second round of the TEBS as it is known around our part of the world, was taking place on the mighty Daly River.

And what a round it was... The water was really low for the season, despite the Daly round being much earlier than on years gone by. A few people damaged their props or got stuck on the sand. And more than should have been, came back without having caught any fish at all...

Not even some little cat fish.

But that was not our story, we did get some fish!

Now how dirty the water was?

Well take a look:

Daly River.

As you can see, the river was dirty and dangerous.

Dangerous for boat's outboards, and for lures that got snagged on so many drifting pieces of wood.

Yet, as we arrived near this spot, we caught up with Brett and his mate Karl. And Brett told us that he had caught four Barramundi the previous day, and to troll just there with a +10 lure.

Naturally I put a Reidy's Big Ass in the 008 colour, one of my all time favourite, at the end of my line and we started trolling.

We must have been trolling for about 10 to 15 minutes when I got a massive hit!

The hit was sudden, and the line immediately started to fly from my reel at great speed.

I could not stop it, no question about that.

It lasted a few seconds, then the line went slack, the fish had spit the lure...

This must have been a really big one and we both called it for a metery.

Wow, we thought, if it is starting like that, it will be a cracker of a weekend!

Well life is not like that, and it was indeed a great weekend, but with not many fish to play with.

It was going to be a long time before the next fish bite.

We then saw Brett and Karl again:

Paparazzi everywhere!

Yes they were getting ready to take some pictures, but not of us...

In fact they were getting ready to photograph Pete who had just caught a nice Barramundi:

The photographers at work.

And yes, I did take a photo too:

Pete with a nice fish.

This was a weekend where Pete was going to shine. Being one of two only to get his full bag of Barramundi (5).

Catch and release in action.

At least it showed us that their was still some Barra in this stretch of water.

This brought us to trolling it a bit more.

I was by then using a lure that I had found a bit earlier, floating by. It was a Classic +10 and as the saying goes: " A found lure is a lucky lure". I got a hit.

The line tensed and started to pull a bit on my rod.

We got all excited and I was afraid that the fish would go in one of the numerous snags bordering the river. But we got it in the boat, thanks to a great netting action from Jason. And I was on the board!

My first Barramundi of the weekend.

At 71cm (27.952756 inches), this was no monster, but still made me feel very content.

This newly found lure was a lucky one.

And look at the chrome on this fish!

It was release too, to grow bigger and fight another day.

Not long after, Jason got a rat of a Barramundi, too small to be a point scorer.

And that was about it for the day...

The river was as beautiful as it can be:

The daly river in the afternoon.

But it was time for us to go back to the camping ground.

On the way we saw some TEBS participants who had elected to sleep in their boat. Straight on the river ready to fish at night if the fish were to come on the chew.

But with what seemed to be a storm coming we went for the safe option.

Sailing back to camp.

The rain was only very short, and after a good shower and a steak at the camp, we fell asleep pretty quick. Yes fishing is exhausting...

On the following morning, the light gave a sensation of end of the world, or maybe new beginning...

Morning light at the Banyan Farm.

This is what I saw as I was getting out of my tent. 

And then we went to the boat ramp:

Light at the boat ramp.

There the light was a bit different, but still quite impressive.

No wonder I love going fishing so much. At any time of the day, there is something to look at.

Just wait to see...

Jason drove the boat past Brown Creek, a spot of very low water, where a few boats ran into trouble:

Jason driving his boat.

Not long after that, we were at the spot where I had caught my Barramundi on the day before.

And Jason line got stretched!

He was on!

The fish started by taking a good run, and quickly as I could, I opened the net.

Yes this was going to be the biggest fish of the day, but after a good fight we saw what kind of fish it was.

And Barramundi it was not...

Shark on the lure.

Yes the Daly too is a river with a healthy population of shark.

Even if we both felt slightly disappointed that it was not a Barramundi, we did have a good laugh about it. These sharks can give you a good work out on Barra gear.

Not long after I got my second Barramundi of the weekend.

As soon as it hit, I thought, Oh this is not a big one, but please be at least 50cm...

But it was only 48cm, not even a point scorer.

Still a fish is a fish, and it definitively made me smile.

It was on the same lure than my last fish too, the lucky found lure.

As we were cruising along the river, either trolling or casting our lures to snags and fishy looking spots. We kept an eye on all the crocodiles that we were seeing. Yes the Daly has a big population of large salt water  and fresh water crocodiles.

We then spotted a salt water one, that seemed to swim a bit strange.

So we went closer, once we realised that it looked pretty much dead.

And dead it was:

Dead crocodile on the Daly River.

It was floating along with the tide, and was really smelly. In fact you could even say that the thing stank like there was no tomorrow!

Now I don't know what killed it, but if that was another crocodile, it must then have been a very big one... Scary...

And this, was the story of the 2016 Top End Barra Series Round 2 from my own point of view.

The fish that I caught put me in the ninth position for the round and 19th on the overall scoreboard.

Which for me is not that bad really, even rather good.

We still had a great time, it was good to catch up with some mate, and to fish on that river where I don't go very often.

Thank you Jason for inviting me on your boat.

Yes we could have caught more fish...

But hey, it could be worse.

Have a good day,

Me.

Fishing Elisabeth River.

Hi There,

For the first time, I went fishing the Elisabeth River, Thanks to an invitation from Brett.

• I had never fished the Elisabeth River before.
• The main target was Barramundi.
• I got badly sunburnt.

Brett had told me on the phone to meet him at Palmerston boat ramp on the Lizzie River.

Now, after arriving in Darwin a bit over 19 years ago, I still didn't know where was the Palmerston boat ramp or the Lizzie River...

Looking for Palmerston boat Ramp on Google Maps gave me another ramp.

Looking for Lizzie River boat ramp, gave me a boat ramp on Elizabeth River, close enough, that must be the one.

I made my way to the ramp and arrived a bit earlier than planned, but Brett was already on the water, so all was good.

With the tide still a bit high, Brett decided to show me a spot where Queenfish always go feeding on a big tide.

And yes, they were around in big numbers, feeding like hungry chickens.

Brett started to get some fish on the fly rod:

Brett getting a Queenfish on the fly rod.

This was getting real fun, with double hook up happening on a regular basis.

Even if I kept loosing my fish.

I was using a small Rapala Skitter Pop and the surface strikes were very visual and exciting.

I finally got a fish to the boat and released it, and immediately started to cast again.

Got another nice small Queenfish on the same lure:

Queenfish on Rapala Skitter Pop.

This one I keep for a feed.

I then tried to put a chrome slice with a single hook on my line. The idea was to let it sink, and then try to bring it back in an as erratic as possible way, on the baitcaster, to see if bigger fish were swimming deeper down the water column.

I was getting hits on the drop, and finally got a fish to stick to the lure.

It was a small Trevally.

It was great fun and I could have done that for a few hours without getting bored. But the tide had started to slow, and it was time to go and try for some Barramundi.

The plan was to fish some little creeks sight casting to the Barra.

One of the many little creek on Elisabeth River.

The first Barramundi that we saw, was on Brett's side.

He made a perfect cast just a bit in front of it, and swam the lure past its nose.

The Barramundi didn't think twice and boofed the little lure with gusto.

Once it realised it had been tricked, it jumped out of the water and showed us his nice chromy sides, that was a healthy fish!

Now, netting a Barramundi is not exactly rocket science, but for some reason I had to have a few go at it, and it is only on the third try that the fish finally went in the net. Which was about time, as I was starting to stress that it was going to chew on the thin leader used by Brett.

A nice salt water Barramundi.

That was a good fish and it made us very optimist for the rest of the morning.

Well, we did see numerous other ones, to which I flicked lures, but without any good results.

I just was too excited to see the Barramundi swimming in clear shallow waters. I casted too far, or too close, when it was not behind the fish.

I missed my casts, I spooked the fish, and I didn't catch any on them.

With the wind starting to blow, we decided to go in another creek.

At the entrance of which was a crocodile trap.

Crocodile trap in the creek water.

Let's just say that it must have been a very clever croc living in that creek.

And that instead of taking the bait in the trap, he had eaten all the Barramundi of the creek.

At least that will be our excuse for not finding any fish there. 

The creek.

It was a beautiful creek, but we couldn't catch any Barramundi in there.

By now it was the morning's end, and I had told my daughter that I would take her shopping early in the afternoon. It was time to go back.

Thank you Brett for inventing me on your fine boat, I had a great time on the water, and saw new places that I had never fished before.

Yes I know, I have to learn to stop being excited as a kid in a lolly shop, when trying to sight cast at some Barramundi. 

But hey, it could be worse.

Have a good day,

Me.