MORE FROM EXMOUTH

From Jono Shales at Exmouth Fly Fishing

Clive Will has done a load of trout and freshwater fishing in South Africa, but this is his first saltwater experience.




How's this for super cool! Clive's first fish fish he's ever caught in the salt, a blue bone caught while sight casting and wading the flats.
Not a bad way to open the tally at all !

The wind has been blowing a little so we waded on foot in the morning and Clive opened the account with a sight cast blue bone on the flats, then later in the day hooked up to his first tuna on fly ... but unfortunately Clive found out the hard way about wearing shoes with laces on the boat. His line wrapped around the laces and the fish popped off. 



It wasn't long however before he was hooked up again and watching the backing disappear off the reel 





Clive's reward. Welcome to Western Australia mate and happy 40th to you. A well deserved fish, congrats — .

Hook baited for fishing bag limits, closed waters

BY KATHERINE GREGORY -September 27, 2013, 9:09 am

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The Northern Territory Government is considering reducing recreational fishing bag limits.

A discussion paper, released today, says there needs to be overall catch reductions of about 50 per cent for golden snapper and 20 per cent for jewfish to allow the recovery of fish stocks in Darwin Harbour.

Territory Fisheries Minister Willem Westra van Holthe is seeking public comment on proposed measures to boost all fish stocks, which includes bag limits, off-limit areas and restrictions on catch and release practices.

He says he hopes any changes do not have to be heavily policed.

"You can't catch as many golden snapper now as you could five years ago," he said.

"If people realise that they are having a significant impact on fish stocks in those closed-in reefs, then I hope that they just do the right thing without a great deal of policing having to go into it."

The Territory's key recreational fishing body says it agrees with Government plans to impose restrictions.

Amateur Fishermen's Association NT (AFANT) executive officer Craig Ingram says he supports measures to ensure future sustainability of the fishing industry but hopes the commercial sector will also follow the guidelines.

"There have been three discussion papers released in the last year in relation to the fishing sustainability issue," he said.

"We haven't seen any movement from the tour operating, the charters or the commercials.

"We believe that it is essential that all of those are dealt with, and it is clear from government about what the impact is on all sectors."

A fishing charter operator says he supports plans to introduce bag limits on certain species of fish for a five-year period, even though it will hurt his business.

The owner of Darwin Reefs N Wrecks Fishing Charters, Jim Bancroft, says the proposal is unexpected and will come at a cost.

"That is a large part of our business, so it is going to affect us dramatically," he said.

"The Commonwealth was making closures further out, big areas, and we didn't realise there would be something in closer like this.

"It has come as a bit of a surprise, closing off our regular fishing grounds."

PROPOSED CLOSURES TO RECREATIONAL FISHING?

Attached are maps from NT Fisheries showing (in yellow) the proposed closures to recreational fishing and the Government is seeking submission/comments on those proposals. You can see more by clicking onto the link immediately below, with advice on how to comment (shown below) attached to that site. Click onto each individual map for a larger view

http://www.nt.gov.au/d/Fisheries/rfc/index.cfm?pg=recommendations

How to Comment

Submissions are invited on the issues raised in this discussion paper. All submissions will be collated and presented to the Minister for Primary Industry and Fisheries for consideration. An online questionnaire is available for your comments, alternatively you can complete a hardcopy and post it to the Department.

All comments must be received by COB Friday 15th November 2013.

Online questionnaire

Click here to complete and submit the online questionnaire.

For more information please email fisheries@nt.gov.au

7.1 Appendix 1- Maps of proposed closures

TIGER FISH ON CLOUSER ON THE ZAMBESI

From our Zambesi mobsters, Dimity and Phillip (The Flying Fosters)

Our trip to Africa started out as a holiday to visit certain places and maybe try for a Tiger Fish. We flew from Darwin to Singapore for a wait of about 6 hours then 10.5 hours to Johannesburg. That is painstakingly horrible. Picked up a hire car and drove to Kruger National Park via Sabie in South Africa which turned out to be an area whose prime tourist industry was Trout fishing!!

Totally took me by surprise. It is so organised that all you have to do is go and buy a permit and they tell where you are allowed to fish. Gear is available from guides doing guided trips. Guides were booked 2 weeks in advance!! I wasn't prepared for this and so was not able to have a go. If we look at it, the elevation of the area is about 4-5000 ft above sea level, quite cold with cool fast streams, as well as, well stocked dams. Some points we drove over were up to 7,000 ft elevation. The SA Rand is very weak and so buying power is very good. Tends to make you spend money and have a good time.

While at Royal Kruger Lodge, which is near the Crocodile River, I attempted to catch Tigers - succeeded but they were very small, although bigger ones are there - as was proven by Chase my guide and friend.

It was my first Tiger fish.

He is a very keen fisherman and is also quite knowledgeable. His contact is chasekurucz@gmail.com. Chase is very friendly and keen to help out in any way possible. The Hippos and crocs in the river kept you alert. In fact, while I was fly fishing I also had a bait line set with a float on it – a croc about 2-3 metres took an interest and decided to eat it – I actually had him hooked up until he decided that he had had enough and decided to go a different direction and of course the line broke off. We saw a croc about 6 metres out in the middle of the river!!

Livingstone in Zambia and Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe are very close together and survive because of tourism, which has pushed prices of everything up. There is also a lot of poverty in the area!!

We then flew to Livingstone in Zambia. We had booked a whole day trip with Anglezam which is an organisation dedicated to fishing. These fish are incredibly pretty and great sport fish although our sport fish are probably on a par. The fish appear to be ambush feeders and put on a pretty good display when hooked. They have very hard mouths and so their ability to throw a hook is really good (or bad if you want to land the fish). There are a few photos attached for info. The fish live in fast flowing rocky rivers. They are common in the shallower backwater parts of rivers - We fished the Zambesi River, which has the Victoria Falls on it, just downstream from where we fished.

Anglezam is a very professional organisation with at least two bases for tiger fishing. The guides know what they are doing and are well equipped for Flyfishing. Our pick up was for 6.30 am with a break for lunch at a lodge well up on the river. The two guides that we met were Andrew (picked us up and drove us to the launch site) and Patrick was the one with us for the day. He is in one of the photos. We fished until about 1800 hrs when it was starting to get pretty dark.

 I took my own flies, which I used to great effect, after trying theirs. They suggest dark flies during the middle of the day with lighter a flashy one in the early part of the day and later in the afternoon. The wind stayed down for us until about 3 pm. After that it got pretty blowy. The first fish to hook up, took me by surprise and of course threw the hook pretty quickly. The next one was not so lucky - about 30 cm or in their lingo 900 gms. The fish were active all morning and I managed to land three with several strikes but no more hook-ups that got away!! They just loved the light green & white clouser with red flash that I used. It lasted most of the day and I did all my catching on it. After that it was pretty tired. The red and black feather fly I tried (mine also) in the middle of the day did not even get a look. One of the rods that I used was a Loomis and the other was another good quality rod. All lines are intermediate - think to minimise gear loss. Have a look at the water in the photos. It might also be noticed that we were using a pair of pliers (my leatherman) to remove the fly from fish - due to those very sharp and long teeth. All fishing is catch and release.

The fish get bigger as you move further north and so their base further up have much bigger fish - by a factor of ten - so they tell me. Have a look at their website. www.zambezifishing.com

Phillip

Didnt get any fish on the weekend but spotted some beautys elsewhere

No big fish but the visuals were exceptional.

FLYING FOSTERS IN ZAMBIA CATCHING TIGERS!

Phil and Dimity are fly fishing in Zambia, just got this from them.....great!!!

"Hi Roger,

Still in Zambia. Caught Tiger fish on Clouser - will send full story on return - great time.

Phillip."

SEVEN!!! TWICE, BEFORE LUNCH.

Just back from Bynoe.  Its amazing the difference the run in the tides makes for the fishing as Graeme says in his post.

There was a good few of us out there, Lord Jim in the boat with all his friends, Pete O and a mate, Crusty and Wayne, Roxley trying out his new aircraft carrier, and Dave with Andy.  May have been more that I missed too, sorry about that.

Lord Jim and Cathie hooked and dropped a couple of monsters, which I'll fill you in on later in this little blog.

I heard Wayne dropped a couple of good ones too, so it looks like there's a few going for the nickname of  'Dropper' this year. (sorry about the sledging but I couldn't resist it)

The first day we had about 2.5m movement before the high and nearly 4 m after the high.  That's not a lot of run but it was enough for us to catch the old 'Seven Species' each on the Orange Marauder before lunch. The fish were not anything to write home about, all between 40 and 50cm. The mackerel were tiny, hundreds of them but this is a big one in the photo below,

While we were catching these little macs, which were mixed in with Tarpon, Blue Salmon and the odd barra on the edges, Cathie hooked a monster fish.  It ran nearly to the backing and she managed to get some line back on it, before it ran to a snag, put its head out of the water, shook once then broke the line off on the snag.   We could not guess the length because it only put about a foot of its head out of the water, but it was a huge barra that could have swallowed a rugby ball whole.  The fish must have been cleaning up on some of the smaller fish and took Cathies fly.

Lord Jim's story is even sadder.   We came upon him in a bay looking very dejected and he told us the saga of his dropped fish.  He was fishing near the mouth of a small creek when he saw what appeared to be a 'Queenie' bow wave coming towards him. He cast at the bow wave then all hell broke loose.  It was a barra, and a big one.   Apparently thinking that the bow wave was caused by the head of a queenie he had cast at the head, only to find out it was the dorsal fin of this huge barra, and as luck would have it, after it jumped a couple of times, and he had it to the side of the boat on two occasions, once on its side.  He found that he had hooked the monster at the front of the dorsal fin, so the fish was as confused as Jim was.

Now we come to the sledging part, Jim tried to net the fish, by himself as usual, only to have the fish get upset by the net and break the fly out of its fin. Cathie was a bit cruel when she said something about, "That will teach you to fish by yourself!" 

Jim said it was the biggest barra he had ever seen in his life, so no wonder he's on suicide watch as he puts it.

Two young blokes fishing near by had watched this fight with the fish and were still flogging the water in the area when we arrived, trying to find the monster. They did no good.

TIDAL NOTE: Jim hooked this barra and a couple more, on a tide that had only 1.3metres movement. 

As the tidal movement became less though, we noticed that the fish too were harder to find, except for the odd big fish lolling in the sun.  The fish also seemed a little less willing to bite, except when you got into the crazy schools of queenies and their trevally mates.  But if you ventured up into the creeks and fished on the more permanent snags, there were some good size snapper and jacks willing to take your fly.

Andy and Dave caught us in Andy's barra spot.

We ran into Andy and Dave, just was we were pulling in a fish at Andy's barra spot, talk about cought with your hand in the cookie jar.   The fish gods got us back though, we ran trough the shallow sand/mud with the prop and the rubber gave way in the centre of the prop.  thank goodness we had a spare prop because when that centre rubber goes, the prop just spins.

Just on props, we tried a smaller 12 inch pitch prop so the boat would get up quicker with a load, because Mario and Mark will be fishing with me in the boat in October and the 13 inch pitch prop takes a bit longer to get up onto the plane.  Now it got us onto the plane fast but that was the only thing that was fast.  Normally we do about 4400 rpm for 45 kph but on the smaller prop we were only doing 36 kph at 4500 rpm.   Too bloody slow, so I put the 13 back on and that was the one that the rubber centre went in.    Even with the 13 inch on, I was no match for Dave with is 90 hp who nearly blew us off the water as he went past us around 65 kph, then to top it off  Roxleys Air craft carrier does 80 kph. Made me feel as though I was driving like Jim does and never got out of third gear.

Darryl is fishing with Jim in October, so I better give the power prop to Jim or he wont be able to get up on plane.

Roxley with his speedster, (Alex and Jeff, the Nimitz has competition.)

WHAT WIND????

There are quiet a few of us heading out over the weekend, from Friday to Monday actually, and if the B.O.M. forecast is correct, on each of those days there is nearly no wind until after lunch when the sea breeze may come in.  Here is a typical chart from them for Saturday

Let's hope they are right.  The tides are interesting and give you a great chance to explore the area in relative safety from getting stuck on mud banks or sand bars.

The wind or lack of it, opens up nearly all the harbour to us! but still be aware of those rock bars that are indicated on the map below in the black lines on the green flats.  Big pelagics could be haunting them!

"What a difference a grade makes"

The weekend arrives with the added bonus of an early mark from work on Friday. "Should I start the housework and gardening early or put the added time to a better use?" Difficult?? Go fishing was the choice made after mulling over the options for at least one second. Next decision was where? With the winds having blowing solid all week the fresh seemed the go with 4 mile springing to mind even though the thought of the track being in the same condition as a couple of months ago was a bit of a hurdle to overcome.

Swag packed, beer iced in the esky, fridge raided for food, boat hitched and the last (hint,hint) of the Rogie Dodgie flies removed from the safe and put into service and it was off down the Arnhem Highway to 4 mile.

All smooth going along the highway and was even able to collect a tray full of firewood courtesy of the wind blowing over a dead tree along the way providing custom lengths of timber.   4 mile track was reached with a decision being made along the way that if the track was too bad 2 mile would end up being a new destination. “What a difference a grade makes”. Road smooth, creeks dry 4 Mile Hole in less than an hour! Not another boat, tent or car to be seen!

Launched the boat straight away and proceeding to the right of the launch area, second cast Tarpon scales in the boat. Fished for about an hour and caught Tarpon, Archer and Catfish. Not what I was after, but fish!

One of the numerous Archers

Set camp, got the bush TV tuned in, tested a can or two to see if the ice was working and settled in for the night under a sky full of stars listening to the donkeys on the other bank making their presence known.

Bush TV at its best.

The next morning was pleasantly cool with a low level mist drifting effortless over the water surface setting a picture postcard scene. Proceeded to cast, and cast some more, into the edges for a very poor return for the amount of effort being put in. Changed flies, changed lines, held my tongue at a different angle all to no avail other than a few Tarpon, Archers, Long Tom and two small golden coloured Barra. As the sun got higher schools of Tarpon started breaking the surface mid-stream so went to a sinking line and white clouser and had a catchfest on these.

First on the water

During Saturday a few other boats and campers arrived, including other “mobsters”. All those spoken to were experiencing the same ailment of “hard to find fish”.

Mobsters living the dream

Mobsters in action

Sunday turned on another magnificent morning to venture onto the water before anyone else and to make things even better Toga and Barra came out to play.

Small, yes, but it's a BARRA

Even though the fishing has been better, 4 Mile Hole is still a great place to go and at some  time soon the fish will turn on for those lucky enough to be there.

Remember, “You’ll never never know, if you never never go”.

As this weekend passes into memories my thoughts turn to the next one and where to? Tides are looking good for Barra and Threadies on the flats in Bynoe over the next couple of sets of neaps. Guess where I’ll be next weekend if anyone wishes to tag along.

Tight lines

Jim Churchley

Maybe Kakadu Management should employ some Aboriginals to do the signage. Theirs last for 20,000 years or more. By the way, this is a Croc warning sign!!!!

SOME GOOD FISHING WEEKENDS COMING UP

Looking at the weekends into November for those who like the flats, there are some good ones coming up.  I'll do September  first on this blog and follow up for October on another.  Insight has just put out a report on the wind, they fished in 24 knot, which I think is nearly 50kmph winds.  I noticed that Graeme mentioned Cooma, Well....I too grew up down there and remember those winds, for example when I was five years old, living in railway tents near the stock yards, the winds (and snow) blew the tents down,  so I for one have no liking for the bloody wind, but, as Graeme says, it does send you into other places that are often better. (when the tents blew down, the railway put us into a solid hut, beauty!!!),

l. The weekend of the 15th September tide is like this..

The days either side for this tide are great too....much like the tide that Andy got his 86cm on, and while some don't have the run that makes the fish react as much as...(http://flyfishersmobnt.blogspot.com.au/2013/06/the-game-plan-your-going-fishingthis.html) .....it should still be good fishing and if the B.O.M is correct the mornings of each day have little or no wind, so it should be great out there.

2. The next weekend had one of those tides that you can call an explorer tide and if that bloody wind keeps away, it will be like touring an aquarium 

This is one of the most comfortable tides to fish, maybe not a producing of a lot of fish, but the big ones will be lolling about if you can find them and put a fly near them, should be one of the best days if the wind leaves us alone. See you all out there !!

TREATING THE WIND AS YOUR FRIEND

I remember very vividly as a kid growing up in Cooma in the early 60's my old man saying "treat wind as your friend otherwise you will spend the rest of your life hating it",and that it forces you into fishing out of your comfort zone might yield unexpected results

With up to 24 knots every day I was pushed into areas that generally don't get a look, generally our target is Threadfin and Barra with the pelagics a fill in, there were enough groups of those to suffice the guiding situation anyway.

Knife Island in the wind!

The flats had good numbers, the casting was reasonable, the striking (as with most Trout Fishers) was pathetic. Saw some very good size Barra and Threadfin go begging not because they were not catchable, but because the ability to react to the presentation decisively was lacking.
At the last casting day I stressed, when you can pick up your fly line and change direction to place the fly in a fishes strike zone,without unnecessary false casts your fishing will improve out of sight.
That fact has not changed in 25 yrs of guiding.

Getting blown into fishing places I hadn't been, one such spot I discovered a new bank that had slipped in, like all such structures over the week yielded some seventy Snapper heaps of Blue Threadfin and great sized Tarpon, there were also Queenies and Trevally mixed into this, twice I had these guys achieve six of the target species mackerel not being one.

Which Fly?????

The ongoing test of Roger and Waynes  B.A.C and S.T.S flys. are still neck and neck, recently Dotty used Rogers and Wayne used his, they played seesaw for a while but Dotty cleaned up at the end with a credible Flathead. (Below)

I have to exercise some diplomacy here as I don't tie them and they do.

TEN THOUSAND VIEWS IN FIVE MONTHS

The Blog has just clicked over 10,000 page reads in the five months that we have been going,  your blog has been read by the following countries...

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A lot of people all over the world are interested in your stories, many are expats, or serving overseas, but most are just fly fishers. So keep the yarns coming in.

AWESOME DAY -BYNOE HARBOUR,NT - GO THE FLY!

FROM 'THE STIG'

Finally got on the water this last weekend, after 7 weeks of on-off money permitting work on boat and other regular life ‘poop’ getting in the way

Was advised by the ‘gun’ fly anglers here in Darwin, that Bynoe harbour 1.5hours SW of Darwin was the go on father’s day weekend as the tides had little movement and the water clarity was through the roof awesome clear – perfect for sight casting to fish. The only potential compounding (i.e. negative) factor was the wind – but online forecast reports showed little wind early gradually building to 15knots by 4pm.The next decision was whether to head off Saturday night and stay at the great little country pub near the boat ramp or leave really, really early and drive out in morning to be on water half hour before sunrise to then motor out to starting location I wanted to be at when the sun came into view.

The wives of my fishing buddy and myself chose the latter for us (as if we ever had the choice once that gold ring was on our finger!!). Still a full Father’s day on the water casting flies to sighted fish- who could ask for more.

Morning started with the water almost as smooth as glass. However by time we got to an outer reef at the front of Bynoe Harbour, the water had become chopped up by a constant wind, especially at this exposed reef. I suggested we head to the windward side of an island a kilometre away when we got a few flashes chasing our flies. We soon were in to some active and aggressive small queenies. Here is one of Peter's queenies.

They kept us entertained for an hour or so. Queenies for the most are so eager to take the fly, so vibrant in their shaking, jumping and slogging runs. There was also the odd plate sized GT to be caught, that you knew instantly what it was by the different fight down deep, thumping, and circling.There were random bait balls getting hammered by fish and birds but always more than two cast lengths away. We chased and then they appeared where we used to be ---- so we chased and chased some more to no avail. So we went back to the queenies again - in the shallows around the submerged rock structures near the corner of the exposed reef.

The wind was increasing and waves were getting rougher, so much so that in my low profile Stessl 4.75 protracker it was getting quite interesting rocking about. Again the thought came to move but my fishing companion has more patience than I, given his Canadian steelhead background of catching sometimes only one fish over the course of day in snow covered country and loving it!

Peter instead suggested we move to a bit of a current line not far away where the randomness of slashing fish was a little more constant. At this location, we found that the bottom dropped off from two or three meters deep 50m away from the reef to 20m deep and it seems the predators were pushing the baitfish up against this drop off and then slashing into them. At other times they regularly cruised this dropoff making them easy targets for our flies. We get to this area just as a lull in the wind occurred. It glassed off around us for three hundred meters in all directions for the next few hours. Perfect!

We also enjoy an awesome sight of seven medium sized manta rays cruising slowly through in front of us 6 or so metres down. A majestic sight – till one swam through Peter’s line and foul hooked – Peter fought it for a while and I think we could have readily brought it to hand for a few photos but we eventually broke it off to chase more suitable targets slashing around us.

There were up to four other boats in the spot at various times when we were near the reef but none were catching fish. Some were bait danglers, others jigging – but no fish were netted by these boats. As for us it seemed every second cast saw a 40-60cm mackerel, or the occasional queenie and trevally attacking the fly. The non-fly fishing in the boats would leave abruptly with much roaring of their engines when we kept catching fish and they remained fishless, over the next few hours other boats arrived and ended up leaving in the same way - in disgust and empty eskies – Go the Fly!!!

With the window of glassy conditions you could see a few baitfish start to pop across the surface as they were being forced up by the predators and we could get there with the electric motor before the big fish arrived in force.
Peter was using a bushy profile clouser using kinky fibre, about 10cm long with a little flash, while I was using smaller tighter profile clousers, quite short in length.

Peter out fished me on the mackerel - netting three if not more for each one I caught – so for the day the profile and length of the fly was important. Interestingly, the baitfish were much shorter than Peter’s fly, instead being more my length of fly of 5-6cm. I can only assume the larger fly caught the predators attention more amongst the multitudes of bait than ‘matching the hatch’ that I was trying to do.

Bites offs were few so wire never became a major need., which was not usually the case with narrow barred mackerel and mono leaders, most took the fly while we were using only a stop start single hand strip of 20-50cms on full sinking lines.

There was not a lot surface slashing by fish, and the birds had gone -- so it was just the little boils of only a few baitfish in patches about 4m across to indicate where to cast. Even when the baitfish were not boiling casting from shallows over the edge of or along the drop off, usually resulted in a fish or at least a follow. If the water had not glassed off – you would not have known the baitfish and the predators under them were even there and our day would have been very different.

One particular bait boil I cast to, I let the fly sink more than usually and first strip came up tight to a good fish. It took off line strongly, the fish tracked us all over the patch of water we were fishing so much so I had to use electric to chase it. Finally, I saw its profile down deep in the very clear water, a trevally of some sort, and larger than what we had been catching. 

As I never handle a draw out battle with a bigger fish well – I really horsed it (lose now or later, or maybe not - the poor reasoning), I was turning it over regularly to disorientate it, putting a lot of pressure on the fish and my eight weight rod – much to the astonishment of Peter. I really put the hurts on it and had it to the boat quickly to discover it was a Golden trevally. At which point I was ever so slightly more careful – as I love catching Goldens far more than GTs, what an awesome fish!

Finally, after one anxiety producing missed net shot, the still fairly green fish was in the boat. Hand slaps all round and a few whoops and hollahs and yeeehhhaaahhhss!!!!! Was I stoked! Many pictures followed.


Our fishing had been a bit ‘hit and miss’ the last few outings, so getting into heaps of fish and a few good ones really made us feel on top of the world. But catching fish only on fly when no one else was – well that’s ---- well, priceless.

Add to that watching the fish take the fly in awesomely clear water – all on flies we tied the weekend before in anticipation of this trip – even better still.

One down side of trip was when we got back to ramp and I was backing the boat trailer towards the ramp to load the boat for the trip home – I notice the unusual wobble on the left hand wheel and found the bearing had collapsed. It was a 10km/h slow ride back to the local pub a few kilometres from ramp to strip the wheel down and take parts home to reinstall bearings and take back the next day. But given the awesome day we had – I wasn’t even stressed about the consequence of my poor trailer maintenance.


Now what day can I get back there soon???????? What are the tides?? What will the wind be doing?
And what flies will I need to tie to be ready for it?