North Australian FISH FINDER TM forums

Darwin Harbour
February 7

Disappointment! I guess you have some of these days on the water.

First: Second cast of the day I hooked a trevally, my totally lax drag fooled me into thinking it might have been edible.
Second: Soon afterwards Mud hooked a barra, hard to say size 50-60 so could have been table fish, to have it spit the hook at the boat
Third: Later in the day I saw something swirling up near a drain, soon enough I hook a barra 65-70 so a nice fish, he charged towards the boat, jumped at the boat, I kept a tight line, but about a second after getting back underwater he spat the hook.
Fourth: In desperation I headed over to where I got the fish in December to find there were zero drains... my only guess it was affected by rainwater last time, but I thought I had a secret spot but now I realise I've got nothing.

Got:
Me: Small Trevelly and smaller cod
Mud: Nothing

Story of the trip:
Probably losing that barra, but let's be positive, zero boat problems, not much chop, no rain, mild day temperature wise, also launched from dinah beach so zero travel time.

Boat problems:
Nothing! Even better I realised that I am an idiot who wasn't switching my batteries over last time, so the problems that I thought I had were incorrect.

Snap

Thats a bugger matr. Still sounds like a good day

Darwin Harbour / Dinah Beach Boat Ramp
February 15

So this was my theory, I wanted to do more quick fishing trips. If I don't have time for a full day, I would just put the boat in Dinah Beach Boat Ramp (10 mins away) and spend a few hours in the water, (plus an extra 2 packing up). Well I had to work Saturday so I figured I might as well give it a shot, and everything went great, except no fish.

Things are doing really well elsewhere so next weekend I need to put in the miles.

Got:
Me: 1 small, 1 medium Powertail
Tameka: Nothing

Story of the trip:
Went down to Reichart's and there was life everywhere. A few boofs, fish jumping, it all looked pretty good. Yet nothing was biting, apart from a couple of Powertail. So much life for nothing. At one point I could see a fish (thought it was a barra, but a closer inspection now thinking maybe a shark) and I swam a lure past its face a few times, once I dragged the lure into its body, it just lazily continued swimming along without a care in the world.

Boat problems:
The battery ran out, I think I did too much on the minnkota, and not enough on the engine. I started it on the second one and managed to charge it a bit on the drive home. Started on battery 1 for the engine flush so I think it is okay.

Snap
Forgot to take pics until I was heading back...

Lots of work, one small barra
March 8

Well, well. Looking at the tides I thought the harbour would be good, but ended up hitting shoal bay instead. Lots of work for this trip! Apart from the 8 hours of solid fishing for one undersized barra, other fun included:
- Motor constantly getting blocked with mud
- Electric motor problems, culminating with the foot pedal starting to smoke
- Someone's crab pot rope wrapped around the prop
- A constant battle to keep the main battery charged (I had a back up battery for the trip home, but I wouldn't lekkie from it)

Wasn't all bad. I learnt a lot from the experience, shoal bay and buffalo creek boat ramp is a nice spot, and the boat handled the small chop really well. I'm sure I'll get some results soon, though that electric motor is critical to how I fish.

Got:
Me: 1 undersized barra
Mud: Nothing

Story of the trip:
Some guys were battling a large barra. I think they were live baiting and it kept taking it and jumping out of the water. I really wanted to go over and start flicking at it, but that would have been majorly uncool. I don't think they ever landed it, but they hooked it a few times.

Boat problems:
Need a new foot pedal. No more electric motor until I get one. And at this time of the year...

Snap

Disco I will send you a PM about the Harbor. I have been doing well there of late.

Dry 2015 continues....
March 14

Oh dear. I didn't think that it could get much more frustrating than last week. Well... I wasn't the skipper this week, my deckie had a much larger and nice boat than me with a 250 on the back, we hit shoal bay and given the forecast of 17 knot winds we decided to take his out. First thing we did was launch at buffalo creek and get stuck on THREE sandbanks on the way out. Then we hit shoal bay hard for zero fish.

The skipper was persisting in casting with a very old baitcaster that kept getting into birdsnests... he was joking that he every time he did his rods up he ended using the reel that didn't work. Well it 'not funny' quickly when he hooked a huge fish and BANG his reel exploded, splitting on the base that connects it to the rod!

Got:
Nothing.
Hey Matt, do I have the ability to change my nickname to "the human banana"?

Story of the trip:
Came across a smaller croc who had thought it was a great idea to bite into a crab float. Problem was he couldn't quite get his mouth around it, and his teeth got stuck in it. So there he was thrashing around trying to get this float out of his mouth.

Beautiful creatures, rah rah, it was actually pretty funny. Wasn't out crab pot so we left it alone.

Boat problems:
The skippers spring on his trailer exploded when he was reversing in his driveway. Nice to know my luck extends to other people's boats too.

Snap

Shady Camp Madness!!
March 22

The drought is over!

An insane fishing trip. We went for the day to Shady camp for the day, which is over 3 hours from my place, meaning we only had about 4 hours fishing in the day for a 6 to 6.5 hour drive. We hit the barrages... In about the first 5 minutes Mud had us a 62cm keeper. Great stuff. It got bigger from there. Mud got a 60 something one soon after. And then another. Okay, good stuff Mud. Then BANG I am on... I think the excitement got to me - soon I had reeled in a nice, large, silver... Powertail!

Soon Mud had pulled in an undersized barra, and not long after I was on. I won't play it up (that will happen later) I knew it was small as soon as I got him, a 50cm barra.

We moved about 5 metres down to give us better access to what looked like a hotspot. Mud soon hooked up a 70cm barra, which was great, but I was getting a mite frustrated. I was using the exact same lure, technique, and spots as he was, and not much to show for it. There was a 30 minute lull after that, but soon BANG Mud was on again... this time with a 74cm fat barra. I netted it (despite my urge to crack Mud over the back of the head an leave him there... outfishing the captain like that is plain rude) and soon lost my white squidgy.

I decided it was time for my "lucky lure" the gold Starlo hardbody with the terrible hooks that I hadn't gotten around to changing. As well as my custom rod (a present from the fiancee) I had set the drag a tad loose as there weren't any snags... what could go wrong?

I tried and tried to get something, 30 minutes later I was starting to lose heart, about 1 metre from the boat a massive barra inhaled lucky and started peeling off line. It had a massive run before I brought it back to the boat. Soon it went on its second massive run. At this point I realised the drag was too lose, so I thought on the third run I would tighten it. It jumped on the wind back and I saw the lure was on the outside of the mouth, and I hate adjusting on the run, so I scrapped that plan. Soon it was on its third run away, and I was thinking "man this is fun!", you've got to enjoy these moments. I got it back to the boat for a third time.... it was off again of its forth run. This time I got back it decided it should hide under my boat, that made me tighten the drag, and the fish was spent. Booyah!! He straightened 2 hooks in one treble, 1 in another.

(If you think this paragraph is a bit much for a single fish, read over what I've done this year to get him)

I was going to release it... I tried to revive it for about 5 minutes but it was done, it had given everything to the fight, ah well it will get eaten and enjoyed.

Oh yeah, we then hit the main barrage and had a crack at the huge school of tarpon there for some fun

Got:
Mud: 5 keepers, 3 rats, 62cm smallest keeper, 74cm biggest, 2 tarpon
Me: Powertail, 50cm barra, 72cm barra, 4 tarpon
(I won the tarpon-off at least)

Story of the trip:
My 3 goals for 2015 was to:
1) Get a metery
2) Bag out
3) Release a keeper (I never do that unless I have very, very good reason)

So that is item (2) done. Bagged out in 3 hours! Most people at the ramp said it was a poor day...

Boat problems:
Nothing. Barely used it though, went about 500metres

Snap
Very happy (the red is from my esky)

Well done!

haha I laughed so much bet you are stoked! Good work!!

great reports! shame we don't have more like it

Great day out and enjoyed reading your report. Especially the part about Mud catching nice barramundis.

PS If you had taken my advice and tightened your drag sooner you probably would have lost that baz to straightened hooks lol

Theo & Siab - Thanks guys! I appreciate people take the time to read it.

Matt, I think it's a shame that I don't have more days like this that I can write about! It's hard coming up reports like last weekend when nothing happened. But if I ignore those days on here I think that is a form of lying... got to write about it all. I've been getting into all4adventure dvd's too and saw you yesterday outfishing them the same way Mud outfished me. Good stuff.

Yeah Mud that was a possibility, but if I had of lost the fish you would have said "I told you so" pretty loudly. I knew how poor those hooks were, I will swap hooks this weekend I think. Also try to find a shop that sells them...

Currently enjoying my lunch at work, some nummas I made with the offcuts

Hi there,

Great report!
And congratulation!
Yes to the skipper, and the deckie too...


Have a good day,
Pecheur

FROM THE PAST: The first, and best, barra session I had

I won't put all the pictures up in this thread as it will 'clutter it', but if you want to see more snaps, check out my website http://www.tidesandtrails.com/

This was back in April of 2011 and I lived in Airlie Beach. We had had a particularly heavy wet season, and for the first time ever Peter Faust dam had started to overflow. People were going up there to look at it, sort of a semi-tourist attraction. But word quickly filtered around that all the barra, were getting swept over the top of the dam, rumor had it that if you could get to the bottom you would be in for an epic session.

Up until then I was mostly a dead bait and reef fisherman, I had never caught a barra. So me and my mate Tony decided to head there. Sounded simply, but it was a last minute decision, we only had a few hours, and we forgot a few things. And when we got there we found out that most of it was locked behind barbwire fences. We found a route down that never said "do not trespass" so we figured if we weren't crossing any restricted areas we would be okay.

We got down there to discover we didn't bring:

- Suncream
- A landing net, fish grippers, or anything that might make getting barra from a very steep incline easier
- A tape measure
- An esky (we assumed all the fish would be inedible)

We brought the camera and some rods and that was about it.

He got about three before I got my first one. I would be interested to know what people thought about eating it... it is fairly silver, and to me, looks edible.


But the story of the day was the big girl that Tony hooked. He took my pliers and made an indent on his rod, and later measured it to be 137cm. Here are the snaps I took, with a normal canon powershot d10 camera (no photoshop or fancy lenses or anything)


Most of the barra had marks on them from the damage they had taken going down the concrete dam. Right at the end of the day, I hooked a horse of my own. I fought it for a while, but it managed to get my line tangled in some trees with a clever jump. Tony climbed the tree to get it untangled, even fell in the water. However the line must have become worn on the wood, and it broke soon afterwards. This (and more) was captured on Tony's go-pro:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7ImDLTCsUQ
(i am having trouble posting this)

So what happened after that? Well I wanted to go back, but I found out later that you weren't allowed anywhere there. Security had stopped warning fisherman and started prosecuting them. But the main reason I never went back was because of this: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/qu ... 6040162004

We didn't think much of it at the time, but we were literally at the bottom of a dam when an earthquake hit.

So I decided to be thankful for what I had, not venture down there again, and just have a memory of a 2 hour barra session that likely won't be repeated.

Horse!!! Nice fish mate