FTB on board the Arrow, Sep 22

Jewies, big reds, macks & more - tell us how you went. NT, FNQ and Norwest.
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jakin.gale
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FTB on board the Arrow, Sep 22

Post by jakin.gale »

G'day All,

I've spent the last few months researching the mysterious Flat Top Banks and found that whilst there is plenty of stories out there I believe the latest post was around 7 years ago.. so I've decided to pull my finger out and contribute a story which hopefully helps someone else out. We planned the trip around some neap tides smack bang in the middle of September when the boys could get off work and prayed that the wind gods would smile on us.
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The vessel

After most of Monday turning into preparation we arrived at the Dundee ramp about 7pm just in time for a parmy and pint before we hit the road. The plan was to wait until the night to get the best weather window to head out in. After deciding it looked pretty calm we launched at around 930pm and quickly realised we were wrong and attempting to go out in that chop would've ended our will to live so we made the correct decision to head back up and sleep at the ramp until the weather improved. Long story short it didn't improve and we ended up waiting until about 5am Tuesday morning to venture out. This time great success, once the sun came up it smoothed right out and we managed to hit our first mark (pipe line) around 8am.
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First few drops were spent marvelling at how clear the water was and that we could see our jigs from about 20m depth. This point also was a realisation that 70m was deeper than I'd ever fished in Darwin and the trusty Lowrance 3 in 1 transducer doesn't thrive once you get close to 100m, but anyway we picked up some fish on the bottom and after a bit of a fight pulled up a few brassy trevs before deciding to move on.
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Next stop was the southern edge of flat top itself, where we discovered around 1 billion longtail's all jumping out of the water. The whitewash was incredible and we probably caught 20+ tuna in the first 30 minutes before we needed a breather. Only kept 1 fish each due to limited real estate in the esky/fish bag and everything else was released. Once we gathered ourselves from the wild tuna distractions we decided it was time to try find some good bottom fish. Whilst sounding around likely ground, we figured that navionics charts whilst generally giving us an idea, were fairly inaccurate in regards to contour lines and steep drop offs that weren't there. So if you don't have any marks out there and just wing it like me then don't expect everything on the charts to be there.
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Middle of the day blues got us pretty hard after only managing to pull up some decent spango's, sweetlip and trevs. So we ventured into some even deeper water and had a crack at high speed jigging in 120m+. This was an experience to say the least, tuna, mackerel and every shark in the ocean seemed to be underneath us so we landed a few tuna, lost a few assist hooks to the mackerel gods and sacrificed a fair bit of lead to the tax man. :dolphin:
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Once sunset was upon us we found a nice small bank to anchor up on for the night in about 25m. Had a couple of drifts over it landing some more nice spango's and even more sharks which was annoying. After anchoring up, it went dark and I decided to be a heathen and pull out some servo squid for a drop, about 30 seconds later I'm reeling in a nice sized smallmouth nanny (a first for me) and off we go again!
The boys conscience wouldn't allow them to go full bait lord so a strip of squid onto the jig assist hook and they were off. In the space of 5 minutes we had 4 nice sized nanny's and a red emperor on the deck which led to a difficult decision... we had to stop fishing because we were almost out of ice. How many reds we could've caught that night will be one of life's great mysteries...
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Waking up the next morning to an absolute glass out with a semi-cold dare iced coffee was magical and one of the boys had a spango on the deck before I even had time to get out of bed. Wednesday morning now and the boys are pretty well cooked, tried to jig a few more pinnacles on the way back without much luck other than the standard cod and brassy combo. We spotted a nice school of big spanish swim right underneath the boat without even turning an eyeball at our jigs so that was the final sign to hit the road. On the way back stopped in the middle of the big blue for an epic swim and a beer before locking in for the steam home. Started getting a bit of onshore chop around 30km from land and proper Dundee slop at around 20kms out. But we made it back in just over 2 hours for the 100km leg. If you've made it this far, thanks for reading :drinking1:
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Stats for the trip:
340km
214l fuel
7 lost riptides
12 lost jigs
37 monsters consumed
1 ice cube remaining
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theodosius
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Re: FTB on board the Arrow, Sep 22

Post by theodosius »

Well done mate, what a memorable trip! Great write up too. I'd love to get out that wide :cheers:
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Matt Flynn
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Re: FTB on board the Arrow, Sep 22

Post by Matt Flynn »

Great report. Funny place is Flat Top, some people have gone all that way and caught Powertail.
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Re: FTB on board the Arrow, Sep 22

Post by NinjaFish »

Great report. :cheers:
Last time I was there about 4 years ago there were about 200 odd dolphins and 2000 sea snakes but no Mackerel.
Nice bust up going on behind in the Long Tail pic.
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Edo
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Re: FTB on board the Arrow, Sep 22

Post by Edo »

Great trip report mate, well done
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jakin.gale
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Re: FTB on board the Arrow, Sep 22

Post by jakin.gale »

Appreciate the feed back guys thank you 🤙

Funny you mention the power tails Matt I forgot to add it in but we did manage to get 2 big slobs in the boat as well 😂

We did spot a few pods of dolphins and more sea snakes than I've ever seen before as well! Pity the big macs weren't hungry at the time mate
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Re: FTB on board the Arrow, Sep 22

Post by RedDevil »

good stuff mate
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Re: FTB on board the Arrow, Sep 22

Post by AM »

Haven’t been on here for a few months. Did a check in to see who’s been fishing and aFTB post pops up. I hear what you say about charts and spots out there. We didn’t have a great deal of shark trouble. But decided in the end the variety and comfort levels were higher in closer to the south. Good read and pics well done.
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