2015 BYNOE SHEEP STATION STAKES

Just before we get into the blog, we need to acknowledge our good friend Pete Davies, who passed away a short time ago.  Pete was a vocal supporter of the mob and the Stakes.  He will be missed, but I do think we saw him out there, this weekend, on the water in what he called the "Great Northern Pond".

The Stakes - fishing for a sheep station.

The rules - have fun.

Well the draw for Saturday did cause some concern with a 'Diamond' Trevally picked as one of the target species.  Luckily, an error by the printer (Roggie) left out the 'Diamond' and made it a lot easier with just Trevally as the species.  There were no protests!.

The starting gate was pretty crowded with more boats involved than anticipated, but all got out with an easy start.   Lord Jim was beaten out by a couple of other boats and was quite taken aback that someone took 'his' parking spot. In the photo below, that's Jim, parked the wrong way just in front of us and you can see the line of vehicles down the road.   The ramp had a heap more parked there.

The are fourteen or fifteen in the photo but nearly as many out of it.

The mornings were beautiful, with a cool breeze, that did come up a bit more on the Saturday but stayed light on the Sunday.

Cool mornings .....calm sea.

The Stakes this year was taken out by the old 'Fowl Hooked' team member, Ross Marriner, he was just in the running on Saturday and picked up the points on Sunday.  His secret...small clousers, Jim will tell you it was having a good guide.
The top ten places all went to 'fly' and the top three were all very close.  Ross managed 1274 points then  Canadian Pete, who was the top of the board on Saturday had 1226  points, followed by yours truly, Çathie with one point less at 1225 points.


So Ross gets the sheep station and Pete and I get 'glory'.

Ross and his sheep station.

The 'Sandpalms' largest fish trophy went to Justine for her PB barra'

 and Justine and Marty (The Brokenflagens) won 'Ramsey' the ram, for their wonderful efforts.

The Fishing

The Saturday species needed for the extra points, were Trevally, Cod, Threadfin Salmon, Mangrove Jack and Mackerel.  The Brokenflagens had been out the day before looking for good fishing spots and had found the threadfin salmon (2) and barra  (11) .  They happily offered to take anyone interested to the hot spot.  We had also found a spot with Tarpon and Blue Salmon, but I'm afraid these spots did not fire on the Saturday, so most of the boats sought their own spots.  Some did well, others not so well.

The Stig and Canadian Pete did well (must be the new orange boat) to see his reports for the Stakes click on THE STIG,  He has day one out already.

Lord Jim had Ross with him and was followed by Craig in a separate boat.  According to Ross they found a spot where it was "..a fish a cast..".  Ross was only using a small white clouser and out fished Jim who had bigger flies.  Sounds a bit like last year when Dion and Kate won with smaller simple flies.

Ross...showing Jim how to fish

Tiny flies catch???

Big flies catch???

Ross did get a very small fish on his small flies ....then Jim got into an epic struggle on a larger fly...the struggle took a great deal of time, where the reel was almost spooled a number of occasions, the boat was pulled around, and Ross was sledging him all the time, until finally a very large stingray came to the surface and snapped itself off.   I can image Lord Jim grumbling away about being the top guide with the mutinous crew.....
Good fun!!!

All the boats covered a lot of distance and Jeff found that even with a back up jerry can, one standard tank is not enough.  This creek above is as far as he got before turning back. I think many used nearly forty litre of fuel in their travels.......average about thirty.

2015 has been one of the hardest fishing years for us, and from what I hear on the grapevine, it has been hard for everyone.  Windy, spooky fish or no fish, and this weekend was similar.  We have had good tides during the year, but the wind and lack of fish have negated them.

Crusty reported that it was so windy in one spot, he though he saw a flying esky coming towards him but it was a boat with its bimini up and the anxious crew Jack, Hayden and Jon on the 'White' boat hanging onto the bimini for dear life trying to get it down before they sailed off into the sunset.

No tag....bugger

The Million Dollar fish is out there, but many of us didn't see a barra, or if we did they were few and far between.  Only Petey O saw a big one which he estimated at 110cm or close to it (he'd know he has caught a heap that size), but as luck would have it, as the fish slowly swam past him, he stood on his line, caught the fly on the net, and before he could get a good cast at it, the fish had swum off.  Interestingly was that the fish was near the reef out the front of Mawson and before you go below Indian Island.   There were schools of blue salmon there too.  The hole in Mawson had Tarpon and blue salmon schools too, but they were very jumpy and would only respond to smaller white clousers with a bit of blue or similar in them.

Giant Herring

There were heaps of tea leaf trevally down in the Charlotte and for their size (biggest 50 cm) they really put up a great fight.  There was also Giant Herring heaps of black bream and schools of Golden Trevally .  The only goldie recorded for Sunday was from down there.   All caught on white clousers with sea foam centre.  We used a variety of flies but the 'special' that Roggie ties for me in white EP fibre with a thin sea foam DNA centre was the outstanding fly.  I caught every fish on that style of fly, and only hooked the rocks a couple of times (don't believe Roggie it wasn't that many times)

Typical tea leaf

The elusive Goldie

 







                                                                                                                                     

Justine and Marty (The Brokenflagens) had been to a secret creek, (I think Lord Jim calls it 'Jims' creek) and they locked themselves in during the change of low tide.   At the bottom of the tide and just as it came in they managed eleven barra and two threadies.

The fish Jus is holding is her PB barra and it won her the coverted trophy.

  Remember its all For Fun and Glory, but they did do some fly fishing for this 'Great Northern' Salmon.

A 'Great Northern' salmon.

Saturday night we had a very secure draw for the Sunday species, if the fish was booed or there was a groan, we seemed to loose the tag, so those selected were by popular demand....they were Barramundi (hopefully a million dollar fish), Mangrove Jack, Golden Trevally, Black Bream and Tarpon.

We cannot thank enough the wonderful staff at Sandpalms and the wonderful community at Bynoe, who always make us feel so welcome.  Blommy has only been there twice and the last time was two years ago but he was blown away when he walked into the bar to greetings of, "Blommy! how are ?".  He looks pretty happy and didn't we have some laughs even though he is on the soda water. He and Roggie are trying to get the next stakes put on so they can launch after breakfast (9am) have lunch on an Island and be back for afternoon tea at 3pm. They didn't mention the fishing.

I think Roggie was looking at mid August next year with neap tides, cooler weather, probably wind and late breakfast.  Didn't find a lot of fish this year on good tides, so maybe the flatter neaps and fishing up in the mangroves and on the higher flats, like in Jim's Creeks we may have more  luck.  Main thing is to have fun though.



Julie had also arranged a great band (Red Dog) for Saturday night and most importantly had oodles of

food and good wine and beer.

 Julie and Oonagh met the boats as they returned to the ramp with an esky full of ice cold 'Great Northern'. Roggie wants to bodgie the Great Northern Logo up and put a barra there with the words 'Great Northern Territory' but I said, NO!,he's bodgied up enough logo's.

The prizes, a 'Sheep Station', Ramsey the stud ram, the Sandpalms barra, esky full of beer,
and no sheep station is without jams and relish from the wonderul ladies at
the CWA (Country Womens Association)....in this case Dottie.

Crusty was always happy even though he lost his trophy to Justine...and Phil was incognito behind the glasses

Trouble...the Fairy Queen and the Wicked Witch
according to Roggie

Steve..enjoying the air conditioning

Lord Jim presenting a cash donation to the Milne Volunteer
Bushfire Brigade Vice Captain Daniel Hannah

Oonagh drawing the raffle with Murph (Mrs. Minchin)

We have always run a small raffle and donate the majority of the proceeds to a worthy organisation that can assist in the area. This year the donation was made to the Milne Volunteer Bushfire Brigade, and was accepted by their Vice Captain Daniel.   The brigade not only  looks after the wonderful locals but also our cars and trailers at the boat ramp.


Only fourteen teams, this year but heaps of apologies ....they were from Tony and Rebecca Orr who are bonefishing in New Caledonia...Dave Friebel...Bob Bekkers who was fishing the GoldCoast Flattie Classic, Mark, Mario from the South East Queensland Fly Fishers, Darryl Harper, Dottie who was busy making more jam for the CWA, Barb O from 'Barbless', Bronwyne and Noel, Cliffy and I'm sorry if I missed anyone else.