The BOM report on Sunday morning was not pretty for blue water travel. .but i had planned to get up at 5am to head to Buff creek with the 5 year old in tow for some crabs if it looked ok by the mornings report..

There was no rain or wind at Parap.. just lightning and thunder out off the coast by the looks.. BOM showed the wind as dropping but still forecast 15-20knot winds and 1.5-2m swell.

I htought what the hell i am up. .might as well head down for a look and the 5 year old was keen as mustard..

There was one bloke at Buff creek land based fishing.. the creek was calm . .but the breakers on the sandbar didnt look pretty.. i could see however that the channel out did not appear to have whitecaps..

So in we went..
Thanks to the landbased fisho for lending me a hand to launch.

I have a 5.69 Stacer Nomad i got from the boat show last year. we snuck out towards the buff creek channel mankers where i had about 1.3 - 2m clearance.. it changed a fair bit due to the rolling swell.... with the nose of the nomad pointed out to see i picked my timing and slowly got out the back of the 3 or 4 breakers without incident.. the nomad handled brilliantly considering the conditions. .its the roughest water i have been in up here..

Once out the back a kilometre or so.. i could head across into shoal bay..

doing it all in reverse with the swell now behind us, i chose an appropriate creek and headed in.. again, the size and stability of the 5.69 Nomad it felt really good coming in over the breakers.. i had good control and with the 115hp on the back was able to keep the boat at the back of the waves.
The couple of times i ran down the face of the waves there was no listing or lack of control and i was able to power on to get onto the next wave infront..

Anyway.. i spent the push in tide dropping the crab pots and the 5 year old had a ball pulling them in. . i ran a mixture of whatever bait i had in the freezer.. Jewfish, Snapper, Barra frames.. & woolies BBQ chook..

I have said it before, for me anyway. .the BBQ chook seems a winner.. it doesnt last long once the crabs get to it. .but that pot had 3 big bucks in it, its probably the oils in it i am guessing..
we ended up with 10 keepers.. all male.. and threw back 5 under size..

We headed back out to sea at about 9.30am.. and got back into Buff creek with the high tide.. i had not thought about that part.. as once i rounded the channel markers i realised how rough inside buff creek can get when the high tide and sweel is coming over that sandbar and pushign you into the mangroves..

It all ened well, we stayed dry all morning and i was pleasantly surprised how calm the ramp actually was.. which makes elf retreived a 5.69m boat easier on me

I was home by mid morning.. the 5 year old now becomes useful when it came to washing the boat down..

Then a mate called asking if i wanted to bring my boy along for a couple of hours on the Adelaide.. I had just finished washing mine but it was still packed and hooked to the car so i said i would come get him.. now we took the 3 lads, 5 or under for a Barra session.

Heading out through palmerston and the Doo it was bucketing down... it didnt look good... but within about 1km of the Adelaide ramp it had cleared up enough for us to give it a try.. there were heaps of trailers at the ramp, we put in and headed upstream.

Like other reports on this weekend, there was nice colour change but no fish .. anyway the boys had a good afternoon and we stayed pretty dry too !

Back home by 4pm. . and wash the boat again.....

Nice work on the crabs!!! 2 trips in one day only in the Territory!

Great to get the tin lids interested while they are young. It is a skill that they will have with them for the rest of their life.

Everyone keep saying 'take a kid fishing'....but have you ever tried it? We had a 3 y.o and 2 x 5 y.o.s on the boat with lures flying everywhere, a tangle ever 2 minutes, they change lures every five minutes and what a chocolate milk every half an hour....

Lucky I had my emergency kit....

Emergency Kit!!!!

Gaaarn, ya had a ball BD.

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I hear you Brent

My little princess (3 y.o) loves it but looses interest really fast (like her mother when the bite is off).

A portable DVD player and a heap of Dora & Spongebob disks and away we go!!!

Sometimes its worth it

Told ya.. had a ball..check out the grins.

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