NT Fly Fishers : BYNOE MAGIC OCT 2014

Just back from two great days at Bynoe, it was breezy of a morning and around 1pm the sea breeze came in and that, with the heat of the sun, put us off the water. Matt Henger and Helena fished the Saturday, and got a great threadie, but the water was fairly milky in the harbour and fish were hard to see.

Sunday 5/10/14
Lord Jim went down into the rivers where there was clear water, and it was non stop fish for a while, mainly small queenies, macs, some tarpon and heaps of trevally as well as some jack for a feed. We fished in the clearer water on the western side of Indian Island, saw some great barra and got very complacent watching big schools of mullet make bow waves in the water, because near the big flat rock at the back of Indian, we saw another 'school of mullet' swimming slowly towards us and took no notice of it until it was too late. It was a 90 plus barra, just lazily swimming along with a big trevally following. Too late to cast at it we could only watch as it turned under the boat and swam off into the cloudy water. Bugger!!!

We had a ball on clear water at the top of Knife Island as the tide was coming in. There were some big trevally around but not the monsters we had seen a fortnight ago, our best was only 52cm, but there were a lot around that size and some goldies too that really gave us a great time.

We lost more flies in a couple of hours fishing there than we have for the whole year I think, because in amongst the trevally and a few reasonable queenies, there were schools of barracuda about 70cm long, and they would engulf the whole fly then bite the line off. Roggie will have to start tying again.
Anything like these with blue in it was snapped up..

Monday 6/10/14

When we were launching on Sunday we ran into a mate of Dion and Kate's, Dave, who was heading out to Fish Reef because he had got some good tuna out there recently, and as luck would have it, as we were pulling the boat out he came in too and told us that he had got into macs and queenies up on the reef. So we decided to head out there, very early (not quiet Jim's time) just on sunrise. It was choppy all the way there and we ran onto schools of smaller fish, bust up the water on the way, but they were not interested in fly and I think they may have been tiny butterfly fish or something like that?

As we got close to the bottom of Fish Reef around 7.15am, we could see flocks of birds working on the side out of the wind, in crystal clear water about a metre deep. Roggie had been going to try the Go Pro, but it was wall to wall fish so we decided to just fish instead, and for the next hour we could not stop catching either trevally, queenies or some of the huge numbers of small macs that were there. It was absolutely great fun, and the macs were even hitting along the fly line and leaders in their frenzy.

There were heaps of these

and here is what they were chasing..

A savaged fly with the fish the school was eating.

Now and then one of the macs would take off like a freight train, because there were big queenies and barracuda going through the schools. We hoped to catch one of the bigger ones, but as soon as the fly hit the water the little ones had it. One queenie that was jumping looked to be nearly a metre fifty, and except in the Robinson River years ago, I have not seen them that size. It was enormous.

Fish Reef

The fishing just stopped about 8.15am. (thank goodness) and everything went quiet except for a few schools in the distance, but we needed a rest then. Just for your information, the tide that day was a high of around 6.4m at 4am coming down to a low of 2.2m around 10.27am.

We then motored over to the nearby islands and Simms reef for the low tide, and got a few small snapper. The water around Simms was crystal clear but not a lot of fish, so we got onto a huge flat that we have never fished before, well wasn't that exciting. There had been birds working off this flat, and again we made the mistake of assuming it was just those strange little fish that had been all around the harbour, that was until we saw what looked like a salmon rolling in the school. Another mistake we made was that because the fish were breaking up a fair way our from the dry flats we thought it was reasonably deep. It was only when the motor got stuck in the sand that we realised that the flat came out a long way and was very shallow with a heap of drains on it that you could just make out in the cloudy water. (Later when the tide came in the water cleared and there were drains everywhere). We didn't get stuck, but almost.

On this flat there were queenies, trevally and schools of blue salmon rolling on the shallows and hitting the small fish. It was just before low tide and the fish kept going for nearly two and a half hours. It was wonderful. There were sharks around the eight foot mark shooting along the drains, and all the blue salmon looked to be in the 50cm to 70cm range.

Typical catch

(The smallest we landed was 52 and the biggest was 56cm) The blues really put up a fight, but because it was low water they would come at the boat and it was very hard to hook up sometimes but when we started to 'troutie' them we had a fish on that would usually continue to swim with the schools until it realised it was hooked then all hell broke loose. One in the mid seventies was on for the longest, fighting all the way. It was almost in the net a few times, but the netter (who shall remain nameless because he ties the flies) stood on my line as he put the net in the water and the fish made another run, breaking the line.
Didn't you hear him? He was unhappy!.