North Australian FISH FINDER TM forums

Hi DR

Was looking for Maxpower.

I saw the camp just below Kangaroo. Had I known I would have dropped in. Still interested in how to access that spot by road.

Couple more shots of trip.

Michael Powell is the one who features in those Suntag reports I put up regularly. Top tagger.

He ended up gun angler on the trip with 173 fish followed closely by Mitch Lester with 172. Mitch is the person in the foreground of a photo I put up previously ( Doug Chan of Darwin in the background).

In the camp photo there are 3 more camps around to the left making 5 in all.

Roper is sure a beautiful river as it clears to green.

Great report Ronje, enjoyed the read, good to see you made time for ANZAC day.

BenJam

Heard you on Tales From The Tinny yesterday Ron. Can you explain what was happening re. the 303 shots on Anzac day morning?? Nice to hear pleasant things regarding your (collective) efforts & AFANT. Good work to you all.

Hi Smed
The 303 shots were fired to wake everybody up at 4.30 am ready for the 5am dawn ceremony on Anzac. Fitting wake up call!

We joked about the firer being a lousy shot and missing our tents!

Considering the differences I've had with Chris M and AFANT recently, I made the joke that if the firer was working under a contract for AFANT then he missed. Tongue-in-cheek stuff.

Chris M actually took a bit of a gamble sending us 750 tags. They cost $1 each, so he basically sent a bunch of people he didn't know (and one vocal fella who didn't seem to agree with him) $750 worth of AFANT assets.

Ya gotta take ya hat off to him for that.

Anyway, we produced like we said we would. We're happy. AFANT's happy with the boost the Billy Taylor program got. All we need now is for more people to take part.

A FFF organised outing once a year to support the program would be good. Imagine 20 boats turning up at the Roper over a weekend and tagging everything in sight.

Ditto for the Victoria river.

Sounds like you had an awsome trip ronje. My old man, cousin, and one of their mates were down there for part of the same time you were. They didn't do anyway near as good as you, but still managed a decent amount of fish including 1 at 104, 1 at 106, and 1 and 120...... All Mt + fish were caught at the same drain on a Reidy's Little Lucifer...... I'm just trying to imagine a little lucifer holding onto a 120!! My old man said that there were more boats there then he had ever seen down there before!!

It was small lure time with the downstream fish eating small prawns and the upstream fish eating small sooties.

Any lure over 100mm wouldn't work. Hence success on a little lucifer by your dad. Good fun on a metre fish.

Where were yr Dad and his mates camped?

Hey ronje
They were camped around twin rocks.
Apparantly were the first camp in there this year??? Don't know, but said they had to clear a lot of long grass to make a camp site. Godd thing they took a whipper snipper with them LOL.
Here's hoping I can get out there next year with them. Haven't been to the Roper since 09, and miss it greatly, it's a wonderful river!!

There were 2 campsites at Mountain Creek.

The one at the creek itself had about 5 camps and there was another just downstream a bit (near Twin Rocks). From memory there was a grey Oceanmaster moored off the bank. (I think it was an OM anyway)

The fellas with the Oceanmaster were late starters every day. They fished further downstream.

Maybe yr Dad?.

If the Nat Park arrangements haven't been put in place by then (when u can only camp at Tomato I for $12/pp/per night), we'll be there next year from 7 April (around dark moon time). Have t0 wait and see what pr0gress is made bef0re the wet wrt the park.

We'll do the tagging again.

We'll invite FFF'ers to take part anytime in that 2 week window. FFF'ers can get onto Chris Makepeace for their own tags OR I'll get sufficient tags from Chris for others and hand them out at the Roper so others can take part. Its the Billy Taylor Tagging program.

Providing I know the numbers and that I can count on the nominees being reliable to turn up.

They were the one's with the Oceanmaster.
Late starters hey, that doesn't surprise me. They go there as much for the fishing as for the relaxing at the end of the night with a couple too many bottles of red
They fished down around the phelps a bit. Was the first time they've headed down that far. Dad said the fishing was a little slow comapred to what he was used too, but there were a lot more boats on the river when they were there than what he's used to seeing down there, so that might've had something to do with it??

Couple more pix of our trip.

The croc in the photo had been gradually moving closer and closer to that boat for about 30 minutes without the occupants being aware it was there. They were concentrating over towards the bank to the right.

15 minutes after this photo, one fella had hooked a bull shark about 1 metre long and had it about 2 metres from boat when the croc lunged from underneath the boat and took the bull shark on its way down.

3 changes of underwear were in order.

The flag photos were at Tomato Is camp on anzac day at 5am.

The other is just a candid photo of Thommo fishing. Not posing or anything.

Couple of photos at Rocky Bar Crossing (used to be known as Queensland Crossing) upstream in Hodgson River.

U can drive there in dry.

Beautiful place. Great barra fishing.

Check out the rock art. Been there a long time. Lot of art there. Done by chiselling on the rock slabs. Don't know what was used to do it. must have been very hard whatever it was. Another rock I suppose.

There's one bit that we reckoned looked like a wagon wheel. Maybe somebody saw Ludwig Leichhardt who pioneered the route in the 1840s.
I don't think so as its much older than 170 years. Gotta be a couple of thousand I reckon.

Now we think that it actually depicts the sun.

Lots of other stuff with 4 fingers (which has meaning) etc etc.