Sweet's Lagoon

Everyone should know the story of Sweetheart, the 4.6 m crocodile that spent many years terrorising the fishermen on the Finniss River. Documented stories of upending boats and grabbing outboards was the stuff of legends. Why? I think sweetheart got sick of everybody taking his photo and then hitting him in the head with cans or sticks while he was relaxing on the bank so much so every time he heard an outboard coming he expected to be accosted especially with the old steel cans.

Sweetheart when being removed drowned and now resides in the Darwin Museum.

It's now some 25/30 years since Sweet's lagoon has been accessed, massive growths have inhibited the way through from both ends of the Finniss, to know where this is if you go downstream from the hardcastle boat ramp near Sand Palms you come to the 3 ways turn right and the access is blocked 500 metres further on. Sweet's lagoon is another kilometre further on.

Last week Matt Wright dropped his helicopter on the beach at Crab Claw and picked me up  to show me his pontoon on Sweet's Lagoon, there is no access from either the Tidal Finniss wetlands or the fresh, he has set up an airboat wetland and crocodile viewing operation there.

We flew straight in and landed on his day pontoon which has been set up to provide lunch etc, but at this stage he has no fishing boat available.

The lagoon looked excellent, tarpon going off everywhere and I assume there would be huge numbers of Sooty Grunter and Barra. Saratoga are not part of the Finniss System.

I know Matt well having done helicharters to the Reynolds River with him and hope to create some sort of access in the near future. He has a floatplane as well so this might bring the cost down to fish this legendary hole.

Bynoe Flats

On the last set of tides, I had a spare day so Dorothee and I went out for a couple of hours as the tide dropped.
I decided, seeing the wind wasn't as bad early to target a little fished flat,  that recently I saw a barra up in the metre class on. On that occasion the client with me wasn't able to put a cast within a bulls roar of the fish,"let me at it" .

Well I didn't see it or any of the better fish I saw that day, certainly found a lot of fish up to 65cm, maybe 25. For the first two hours they totally ignored us even pulling up and backing off the fly.

Sometimes this happens and is so frustrating but when the tide turned so did their attitude. In the next hour and a half we both ended up having double hook ups landing probably a dozen. No big ones, with maybe 5 legal and one at 68cm.

We both had on Wayne Williams STS fly mainly because it had some good weed guards. Certainly did the trick, Dotty lost hers when a small stripey nailed it and a big cod ate the stripey. It wasn't letting go and believe it after a lot of tugging and a forced jump it made a piece of reef.

The wind is still pretty horrendous in Darwin, went to do a charter today and the boat ramp pontoon at East arm was going up and down like a yo yo, had to turn around and go home. Probably good for a milkfish although that wind tends to travel around corners and funnel the creeks. Its supposed to back of by the weekend.

How to Use the TFO Office Rod

"Watch out for Buffalo"

The weekend comes around and Saturday morning I’m faced with the daunting prospects of mowing the lawn, doing the washing and cleaning the house. Rather be at work, and that is saying something coming from me. Scanned the internet to find that 4 Mile Hole opened Friday – long grass is environmentally good, dirty clothes saves the environment from harsh detergents and spiders webs in the lounge room adds character! Convinced myself it’s the right thing to do – go fishing.

One cooked chook and salad from Woolies, Mid Strength Beers and ice, swag, mossie dome and the boat hooked up and away I went.

I arrived at 4 Mile at 4.00pm after travelling for 30 kms in almost one and half hours over bad corrugation. Having fished 4 Mile for more than 10 years the road is in the worst condition I have seen it, maybe it’s the “Kakadon’t” management system coming to the fore again! Only one of the creek crossings has any water of note in it but is lower than last year. Beware there is a deep hole just before the exit ramp  inbound which can make the heart miss a beat for the unprepared. Had a chat to someone coming out who told me that it was “dead as a Dodo, no-one getting anything and the road is s… house all the way, don’t bother”, great!

I launched the boat as soon as I got there off the bank with no problems and went fishing. Fished until dark within 100 metres of my launch place and picked up catfish, tarpon, barra (small) and toga by throwing a Roggie Dodgie flies into the edges and snags, enjoyable couple of hours. As soon as the sun met the horizon you could hear them arriving, MOZZIES. We’ve all heard the stories as to how bad they can be, double it and it will be somewhere near actual.

Set camp, built a fire and put as much wet grass on it as I could for the smoke, after half an hour things weren’t too bad. Couple of beers, chook and salad it was time for the swag under a sky full of stars with just a hint of coolness making for great sleeping weather.

Home

Woke at 6.15am expecting the sun to be just showing itself over the horizon, still dark!! It was then that I realised that the light was being blocked by all the mozzies parked on the outside of my dome – millions of them. I covered myself with as much clothing as I could put on and went fishing.

At that time of the morning with no other boats yet on the water, sun just showing itself, reflections of flying birds to be clearly seen on the water surface it is truly worth the little bit of effort to get there. Fished the upstream section of the waterhole just around the bend at the end of the main body of water and caught a number of barra in the 40 – 50 range and toga the largest going 65 cms.

Another one

 

"Magic"

Whilst the fishing was not as good as I have experienced there it was still a great session and no-one should be discouraged about going there. There is still a large amount of water on the flood plain to yet come back into the billabong along with a lot of fish. Because the water is still so high only saw 2 crocs while I was there, this is always an indication that water is on the flood plain, also it’s too wet for the donkeys to get to the area which may be one of the reasons I slept well without them making a racket all night.

 

Still plenty of water to come back

Whilst fish size and numbers did not set any records, and despite the hard going getting there I’ll be back there in the not too distant future. Hopefully Alligator from the Arnhem Hwy will be open for the upcoming long weekend if anyone wants to tag along.

Oh yes, almost forgot, “Watch out for Buffalo” they are hiding in the valleys of the corrugations – beware!

Steve Huff in the NT

With all the wind it looked liked the conditions were going to be pretty hard,we started of at Bynoe fishing for 5 days on the making tides,at least  the water tempeture still kicked around the 26 deg so a the fish should be reasonably active.

Steve soon discovered that Threadfin swallow flies and spit them out faster then you can strike,
nearly convincing himself that they might be a challenge that he wasn't going to achieve, but he did end up nailing a few, we had at times great sight fishing catching quite a few Barra and Blue Threadfin, the odd King Threadfin and the usual array of Queenies and Trevally.

Dottie joined us for a number of days which was great,Steve was pretty laid back and we all managed to catch stuff, Dottie got a great Queenieon the flats with numerous Barra as well. We did a lot of bullshitting, sledging and trying different things.

One morning I told Steve that  Lenny Sibio and I had encountered some Permit , so the three of us headed out to find them. The weather was blowing really hard when we got there so just cruised slowly looking around.

Steve spotted the first one he reckoned about 25lb but we couldn't get a shot in the waves, you wouldn't believe it we then encountered a number of pods of them possibly we saw up to 50 in total unfortunately whilst we got flies to them other then the odd turn to look they ignored us.

Steve was responsible for Del Brown's 513 Permit in Florida Keyes so I now have a fair idea what needs to be done, we tried to get back but the conditions wouldn't allow it, I'm definitely going to keep at it though.

We headed down to Corroboree, looking for Saratoga, a brief respite from the wind at first light managing to catch a dozen before 11am, all were caught amongst the sticks and lilys, we didn't go deep at all preferring to experience the crash tackles in the shallows. Dottie came along and as usual took a couple of hrs to extract 6 out of some of the most inaccessible parts of the lilys.

The Milkfish were next on the agenda, a loaf of bread plus half of my lunch roll,(Steve wouldn't give his up) we hooked one which ran straight in to the rocks, then hooked another 3 which  all came off.
Thats unusual so I blamed him and put that back on the bucket list.

We will be at the Ski Club this afternoon at 5.30 pm,if you can make it come and say hello.

Cheers Graeme

Permit Fly Patterns

PERMIT FLY PATTERNS SEEM TO ALL COME FROM THE SAME PRECISE BLUE PRINT THAT DICTATES A HEAVILY WEIGHTED, RUBBER LEGGED, CRAB PATTERN. THIS ALL BEGAN WITH THE PATTERN PICTURED HERE; ORIGINALLY CALLED DEL’S MERKIN IT WAS CREATED BY DEL BROWN AND GUIDE STEVE HUFF. THIS FLY IS MORE THAN THE FIRST EFFECTIVE PATTERN FOR PERMIT, BUT RATHER IT WAS THE START OF A NEW AND DIFFERENT TECHNIQUE OF PRESENTING THE FLY. 

TRAINING VIDEO?

Jono Shales shared a link

.

Friday

Click on the link or the photo below

http://vimeo.com/70032997

7 degrees south - Alphonse Island - official trailer

Five world class fly fishing guides take the audience on a four week journey fishing the Alphonse and St. Francois atolls of the Seychelles for various species of…

11

SOUTH FOR THE WINTER - TAKE ICE PICKS.

Carol and Bill (The Wilsons) are heading south for the winter.  Their baggage must weigh a lot, because they will need ice picks to go fishing.

Here is just a few shots of their home in the south.

top picture is the house behind us,the rest of the photos are of our house and gates 

great week end thanks

Carol

Snow started Thursday 4.30pm, been snowin and blowin ever since!! 30-45cms in depth, drifts much deeper

THERE WASN'T THAT MUCH IN IT!

What a great weekend.  The Inaugural Bynoe Harbour Sheep Station Stakes was a huge success and a fun time was had by all who competed/attended, because after all it wasn't really a comp was it.




Kate's biggest Queenfish to date

 

Kate and I fished together as the Fly Wired team in our 12 foot punt and we did pretty well.  If not catching the target species, we caught just about everything else.  Over the weekend Kate and I caught the following in multiples-  Barra, Jacks, Goldies, Ock Ock, Pikey Bream, Russels Snapper, Goldspot Cod, Barracuda, Silver Batfish, Queenfish, Trevally and Tarpon.

We were extremely happy with the Tarpon finishing up with 3 for the comp.  Now I know where I can find good Tarpon.



And Mangrove Jack





Kate pretty happy with her first saltwater tarpon



And Barracuda





Just to put this into perspective, Kate has had about 5 serious attempts at flyfishing, so to pull off runner up in a field of well seasoned fly anglers, seriously highlights the nature of this event, but it also highlights to the peanut gallery, the importance of a good captain and guide, right Rog, Graeme and Steve,  back me up on this one!!  One Sunday, Kate managed 19 fish from 9 species, 3 of which were the target species for the day effectively mutiplying her cm count by 3.  I on the otherhand landed 28 fish from 10 species but only 2 were target species. 

We both dropped good barra in the mid 70's to high 80's and we sighted a cracker well over 90.  Kate hooked and fought a Mangrove Jack in the mid to high 40's for a good couple of minutes, but lossed it close to the boat.  I think if she had of held her barra and that jack, it would have been tight with Pete. 

The weather was great on both days which was an advantage to us because if it blew up we would have been buggered in the tinny.  A tinny does have its advantages though.  We were able to sneak into some pretty skinny water and see a lot of fish.  The Barra were there in good numbers, but were flighty.  The only one we were able to land was sighted a good 100 ft cast away feeding.  I landed the fly on his nose and there was no hestitation.  Other fish we came across, were already spooked before we saw them and the fly only frightened them more.  

Queenfish seemed to be everywhere and doble hookups were common. They were on the points, headlands, creeks and snags.  They were a pain on the second day because they weren't a target species but great fun just the same.

The fly that did the most damage was, wait for it.......a small white clouser.  No surprises there.  Variations to the theme included pink, chartruse, yellow and green underwings. Waynes's STS fly did the trick on a barra for me.



Nearly legal at 53cm



For Kate and I, Mackeral and Golden Trevally were elusive, but that's nothing new, macks always seem to elude me at Bynoe.  One day I'll break that nemesis.

There seemed to be some confusion over stripies that were a target species on the first day and it seemed that some folks were calling Russel's Snapper, Stripies.



This is a Russel's snapper



Kate has suggested that we make up an ID chart with all species in the draw and laminate it for the next salt water outing.  We had a few queries about what fish was what, so we'll probably organise that over the next couple of weeks.  The Ock Ock or Javelin Fish was another species that seemed to raise some questions relating to it's identity so here it is.


This is an Ock Ock.

 All in all, the fishing was great, the company was fantastic, the hospitality from Julie and Tommy was excellent as usual and meeting Steve Huff was a highlight.  A great man and gentleman to boot.  I personally hope to fish with him sometime soon.  To Cathy, Roger and Jim, awesome effort and definitely a highlight on our fishing calendar.  Congratulations again to Pete O, great fishing and look after those sheep.

Dion

PETEY O' TAKES SHEEP STATION.

What a great response to the Non- comp comp (Fishing trip) you could not move in Sand Palms on Friday night, we spilled out onto the veranda.  The whole idea of the Bynoe Sheep Station Stakes (named by Dion) was as a result of people in the past saying that we were not playing for sheep stations,  so some thought it would be a good idea to put a sheep station up as the stakes just for fun and here it is complete with faithful sheep dog.

Lord Jim devised a system for the stakes, so that a draw of five species was made from a large pool of fish species, before each fishing day.  With a limit of only five of each of the selected species counted on a per cm basis and then the total from that is multiplied by the number of species caught.  This total is then added to the total of all other fish (only five of each allowed) which are counted on a per cm basis to give a final score.  It may sound complicated but it worked out really well and it does what Jim designed it for, it gives everyone a reasonable chance at winning the sheep station and cup of 'glory'.

Pete O'Sullivan (The Rubber man) now has the original sheep station after taking out the stakes.

Pete with his cup of 'glory' to add to the sheep station.

Pete won the coveted prize, (I mean we've all wanted to win a sheep station), after a big run on the second day of the non-comp comp.  He got three of the five species selected for day one and four of the five selected for day two.

Kate came in just a few points behind Pete O' and well in front of Dion 

It is a bit of a worry for NSW coming up to the next State of Origin, because the top of the winners list read like this if you were working on state or place of origin.  Here they are....

First............................................Pete O...................Victoria
Second........................................Kate ....................Queensland
Third...........................................Dion....................South Australia
Fourth..........................................Lord Jim................UK
Fifth.............................................Roxley .................Tasmania
Sixth.............................................Cathie .................Victoria
Seventh.........................................Bill ....................West Australia
and finally a New South Welshman.....thank you Carol
Eighth...........................................Carol ..................NSW
Ninth............................................ Marty ..................Germany
Tenth............................................ Matty ...................South Australia
Eleventh....................................... Jus ........................UK
Twelfth........................................  Roggie...................NSW 
Thirteen.......................................  Hags.......................UK
Fourteen......................................  Ash......................... South Australia
Fifteen........................................... Dottie................... South Africa
Sixteen...........................................Graeme..................NSW
Seventeenth......................................Steve..................... USA
Eighteen..........................................Lenny.....................Italy
Nineteenth.......................................Cliff.......................NSW
Twentieth....................................... Gary.....................  UK
Twenty First...................................Les .......................  NSW
Twenty second................................Irene.....................  NSW
Twenty third....................................Phil......................  NT
Twenty Fourth..................................Pat........................  NSW
Twenty Fifth................................... Connor.................  NSW
Twenty Sixth...................................Justin..................... NSW
Twenty Seventh...............................Julie...................... NSW
Twenty Eighth..................................Donna................... NT
Twenty Ninth...................................Jacob.................... NSW
Thirtieth..........................................Tommy..................NSW

There were a few more that we handed sheets out to as well who were fishing with the guides but I have forgotten their names, and a lot more were there to support the mob.

 The gang at Sand Palms have named the 'Social Mob', the 'outCASTS' which looks like sticking.  Sounds better than 'mobster'!!!

  Anyway back to the fishing....

Pete with more 'Gold'

Pete and Jim struck the jackpot around Knife Island.  While they were into the mackerel, Jim noticed what he thought was a barra come up at the same time.  He mentioned it to Pete and the next thing both were pulling barra out from under the mackerel on one of everyones favorite corners of Knife Island.

Jus and Marty  (The Brokenflagens)

Jus and Marty really got into it too.  Jus got four species for the first time on fly, and Marty was the only one who could manage to catch threadies.  He doesn't like the 20lb leaders though, because the mackerel kept cutting him off,  plus he had a big!!! barra on and it managed to gill rake the leader...no more barra.

A 'Mid' day barra.

The wind wasn't too bad at all, and the water was clear.  Saw plenty of barra and salmon but they were not drawn out for the species in the stakes, so we had to try and give them a miss.  Not really!   Graeme and Dottie fished with Steve Huff, and Dottie got a monster queenie and a thumper of a golden trevally.

Steve filled us in on the fishing in Florida, he was very generous with his information and I think some are already booked with him.

The ' Outcasts' from Insight.

A cap from Michelle at Palmerston Embroidery was presented to Steve to show off in the US.

Wind????what wind.  

Special thanks to Julie and Tommy at Sand Palms.  Huge, outstanding meals, great accommodation and atmosphere because of all the wonderful people out there.

Also a special thank you to Kevin at C.U.B. for the great support for our fledgling mob of 'outcasts', and wasn't it great as you returned to the ramp, to find Julie and Donna there with a complimentary ice cold Carlton 'mid'.  Paradise!!!

The wonderful, Julie and Tommy.