about us

A social group of dedicated fly fishers who are passionate about fly fishing in the tropical north of Australia and equally as passionate about the close camaraderie this sport brings. This passion and dedication led to the creation of the NT Flyfishers Social Mob blog site; an interactive and creative outlet where everyone can share our wonderful fly fishing adventures and link into the “after fishing” social events we enjoy in this incredible part of the world.

Sunday 27 October 2013

Who



Over recent time “The Mob” has been very active on the fishing front. As always not everything follows the script.

Who – in their eagerness to get on the water, left their vehicle lights on FULL BEAM at the ramp? Wonder why there was a slight problem on return trying to start the vehicle. Good job others had jumper leads!

Who – takes a “bunny rug” away with him to wrap around himself at night to remind him of home?

Who – slept through the alarm and 5 telephone calls leaving his interstate visitor waiting on the footpath at the airport at 1.30am?

Who – went for an anniversary manicure and got 20% off the price?

Who – went for 3 days with only 3 hours sleep because his roommate snored so loudly? He was heard to be offering $100.00 for a set of ear muffs at the end of 3 days.

Who – kept casting his fly at his partners sighted fish and scaring it away so that neither of them caught it?

Who – was seen eagerly savouring Sauvignon Blanc from a glass? Glass being a 750ml long neck, class was shown by the use of a stubby cooler to keep the Sauvignon at the correct temperature.

Who – launched his boat without securing the rope correctly only to see it drift off into the early morning haze? 10/10 to Richard for owning up to this one in an earlier post.

Who – was saved, half a dozen times, from falling off the veranda to a head cracking fate from his contorted sleeping (coma) position in a chair? Remind me never to drink Sauvignon again!

Who – will be posting a fishing report from Melville Island very shortly?

Who – spent 2 hours under the trailer 200kms from home trying to replace the axle that had parted company from the trailer? Yes he did it and got home.

Who – has not got a “Mob” cap?

If anyone has any little titbits about Mob actions, don’t be afraid to let the world know.

Remember, “You’ll never never know, if you never never go. Get out there and fish.

Tight lines
Jim Churchley

Friday 25 October 2013

IGFA PETITION

make a difference
Urge NOAA to Strengthen Longline Fishing Proposal

Urge NOAA to Strengthen Longline Fishing Proposal

685
25,000
we've got 685 signatures, help us get to 25,000
NOAA Fisheries wants your input on proposed measures that could benefit Atlantic bluefin tuna and recreational anglers by reducing bycatch on surface longline fishing gear. The agency is also considering a harmful measure that would penalize recreational fishermen for waste in the longline fishery. Make your voice heard today to ensure NOAA takes steps that will improve this proposal!

Surface longlines kill thousands of hard-fighting game fish, including white marlin, sailfish, and bluefin tuna. In 2012, the fishery threw back dead nearly 25% of the U.S. bluefin quota. Action is needed to end the waste of bluefin and ensure that surface longliners, not recreational fishermen, are held accountable for this incidental catch.

Please join us in calling on NOAA Fisheries to implement strong measures that will protect spawning bluefin in the Gulf of Mexico and reduce unwanted catch off North Carolina, hold surface longliners accountable for bluefin bycatch, maintain current bluefin quota allocations, and promote increased fishing opportunities for recreational anglers.

Don’t Let This One Get Away: Send your comment and help improve NOAA’s proposal.

you have the power to create change.

START SHARING AND WATCH YOUR IMPACT GROW


GO TO THE ATTACHED LINK TO SIGN

Thursday 24 October 2013

GOOD TIDES DURING NEXT WEEK - WE'LL BE CELEBRATING


There are good tides for the flats next week if you can get the days off, Cathie and I will be out there celebrating, this year we are not going to miss our anniversary as we did last year, and I don't intend to cut off any more fingers either. (That's another anniversary)  Its 25 yrs for us and how could I resist her, she was always surrounded by cops and could out shoot me.

Cathie with her security 25 yrs ago

with more of her security.....who's going to argue

Monday 21 October 2013

PERIPHERAL VISION

If I went to see Pink Floyd it would be expected I would have to pay a premium price for the ticket, I certainly would not consider turning up wearing a pair of hearing protectors.

This guy is booked to specifically go sight fishing with me for 3 days. We did it, right, time of year tides etc. he had the gear the fly's the lines and in my opinion the guide to do all this.

Every time I said" there is a fish" or "did you see that" he said no can you say 9 o'clock or 6 o'clock whatever ,sometimes fish are not like that, seeing them coming or having
 short ethereal views basically flitting in and out of your peripheral vision is normal.

This photo demonstrates even with his concerns about skin cancers that you fail before you get started.

Thursday 17 October 2013

LAST WEEKEND BYNOE WRITE UP - THE STIG

Mobsters,

Fished Bynoe on 13th, enjoyed Saturday evening at the sand palms chatting with all and sundry.

On Sunday I had a blast, annoying scrappy queenies, mackerel and trevs first half of the day, and left the water round 12:30.

Early on I was continuously dripping wet in sweat in the hot humid and still conditions till the wind kicked up at 10:30am, it had been 'oil calm' from 8am - wonderful conditions for spotting fish moving about. Hung around Knife Island from dawn with fish every few casts, casting to working birds and regular surface bust ups. In first few minutes of coming off the plane and putting electric in the water - I had caught five species in only nine or ten casts (sadly no barra or salmon for the time on the water - I really need to work on my experience and skills with these species more actively and intently!). I caught Mackerel when casting left and deeper water, while hooking queenie and trevally when casting towards shallow water near the island.

I Snagged (i.e. Fluked) one of the tiniest snapper I have ever caught and a very lonely looking 53cm tarpon mixed amongst the above to round out my five species. I did see a huge bow wave making bait behavior erratically and a quick long cast leading the commotion saw a strong take and hook set. An immediately typical high & crazy jump told me I had a monster of a queenie hooked - which then saw the fly line scoot out quite rapidly, the fly line was quickly followed by my first colour of backing (150m) but (aaaarrrrgggghh,,,@&$%#£€¥!!!!) - a small joining knot between first lot of backing and my next lot snagged the line just long enough to break the leader at the hook knot 200 or so metres out, it was a sad long handle wind getting all that line back on reel - oh well next time! Man, that line disappears off the reel soooooo fast when they are bigger!!!

So I had a great day - but it almost didn't happen.

When I got to boat ramp following in Lord Jim's dust trail in the pre dawn light from sand palms
Jim had just launched, parked his ute and got in his boat as I launched mine.  But, I didn't have a deckie to drive the boat off as usual, so I snap launched it, and to mine and my dead father's horror and with much turning in his grave as he was a truckie of renown who supposedly taught me knots - my knot to hold boat to trailer once launched slipped, which saw the boat floating away and me looking real stupid and lonely on shore.

Luckily Jim and Dasher heard my pitiful and embarrassed scream for help and took the time to nudge my boat towards shore for me. So thanks guys because if it wasn't for you I would have had to wait for Roger to launch his boat and he would still have been sitting at the boat ramp sledging and laughing at me.


The Stig

Wednesday 16 October 2013

RULE TWO.

Just a short report for the weekend...

Rules for the last few days fishing were as follows;

Rule 1:   HAVE FUN AND CATCH SOME FISH
Rule 2:   IF YOU MISS THE FISH...HAVE FUN.

Well whilst we did get fish each day, it wasn't easy, dirty water, bloody wind, and a seemingly lack of fish on the flats did not help. Graeme tells me the high temperature of the water had an impact on the fish.  


Buddha and Barra......first Day..first barra...and no bloody wind. 


There was a heap of us out there, I hope I don't miss any of you, but from memory after pushing rule two for four days, there was the Wilson boat, the Hagleys, the Stig boat, Foster boat,Two Williams' boats, Barbless, Broken Flagon boat with new flyfisher, Lord Jim's boat (with Dasher), Crusty and Blommy and finally the M & M boat (Mark and Mario) with me. 

As I said we caught fish, even enough to have a few platters on the table, but it wasn't the usual and wasn't there some sledging about some "fish a cast" comments.  Actually on the M & M boat I don't think there was a let up on the sledging. But I will leave all that to another story teller. 


Another barra on a wild thing

There were schools of smaller queenfish busting up around the harbour, and underneath some of these schools, there were some big fish, but the little fish kept monstering the flies and there were no real hookups on really big fish.  Barra were caught everyday, but not in the usual numbers and tarpon with blue salmon kept turning up.  I think Wayne was the only one to get threadies, but we did see some monsters on the flats.


Black and red worked to on this great fingermark.

The real monsters that we saw were, huge milkfish.  They were in the wind lanes slurping up anything on the surface.  I am not sure how big they actually get but to the end of the tail some of them appeared to be in the 1.5m size.   Must tie a wind lane fly for the future. 

So because there was not a fish a cast and we did not have to hide behind the gunwale to tie the flies on through fear of being attacked by ravenous fish, Rule Two was invoked, and didn't we have some fun thanks to the great company, and the wonderful staff and people at Sand Palms.

The pool actually overflowed with the mob in it, there was some sledging about some of us looking like beached whales and pushing the water level up, but it was mainly due to the size of the meals we had down there.  There was a few other issues with weight however, the M&M boat could not get up on the plane with the weight so we had to put on a 'Fat Bastard' prop to get it out of the water.  Couldn't move around much in it either for fear of it tipping water over the side of the boat because it was so low in the water.

The 'Fun' rule did have consequences however, all of us suffered rib injuries from laughing so much.  



UPDATE:   I've been instructed that this has to be shown too.  It was a medal that was presented to me and I was forced (under threat of no wine) to wear down there at Sand Palms.  Very unfair!  and they reckon I sledge!


Guided By An Old Tide Like Me..


      
 FRIDAY 11th OCTOBER 3 HRS to Go

The water temperature was hitting 33C as I started a run on the "Drift Of Dreams" (WTFIT), I pretty well knew straight away that the Barra/Salmon would probably have exited the shallows when it was much deeper.
Now this guy had been to Christmas island 5 times and was giving me an earbash about It that would have made Crusty proud.
 I was looking hard, trying to be polite, watching him cast and thinking bonefish must be really easy to catch when three Trevally swum up behind me.
His first cast was all over them,(didn't work 20 yrs. ago still doesn't) they didn't spook just swam off.
The thing I noticed was  the lead fish, not much longer then many big trevally but it looked pretty fat.
Anyway I put it behind me, although I did remind him a few times that it was only 20 ft. away when half an hr. later I saw the bow wave 50m's off and beelining me, like the midget at the urinal I was suddenly on my toes. With some encouragement (lots) I managed to get him to cast into an intercepting point and told him to wait, when I thought it was about right told him to strip fast.

That Trevally nailed Wayne's STC fly (sorry Roger) and made a 100m dash in 2 ft. of water carving a beautiful smoke trail in pursuit of deeper water, the other two were with him all the way.
When that didn't work it came all the way back and got within 5 foot of a tree,I said all you can do is lock him up, he did, it turned and came back looking for a reef off about 150m's.off
With backing still disappearing I did a long circular roundup between the fish and reef,45 mins later on his XI3 8wgt we had it ready to net, suddenly  he high sticked the rod past that point of no return,  it exploded into 3 pieces, I had to grab a piece of it and managed to get a net under.

That Trevally bottomed the Boga's at 30lb,it was heavier then that ,who knows, he reckoned in his experience it was closer to 40lb(Crusty would know for sure)) and was so fat, look at the photo, maybe it was in the family way, anyhow we rested the fish took a few photos and it happily swam away

The real bad luck was all the water was gone on the shallows and I had to go and put up with the "Jelly prawn feeders "for the rest of the run out.


Friday 11 October 2013

Whats the hardest thing about fly fishing?

Fishing in the NT generally consists of a boat load of mates, as much beer as you can fit in an esky and a packet or two of bbq shapes just incase you get stuck on a mud bank for a few hours and need some survival tucker.
Anyone who knows me also knows I'm a big believer in this age proven method of having a good time on the water. 
Those people also know I promote fishing as the act as a whole and am not wrapped up in photos of meter plus barra. I'd rather catch toga than barra at Corroboree Billabong and I enjoy trying to trick a bream in darwin harbour.

Fish like sooty grunter, saratoga, queenfish, golden trevally, giant herring and milk fish are species that would hardly rate a mention in fishing media a few years ago and certainly not in any advertising campaign by the NT government or fishing tour operators.
This has no doubt led to the conditioning of a traveling angler to believe that barra is the only fish worth targeting in our tropical paradise, and the flow on effect of this is that when the wet season is a no show and barra recruitment is poor the fishing tourist plans his/her trip for the year to another destination, taking their dollars away from the NT and spending them elsewhere.
Its a big problem!

Saying that, the wheels are turning. Even in my short time in the NT I have seen the "barra blinkers" come off a bit and people who wouldn't target anything else are now opening their horizons to the plethora of wonderful fishing targets we have at our doorstep.

Fly fishers are one of the main groups of fishos who openly target an armada of species, not because of media hype and publicity but because of the individual challenge each species presents us with as we wipe the sweat out of our eyes on an oppressive build up day on a glassed out harbour arm and ask our mate, "how the hell do we catch these bloody things" pointing at the schooling bream on an oyster rock.
Through my association with the IGFA I have been researching world records which we as territorians can target. 
To my surprise I have highlighted over 80 world records for our local species, from junior all tackle right through to fly class.
There are over 50 world records which I have penned in as either beatable or currently vacant for women, many of these are fly class records!
The picture attached is a tarpon of good size, not massive and i know there are plenty bigger out there but the difference is this fish has recently been recognised as a world record for the 4kg mens fly tippet.
The difference in this situation is that we put down the beers and bbq shapes and took the time to document the catch correctly and submitted the required info.
My brother (who is also a guide) used to jokingly say to me, "whats the hardest thing about fly fishing... telling your mates you are gay." 
Bad taste I know but now that I have a world record certificate on the wall young Deano is swathing around all over the place!

Id love to have more territorians holding world records and in particular more of our long wand wavers.
If anyone is interested in pursuing a record, let me know and we can get it happening!


FOR THE LADIES





Hi there mob, I just thought I'd put the word out there that I'm looking for two ladies who can hold onto a fly rod and are keen and available to chase some world records next weekend on sunday 20th October.

Will be fishing either Bynoe or dundee depending on wind.
There are over 50 Women's world records up for grabs in the NT and I'm keen to help out anyone who wants one!

Below is a pretty ordinary photo of a tarpon which recently got recognised as the new world record for 4kg fly.
These records are very achievable, all you need to do is make the effort!





Glenn Watt
Barefoot Fishing Safaris Darwin Camping Hire NT 0417272871



Tuesday 8 October 2013

A BIT OF DRUM FOR THE HARBOURS

Looks like there will be a heap of us out this weekend, weather forecasts say it will be fine, wind of course is subject to a crystal ball view, and just in case you were wondering about what flies to take, here is a bit of drum from the reports that we have been getting.....

There a heaps of queenies etc. about in schools, but they don't seem to want to take the smaller flies and when a larger fly is presented its snapped up.  That might change of course, but have a few longer flies just in case that is the secret.

Take some wire, there a big macs shooting through the schools, ................................................
and the TWO rules for the Top Enders vs Bottom Enders are as follows;

                                       1. HAVE FUN AND CATCH SOME FISH
                                       2. IF YOU MISS THE FISH...HAVE FUN.



Monday 7 October 2013

KNIFE ISLAND THE JEWEL IN AN ESTUARY


When I first started guiding at Bynoe from Crab Claw Resort the first feature I came across was Knife Island, its now 15 years and it never ceases to amaze me.

Every species has been caught or lost here it is one of the easiest accessed and has been responsible for yielding incredible captures over the years.

There on saturday I had a couple of guys fishing for the 50cm queenfish busting up around the Eastern end and it came from nowhere, brief but nonetheless the reason its always will be a gem in Bynoes crown.


                                                       
 
If this does not play try this link  http://youtu.be/cuiLDyvY_rs



Saturday 5 October 2013

Within sight of the Elizabeth River Bridge



All week my plan was to spend this weekend going over the boat and trailer in preparation for a full-on month of fishing. 4 days at Bynoe with the Mob from “Down South”, Corroboree Park Challenge, Togas in Kakadu (a mate reported last night 80 Togas in one day at Mardugal!). With the morning presenting no wind, a midday low the boat clean can wait til tomorrow, a hit and run session on the Elizabeth won out over boat shampoo.

I was cruising away from the pontoon all within 15 minutes of driving out of the driveway at home!

The tide was well and truly out of the mangroves exposing numerous drains on the bank opposite the ramp. Drifted along with the tide and came across small groups of Queenies every three or four hundred metres or so to keep the interest up. I must be a real slow learner because I still forget that the smaller they are the more vicious their spines. My hands resemble a pin cushion!

Queenie from the Elizabeth

Made my way downstream to the flat that is in the channel next to the island on the left. Again found Queenies to sight cast to and Mackerel would storm out of the main channel onto the flat to nail the fly. Hook ups lasted no longer than a blink of an eye, note to self – have trace wire in boat! As the water came off the flat moved across the river to the other island and fished the dirty water line from the large creek that joins the river. I spent 20 minutes throwing white clousers at Tarpon rolling in the dirty water line with not even a bump. Changed fly to a “Roggie Dodgie” second cast 57cms of angry Tarpon took me all over the place on a 7wt.

57 "angry" cms
I drifted with the incoming tide and all the creeks on the left going upstream had Tarpon working any dirty water lines emanating from the numerous drains.

Beware of this in the river between the two islands

Back at the ramp it was 15 minutes and I was back in the driveway washing the boat.

Remember, “if you never never go, you’ll never never know”. Get out there and fish.

Tight lines
Jim Churchley