Glassed out conditions in Darwin harbour

I am setting up a salt water aquarium next year in the school science lab and after my visit to weed reef in Darwin Harbour on Sunday 15th I wish it was already ready set up because of the good and varied fishing I experienced.

To begin with, I caught a plethora of 30-45cm giant trevally as the tide dropped, and due to the consistency of a trevally on nearly every cast, I decided to test a heap of flies.

I tried an articulated squid fly I have been playing with. I used an intermediate sink tip line in 10 feet of water. Love the fly's action in the water - it has an awesome pulse. While the fish respond well to it, I feel colours need to be a little more softer and subtle in clearer water situations like this day had - so am looking for a paler orange craft fur, might also do some tan versions as well.

Then I changed to a scampi fly. A prawn type pattern but lots of movement from orange plastic legs and a white rabbit fur strip. I cast to edge of dirty water at the western tip of weed reef on a 1.5m low tide and let sink - here I caught in successive casts: a stripey, a Moses perch, several quite small snapper, a very large butter bream that went quite hard for a while, a 45cm golden snapper, a wrasse and then a small coral trout.

All of which would have looked great in the soon to be school saltwater aquarium (except the snapper which was definitely destined for frying pan).

Around 11am, the water glassed off for as far as I could see. An eerie experience. But now I could see the small pods of largish queenfish sporadically subtle rolling on surface on the deep water edge out from weed reef.

I targeted the queenies for a while for not much success other than a few passive follows before heading back to weed reef to work the flats as the tide rose.

As the tide continued to rise higher I targeted a pod of bastards on back of the flats but all I did was hit them on the head with the fly I was using and spook them all. More casting practice is needed that's for sure!

Weed Reef for me is an awesome location. It is within sight of a major city, a short travel to ramp and home. Catching fishing the whole time, plus an amazing range of fish. Hot day - yes, but what a great day fly fishing!!

Seriously I had to check myself several times during the day to see that I wasn't dreaming such was the enjoyment of the day, the sights, and the fish.

Wind speed started to rise round 1pm, so I was home by 1:45pm.