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One and half days on the Tiwi Islands

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Recently friends took jobs in the school on Melville Island. We decided to use May-Day long weekend as an excuse to go and see them, unfortunately Claire and I couldn’t get Friday arvo off so we had to get the Saturday afternoon flight over.

We got our permits sorted and headed over, on Sunday me and my mate spent all day in Shark Bay. He only got his boat in Easter so hadn’t really got his spots sorted yet, with that in mind it was a reasonable day. He got a nice 70cm barra for dinner and I got a lot of fish, but they were all pretty small. It is pretty eerie fishing in a location where you don’t see a boat for the entire day, and there are zero other cars at the boat ramp!

Some highlights include:
– tom hooking a huge groper and it getting itself wrapped around a snag. It was at the surface so we gave it a shot at netting it but it scared and ran, managing to break off his braid
– a kingfisher deciding to hit my lure, lucky I was running a weedless rig and it didn’t hook it
– the mist off the water on an untouched morning was pretty nice

While we were off fishing Claire went to a nice waterfall for a swim.

The next morning we headed to a billabong. We only had two hours fishing as we needed to get the ferry back. When we got there – devastation! The boat ramp had eroded so we couldn’t launch. Ah well, might as well cast from the shore. A few casts and I had a couple of tarpon. Then I hooked a small barra! I yelled to my mate, excited that there were barra there, and he came running with the net… looked at me like I was stupid when he saw it was 30cm.

But anyway… soon we were hooking barra each couple of casts. I estimate that most were between 25 and 40cm. It was amazing fun. I landed two thumping saratoga’s, check out the story of the trip. The biggest I would estimate to be 45 to 50… I was thinking of measuring him but got a hook in the throat so I really wanted to return him to the water asap, and the tape measure was in the car.

It is how I imagine Coroborree would have been before it became Darwin’s favourite spot.

They loved a new lure, and it gave me a chance to try some lures I’m not that familiar with, like vibes and poppers.

Got
Saturday
46, 47cm barra, mangrove jack, golden snapper, catfish, cod

Sunday
A few tarpon, 20 odd barra, two saratogas

Story of the trip:
Banks can be hard to cast from with overhanging trees. So I threw my popper out and accidentally cast over the tree, so before I could wind I had to get the braid out of the tree. Once I did I realized I couldn’t see my popper… had it sunk? Well, as I would up I discovered a saratoga had liked the look of a popper sitting there doing nothing, and had decided to hook itself!

 

Dry 2015 continues…

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Oh dear. I didn’t think that it could get much more frustrating than last week. Well… I wasn’t the skipper this week, my deckie had a much larger and nice boat than me with a 250 on the back, we hit shoal bay and given the forecast of 17 knot winds we decided to take his out. First thing we did was launch at buffalo creek and get stuck on THREE sandbanks on the way out. Then we hit shoal bay hard for zero fish.

The skipper was persisting in casting with a very old baitcaster that kept getting into birdsnests… he was joking that he every time he did his rods up he ended using the reel that didn’t work. Well it ‘not funny’ quickly when he hooked a huge fish and BANG his reel exploded, splitting on the base that connects it to the rod!

Got:
Nothing.
Maybe I’m a the human banana?

Story of the trip:
Came across a smaller croc who had thought it was a great idea to bite into a crab float. Problem was he couldn’t quite get his mouth around it, and his teeth got stuck in it. So there he was thrashing around trying to get this float out of his mouth.

Beautiful creatures, rah rah, it was actually pretty funny. Wasn’t out crab pot so we left it alone.

Boat problems:
The skippers spring on his trailer exploded when he was reversing in his driveway. Nice to know my luck extends to other people’s boats too.

Snap

Lots of work, one small barra

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Well, well. Looking at the tides I thought the harbour would be good, but ended up hitting shoal bay instead. Lots of work for this trip! Apart from the 8 hours of solid fishing for one undersized barra, other fun included:
– Motor constantly getting blocked with mud
– Electric motor problems, culminating with the foot pedal starting to smoke
– Someone’s crab pot rope wrapped around the prop
– A constant battle to keep the main battery charged (I had a back up battery for the trip home, but I wouldn’t lekkie from it)

Wasn’t all bad. I learnt a lot from the experience, shoal bay and buffalo creek boat ramp is a nice spot, and the boat handled the small chop really well. I’m sure I’ll get some results soon, though that electric motor is critical to how I fish.

Got:
Me: 1 undersized barra
Mud: Nothing

Story of the trip:
Some guys were battling a large barra. I think they were live baiting and it kept taking it and jumping out of the water. I really wanted to go over and start flicking at it, but that would have been majorly uncool. I don’t think they ever landed it, but they hooked it a few times.

Boat problems:
Need a new foot pedal. No more electric motor until I get one. And at this time of the year…

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A crock getting stuck on a float

Greenant day trip in the wet season

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Much of my memorable adventures start with reading the Kakadu or Litchfield access report, find a place and calling the rangers up and asking about it. In this case I called the Litchfield rangers to ask about swimming at greenant creek. A quick google search said there was a rockpool you could swim at, the access report said the track was open, but didn’t mention anything about the swimming. What followed was a hilarious conversation with a helpful ranger handicapped by the world we live in. Basically he said:

“there isn’t anywhere that is zoned for swimming there, so I can’t tell you you can swim there. But there is a rockpool above the waterfall that people swim, I swim, and we don’t mind. You don’t have to worry about crocs but you do have to worry about flash flooding, since you’re on top of a waterfall.”

Litchfield in the wet season is generally pretty full, as you can only swim at Florence and the Buley Rockholes, and the weather is such that you really want to swim! So we decided to walk there, and were utterly amazed that we had the entire place to ourselves all day. I imagined all those other people braving the crowds… ah well!

The highlight of the walk were the enourmous golden orb spiders. We saw a few big ones, then ran into two that were just enormous, easily bigger than my hand.

Other than that, just a great day chilling out on top of Litchfield!

 


On top of the waterfall


In the rockpool

Adelaide Bridge in 2015

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First trip since the break and it was pretty uneventful. The original plan was going to be Bynoe but given the winds and my reluctance to drive such a distance when a storm could roll through, we went to the Adelaide Mouth. Only got one hit for zero fish. Stopped by the famous Kai and Goat Island. Good to get out om the water but a very quiet day.

Got:
Me, Mud, Mud’s daughter – nothing

Story of the trip:
Not much to report really, didn’t get rained on which is always a bonus at this time of year. The water was very dirty and we only found a few good colour changes, but it didn’t produce anything.

Boat problems:
My boat is shorting out if it gets swapped to battery 2. Things were okay as I could just run it off the main one, but really annoying, this is a brand new battery, also my first ‘boat problem’ that has repeated itself, i.e. the rest I could think ‘well who knows when the last time X was looked at’ but this time I know… brand new, July

Snap