Daly River - Saturday 14/01

And jacks, salmon, jewfish - tell us how you went. NT, FNQ and Norwest.
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Out Blue
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Daly River - Saturday 14/01

Post by Out Blue »

A mate and I headed to the Daly around 5am in the morning, more to give the boat a good run and just get away from the wet season yard work and mowing needed which turns into a weekly 5 acre chore.

Arrived and found the car park chockers, for some reason we were thinking we'd pick up a park near the ramp but who knows what we were thinking this time of year. Must've been at least 25 trailers parked up.

Hit the water and headed down river to see what's about. River was up as we expected, maybe around 7m and was pretty clean considering I thought although there are some good size logs making their way down river and no doubt back with the tide later in sections.

I haven't fished the Daly for maybe 5-10 years, can't even remember the last time I was there as I've taken more to the bluewater scene but heading down river I did miss it.

All of the creeks had boats a) either stationed in and out the mouths fishing or b) waiting to swoop once someone moved on so we kept going. Elizabeth had maybe a half dozen boats in and around so still we kept going.

Finally we found a nice bit of clear water pushing out of a creek my mate had previously caught fish at so we set ourselves up for what was a long day just as an isolated cell commenced to drop a bucket load of rain on our head.

The first thing we noticed was a complete lack of bait. I could count the number of mullet I saw on one hand and probably saw more snakes trying to get into our boat then bait. Still, we were there so we thrashed the water with rubbers. The colour coming out of the creek was promising and it wasn't long until we were hooked up to a nice fish. It jumped several times and had a few good runs, I could see it was a pretty good size but was more focused on looking for a red tag before even having the fish at the boat. Anyway, after a short fight we boated a nice fish that went 85cm and thought that today might be one of those days.

Well it was. Apart from a smaller 65cm taken maybe an hour later, we had one other hit during our 10 hours on the water.

Still needs to drop a little more I think down to around that 4m mark. We flogged that creek and a couple of other run offs all day and saw one boof and again no bait. I suspected most boats were doing it tough as there was a lot of movement on the water, boats heading up stream one minute and back the next continually all day. Right or wrong we tried to have more time with lures in the water than props spinning.

We headed home late in the afternoon, pulled out and was surprised by the number of boats putting in and still heading to the Daly. We sposke to a few boats and all of them said they had doughnuts for the day so a couple of good fish we managed raised our spirits. Must have been a massive storm dump a heap of rain as the creeks were right up in a couple of areas with one flowing reasonably high and hard down from Tipperary, fine in a 4WD but not so sure in a sedan.

Anyway, long story short, bl..dy hard work, heaps of boats, not many fish and no bait yet.
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NBN
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Re: Daly River - Saturday 14/01

Post by NBN »

Good day on the water and a quality fish, thx for the report
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Re: Daly River - Saturday 14/01

Post by Castamasta »

Good report , cheers [emoji106]
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Re: Daly River - Saturday 14/01

Post by JEDA1 »

Hey mate good to see you at least got a solid fish !!!

I'm thinking about heading down tomorrow my mate said up river is really tough.

Any advice on how far down to start ?
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Re: Daly River - Saturday 14/01

Post by Tap'n'Zap »

Good read mate, thanks for sharing.
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goldfish
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Re: Daly River - Saturday 14/01

Post by goldfish »

Good effort bud ...

Sounds like you did better than most people.

Did u see many fish on the structure scan ?

We went through the upper howard a couple of nights back. Spotted a few barra with the torch but only saw tiny bait about 25mm long rainbows n shrimp. Need a lure that immitates about 30 of them as they were boofing in the grass n weed edges below the feeder creeks.

Hope we get more rain soon to top the river up a bit ...

Tight lines girls n boys.
Tight lines 'n' keep the shiny side up people.
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Re: Daly River - Saturday 14/01

Post by bigwoody »

Those fish made the effort worthwhile, the tactic of casting lures rather than spinning propellers often pays off, strange how that goes unnoticed by many nowadays.

We are well into another dud wet season though, rain figures are very low for the Daly, the mere fact that there are numbers of boats are on the river at this time of year does not bode well for the fishing.
The river is best when we can't get to it or fish it for January and February!
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Re: Daly River - Saturday 14/01

Post by nomad »

I went down last wed for a look but it started rising when I got there. I only saw one boat hook up (and dropped) but spoke to a mate who said he got 8 fish in total. I got one hit in 2 days!!

No bait, hardly a bird in sight but a couple of run-offs were pumping down near alligator head.

It was nice to be back on the river again when it had some water in it. Last few trips have been dry season and snags everywhere. Not so now, plenty of water.
Some creeks were pumping out fresh but very dirty.
A couple had ½ decent colour coming out.
I saw heaps of fish lying on the bottom at Lizzy but couldn’t get a rise from any of them
Later that day, my mate told me to forget bottom fish and all he caught were right on top water.
I heard just the one boof for the whole trip.
Nothing around the run offs
Ill have another crack next week maybe
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Re: Daly River - Saturday 14/01

Post by Out Blue »

I was at the pointy end of the boat this trip which was a great change, only really looked at the sounder when we stopped at the mouth of Elizabeth on the way back. There looked like good fish holding the bottom at the mouth there but we didn't put much effort in as we were heading back to the ramp.

A lot of the creeks looked good from Elizabeth down, were plenty of good color changes early in the day and being a weekday Jeda1 hopefully you'll get your pick of creek mouths. We worked that area around Powertail and down towards waterfall.

Just no bait to be seen anywhere on Saturday.

Let's hope there's a lot more rain on the way this wet
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Re: Daly River - Saturday 14/01

Post by fff1964 »

Great report

Thanks better to be on the water than chores.


Cheers
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Re: Daly River - Saturday 14/01

Post by Boating »

Good Report Thanks Mate
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Re: Daly River - Saturday 14/01

Post by Chubbs93 »

Nice report mate
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Re: Daly River - Saturday 14/01

Post by theodosius »

Great repory. We did a night trip for 0. Heard a few boofs but saw no bait at all! Mixed reports from other boats, sounds like a few ventured down to the off limits zone
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Re: Daly River - Saturday 14/01

Post by ozdodge »

Thanks for posting, can't wait to hit the Daly in time!

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Re: Daly River - Saturday 14/01

Post by Out Blue »

No doubt a few would head pass the closure line - I should take the drone next time.
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