Comments from the Podium

DAY 1

Saturday started a little fury.  American honey seemed to feature highly in the excuses, but an alarm set for 5:10........pm didn't help the situation either.  Kate and I left the docks at around 6:30, fueled on by a lovely bacon and egg toasty from the bar.  Early on, I realised I hadn't fished Bynoe since July last year when Kate came in runner following a glorious finish by Pete O to take out the stakes. The fact hit home when I finally decided to look at my GPS and realised that I was about 15 km from where I had planned to fish.  My motto for success is to have a plan before you go and stick to it, otherwise I spend far to much time boating and not enough time fishing.



Sunrises are always pretty good coming out of Milne

The shot above was actually Sunday when we were a little more organised. 
We found ourselves inadvertently at the top of Indian Is (Unjin Pt) which wasn't so bad considering the targets for the day, Bream, Queen fish, Javelin fish, Cod and Blue Salmon.  I know a gutter up there where I can usually get a couple of Blue Salmon and thought my error in navigation was a predetermined by the fishing gods, but alas the tide was just a bit too low, the 5:10 start might have helped.  Off the flat we went and headed for a rocky headland in search of, well whatever we could find. My plan was shot.  Fortunately we found small Bream, some cod and the odd Queenfish.

Pretty little wire netting cod (note the small blue and white clouser)

Kate largest queenfish to date

We didn't take any shots of the Bream I caught, both were pretty small. I had to drop down to a size 4 white and green clouser for them to look seriously at it, but they were a target species.

We went on to line out on small trevally and Russell's snapper, but also added Tusk fish, Monos and Stripey's to the list, but basically day one was mostly small fish with the exception of a couple of bigger Queenfish and Kate nailed a nice Estuary Cod around 40cm.  We did see some stonker GTs smashing diamond scale mullet up the top of Indian. They were horses in the 30-50 kg range, but seemed to be loners and trying to sneak up on them with the electric was a pointless exercise.

DAY 2

Day 2 dawned a little better, but the alarm failed me again because the battery in my phone went flat over night.  Again we were blessed with an early grease hit to kurb the ache from the previous evening's frivolity.  We were a little more confident with our navigation this time and as a consequence were able to stick with our plan.

We decided to hit a flat on the eastern side of Indian that Andy Congram use to fish and he would often regail me with tales of schools of Salmon and loads of Barra on the right wind and tide conditions, so that's where we started.

We had both lined out on Barra within about 1/2 and hour and then the Salmon moved in and we caught 3 before the tide was too low.


Kate's largest Barra on fly

And her largest Salmon

After the tide dropped out and even my little boat was bottoming out, we exited the flat and headed up to Unjin Pt again but the conditions had changed from the day before and the water was dirty. We managed to line out on Trevally first though, even under poor conditions.  From here we bolted for Turnbull Bay and a little rocky headland that shall remain nameless to protect the various inhabitants.


My little patch of rocky reef

This spot usually produces something on these tides and Sunday was no exception.  Kate managed her largest GT on fly and we caught several nice Queenfish and Golden Snapper.

They started out in the mid 30s and then ranged up to 46cm

I tried bigger flies including STS and Roggie Dodge Barra a Cast flies but the little blue and white clouser outfished them all.  We ended up with 3 species, Barra, Threadies and Trevally on day 2 plus numerous other bits and pieces.  All in all though we found the fishing on Sunday to be far better than on Saturday.

Many thanks must go to Rog, Cathy and Jim for the effort of organising the Stakes, Pete O and the Stig for their generous and wonderful donations of prizes, Julie and Tommy of Sand Palms for their hospitality and the great perpetual carved Barra.  I think it was a fantastic weekend and best of all it was FUN, even though we were playing for sheep stations!!

Remember the Peanut theory.  It works.  For those that don't know it, the peanut theory is based on the likelihood of fish feeding on small tid bits even after they are full and have fed to sufficiency.  I'll guarantee if you've just pigged out on a huge 3 course meal and someone places a bowl of peanuts in from of you, you'll probably still grab a couple (unless you are allergic to peanuts, but you get the idea).

Dion