North Australian FISH FINDER TM forums

Just returned from our yearly trip to King Ash Bay, 5 days on the houseboat. Had an absolute blast with my brothers, the old man and a couple more friends. Trips like this take months of planning, like what tides will be best, can everyone make those dates, how much food will we need and the most important thing is how much beer do we need. Packed the boat, loaded the car, made one last check and I was off 700km drive from Katherine to KAB. Better than the 1600km drive my brothers and dad had to do.

Drive went great, road was great apart from about a 60km section between Daly Waters and Cape Crawford. Caught up with the others at Cape Crawford to find out that there trip hadn’t gone so well. Snapped an axle 30km back down the road, but with dad being the hoarder he is they had the broken one off and on with the new one that he said he had only found out the dump a month ago.

Arrive at KAB around 2pm met with Scott from Borroloola houseboats, paid for our hire and we were off. Cruised down the river for about 3-4 hrs till we reach our camping spot. Dropped anchor and made ready dinner. The boys decided to have a quick fish before going to bed, which to my surprise yielded about 5 pan size goldies. Into the freezer they went and off to bed we were, eager for what the next day had in store for us.

The first day was slow with only myself and my brother Jason landing a Barra each 65 & 86. A few more Goldie’s were caught off the houseboat that night as well as 4 big mud crabs. The second day everything went right. BANG first troll a nice 80cm Barra followed by 3 more over the next hour. Things were looking good and then things got a whole lot better. Nothing beats the sound of peeling drag and both brothers yelling like mad men when my rod buckled over, from the way it hit we could tell it was big. We did our best to lose it as well with my brothers lure getting caught on my line and having to let it go slack to untangle it, once untangled and back tight it came flying out of the water right next to the boat and then we realised we had just hooked a metery. Another couple of runs and we were starting to tire her when I noticed that all she was hooked by was on treble in her eye socket, after a few nervous dives at the boat we had her in the net and in the boat. High fives all round and then the all important measurement, 107 it was bl..dy awesome. Quick couple of photos then back in the drink to fight another day.

We a steady flow of Barra and a couple of threadys all week and ended up with a heap of fillets for the family back home. The 2nd last day dad also ended up landing a 107, coulding take that smile off his face, probably still grinning now. Ended up with 2 meterys half a dozen 90s and a heap of 80s, only 5 fish landed for the trip were under 80cm and also got about 20 crab.

Back home now and already wanting to go back. This trip has been and gone but now there is a lot to look forward to for next year. Great place and Scott and Damo from Borroloola houseboats were legends, very friendly and would drop anything to help us out, even let the old man use there welder to fix the boat trailer.

Cheers for reading
Been there and going back

Nice work well done great story thanks.

Nice work well done great story thanks.

That sounds awesome. Congratulations on the big girls

Awesome work boys.....some nice fish there

Thanks for all the info and tips.

might see a few of us there next trip LOL.

Trip of a life time for most

Cheers

Sounds like a Cracker trip ,Well Done .

Thanks for posting ,cheers

Wow!

Lucky it's so far away or we'd all be there this weekend!

good on ya!

cheers

Quality trip boys thanks for the read . One area I’ve never fished, sounds like I should have............


Melv

Great read mate, thanks for sharing.

Good report mate cheers for the effort .

Will put it on the to do list (one day)...so many spots, so little time

Great read guys !! Thanks for posting.
Heading up there is 3 weeks on a house boat for a week and been planning it for 2 years now !!!.
Do you have any tips for us ?
Was wondering what creek you moored the houseboat in ?
Cheers craig

Sorry, had to send screen shots due to an issue thats probably due to internet..

Thanks Ninjafish , and thanks cutting93 for the Pm. I couldn’t for the life of me work out how to reply back to a Pm must be to simple haha
I can’t wait to get up there and man we’re we happy that the cyclone buggered off !!
Just look at your pic again and man you got some rippers !
We’re about do most people crab up there ?out the front on the flats or up tight little creeks

Craig