We went down to Howard Springs for the weekend for Eddie’s birthday. It was mostly filled with caravan park fun – jumping pillow, splashpark, swimming pools etc. He had a great time and he really loved the jumping pillow. M&I came down for the day and another family dropped by to see him too.
We went down to a caravan park in Katherine for four days with three other families, our second trip in the camper trailer. Everything went really well and the kids loved it. On the first full day we went to Mataranka and Bitter Springs, I was surprised that Bitter Springs was much better. I had never been there before. On the second we went to the caves which was interesting but expensive and I would not repeat it – I have been to much better caves before, e.g. Buchan.
We all went to litchfield, it wasn’t fully opened yet but we want to Florence, Buley and the picnic spots. The kids had a great time although the water was still quite fierce, and I think the highlight was a bold lizard coming up to us at Florence trying to raid some of our picnic.
Claire and Maggie were away for a few days so I decided to take Eddie down the barra farm again. I gave him a few options and this was what he said he wanted to do.
He was instantly fascinated by a Caterpillar on a branch that he found and carried it around everywhere he went.
We got a couple of fish, he is interested in the fish but today he was not that interested in winding the fish up.
We went down to Shady again and hit my favourite spot on the outgoing, we refer to as “Mud’s Run”.
Straight away my mate MarkR pulled out a 59cm, already bettering his effort the week before. From there we started getting fish, I got a couple around 57cm and the rest were undersized. We soon moved to give prime position to MarkF and Tom but they didn’t manage to get anything, so left to do some trolling. They later reported to getting one decent barra each, one 60cm and one 65cm.
We went back to poll position, and nearly straight away I pulled out a 59cm.
We kept getting regular fish, so we didn’t want to leave. Soon – bang – I was on with a great fish! The water was absolutely pouring out, so I struggled with it, it took quite a while to get it to the boat. When we got it out my arm was dead – totally cramping up. It had never happened before but I struggled to let the rod go. But the fish measured out at 81cm.
I took a small break to relax my arm before getting back into it, and not long after I hooked onto another decent fish. Once again, the size of the fish combined with the fierce current meant it was a really decent fight. When I got this guy back to the boat he was 70cm, but additionally my arm was so bad I had to use my left hand to individually pry each of my fingers off the rod. I had just totally lost control of it. I was forced to admit at this point that I was done for the day. I took the fillets off the big ones (might have been a mistake as at the time of writing I’ve eaten one and it tastes terrible) while my mate fished, who got another keeper. In the end I got close to 20 fish, legal ones were: 57, 57, 59, 70, 81.
I will have to remember that this place functions well om outgoing tides towards the low.