Daly River - Saturday 14/01
Posted: Sun Jan 15, 2017 9:26 am
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.
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.