ALL OVER THE SHOP

With my season over Dotty and I spent  Christmas to New year between Bathurst and Melville Island ,a friend bought a new boat so we joined them for a week cruising Apsley Straight. There were heaps of Snapper and Mangrove jacks but not many Barra, very little visual flats but lots of snags.

The New Boat

Some of the jacks were really good sizes and provide lots of fun, Tarpon were also in abundance, one notable catch was a baby groper which pulled Dotty around a bit,on a sunset to Sunrise fly as well.

Overall the country was mangroves and mudflats estuaries etc but no little gems like Knife Island.

Managed to catch up with a few Relo's from Barra Base days

Back to Darwin we  took off to Tasmania. We ended up at Great lake and for the next week fished places such as Penstock Lagoon, lake Fergus Little Pine, and Bronte Lagoon.

We stayed with John and Sue Newman who were original DFR members it was John who originally designed the logo. The weather at first was pretty hopeless we didn't do to much good  until we got to Bronte lagoon, fortunately we ended up staying near by with a client who is the manager of the Australian team.

His guidance and our enthusiasm saw us hunting on the beautiful shoreline of Bronte Lagoon, a long slow stalk on those edges produced nice size trout . After a few stuff ups with me either stepping on them or being obvious I came up to speed and managed to convince them to eat my fly.

As usual we thought we would catch more than we did, I know why and brushing up on my entomology and stalking  ability played a big part.

This is how I thought of my stealth and hunting ability

 Mostly we  used emerger patterns to match up with the amount of spinners in existence. Caddis Nymphs and possum Emergers seem to cover the conditions, I never saw to many Mayfly or Dun hatches but maybe that was the weather.

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Some fly's recommended to us were so small that it was nearly impossible to get a line through the eye much less tie a knot in the 4lb leader.

Shoreline of Bronte Lagoon

We also used techniques that are now common in competition  using Nymphs and big Caddis that involved drift fishing from a boat, that also was productive.

We ran into Peter Hayes who had us walking Brumby's a few times ,whilst we found them we couldn't catch them, irrespective that was fun.

Lake Fergus on the headwaters of Little Pine

 A walk around the untouchables bay on Little Pine also raised and saw fish but caught one only about 6 inches long, I did fish with Dotty on the wall of Penstock and played a big fish for ten minutes into the reeds where 4lb line was useless, so no photo.

Caddis Moth so thick it was hard to see through.

 The weather went bad and it actually snowed so Dotty and I made a hasty exit and flew to Cairns, we hired a car and drove up to Cooktown crossing over the Normandy and Annan rivers, I have been told that there are a lot of Jungle Perch in there ,we didn't have time but I would love to try that.

Annan River on the High road to Cooktown.

We didn't really fish Cooktown just had a nice look around, certainly lots of potential. Although if you don't want many people to visit you it would be far enough away, unfortunately our trip was cut short when one of Dotty's Job applications came through. We had to come back to Darwin.

Cooktown has about 2000 people and seems to wear a lot of wind, it would be nice to spend time there, the fishing shop had some great photos of giant Herring and the reef isn't far out.

The country and scenery was really worth the trip where the mountains of Black Granite are amazing. Dotty heard you can get some sort of energy or paradigm shift laying on them, I watched for a while expecting a big F..ing flash but nothing really happened, I told her you might do better  eating a Rambutan next time.

Cheers Graeme