AUGUST FLATS FISHING MAGIC

It's getting a bit like we are always saying that we live in paradise, but it has to be said again.  For those who managed to get out this last weekend, we had probably the best and the worse of it.  Beautiful flat, gin clear water and no wind, or muddy dirty spots with the wind blowing a gale. But if you got into the right spots, the fish were there.   Saturday was blowy which had not been forecast but Sunday was outstanding.

Clear water and no wind!!!

A good turn out from 'The Mob' and I see that Jim has already put out a report. ( He had an awesome time on the barra ). We are a bit late with ours, because we stayed out there, in Bynoe,  for fours days as we both needed a fishing fix and wanted to explore some areas on the lower high tides on Friday.  In all we did 375kms on the outboard, and by the third day I had flattened the electric motors battery by running on top speed to see everywhere we could.   Luckily the running back and forward charged it back up enough to allow us to use it on Monday.

We saw some awesome fish on the flats, in one spot four huge barracuda that looked like two metre logs laying up on the sand near the trees.   Cast at a queenie about 70cm in the trees only to have a metre plus one hit the fly and take the line out to the back before the unimaginable happened.  The bloody knot slipped and gave way.  I'll cop some sledging over that, but at this stage I'm blaming my little fingers for not pulling down the knot tight enough!   To top it of in the same trees up on one of the flats on the Darwin side of Indian Island, we came across two golden trevally.  I believe that they only grow to around 30kg and these looked to be a foot wide and a metre long so must have been close to that weight.

I hooked one of these, and off it went, straight out away from the trees and onto the backing, I pressed the button on the remote for the electric to stop it, but I must have missed and hit the rabbit (full speed) and went straight into the trees, but no worries, still had the fish running out into the bay, but then it turned, came back in as fast as it had gone out and ran around every bloody tree in the bay while the boat was turning in circle.  Lost that one too.  Went home on Friday without a fish in the  boat.

Saturday it all changed, thank goodness!!!!  We caught a couple of barra, one salmon landed and a lot lost.  The mackerel were hunting in schools around Knife Island and off the rocks bars of Indian, but we couldn't manage one bigger that 75cm.  Heaps of other fish on the flats just off those bars, there were school of javelin fish, bream and snapper.  In one spot it was a fish a cast, just crazy!!

A 44cm snapper

 In one small creek there was so many threadies, you could nearly walk across the water on them.  Cliff and Les (and old workmate of ours) also managed a metre plus barra.  Between a 110 and 120cm they estimate.   The got it to the boat twice, but on the third occasion, just as Cliff was bringing it to the boat, the beast shook its head and broke the gold bomber lure in half, then swam off with the back half still hooked up.  Now its just another fishing story.

Not sure what this is, but a good fish. (From Dion, it is a sombre sweetlip or brown bastard)

Great goldie.

Hags and Di got fish down in the Annie.  Pete O and his family had a day like our first day. Dave and Jeff took advantage of having no easterly winds and fished the flats down the front of Indian.  Jeff was apparently trying to hypnotize one barra by zig zagging it back and forward, even hitting it with the tip of his rod, but it would not take the fly.  The WWW team, Dorothee, Graeme and Wayne Williams landed some good fish too.  Photos to come!.

We also got onto bait balls at the top of Indian.  We've been trying out some crab flies on the sandy flats near the trees at Hutt Point just as the tide started to rise, when we saw the birds start to gather then they were in a feeding frenzy over three big bait balls just off Hutt.

What made this more special, is that the water was Gin clear and you could see down below the balls, where there were schools of huge trevally rounding the balls up, while tuna and mackerel with the odd big queenie cut through them on the top.   Sharks and dolphins were having a go too.

Underneath these birds are fish that were about to unleash hell.

Cathie's first cast into one of the balls ended after a mackerel about 2 mtres long cut the fly off.   Tied on a similar fly with a short trace and that fixed the problem, and for the next three hours we had a ball.  I think we must have lost about ten kilos in sweat fighting fish.

One of the tuna

After pulling these in you're too tired to hold them up.

The last one of these I ever want to hook.

As soon as you put a fly out it was hit, and we had a double hook up at one stage on tuna.  Not easy fishing, but managed to get them both in.  Five in all from 82cm to 97cm.  Then the bloody trevally hit us. Cathie got an 85cm in and I had to have a go then.  No more double hook ups on these!!  I thought the tuna were hard to get in, well I hope this is the last of these big trevally I hook, didn't even measure the bloody thing because I was too tired, and broke the rod which had landed four tuna and two of these big trevally.   Its only an 8 foot 8wt 300 -400 gn.  TFO Mini Magnum, and we had put so much pressure on it, to the extent we were shaking with the effort as these fish ran.  I made the mistake of trying to left this last one into the net and high sticked the rod.  Broke the butt.   Stupid fisherman, absolutely great rod.

The fly- what's left of it.

After all that we were all fished out.  Would not cast another fly just in case a bigger trevally took the fly.  So we went in early and were nearly too tired to get to dinner later that evening.  Luckily we were able to put back on the weight we lost thanks to the great hospitality at Sand Palms!

The Bassetts