Another trip report from Royal Darwin Show Day

I wasn't interested in the battling the crowds at the show for overpriced junk and deep fried frankfurts. It had a been over a month since I'd been out for a serious fish and Tony had just returned from FNQ. So we headed out around sunrise in the hope of finding some tuna and mackerel.

Last time I went to Lee Pt chasing mackerel I was bit off within rod length of the boat by the biggest mack I'd seen that day. This time I was prepared with a handful of flies with a few inches of wire trace attached.

Uncertain of the best way to attach wire trace to leader I'd put a loop in the end using a haywire twist and attached that to the leader with an allbright. It seemed to work alright.

I pretty much stuck to the harbour prospecting method that Swoffer had shown me. Starting at Weed Reef before heading towards Lee Point. There were a few larger predators about at Weed Reef, including a large cobia that followed Tony's fly but wouldn't commit, alas all we managed to catch were small queenies.

Sunrise from Weed Reef.

Around East Point we came across a number of boats on a big school of queenfish. The fish were staying up for a a fair while and heading in a consistent direction despite all of the boats around them. At first we only managed a few small fish from the school, but as the bite progressed and the numbers of fish seemed to decline the bigger queenies seemed a little more abundant. Allowing the fly to sink for a while before retrieving increased our success too.

Great fun and good practice for casting at tuna.

We barley paused to get photos.

The longer we persisted the bigger they got.

After we'd had our fun with the queenies we headed for Lee Point and joined the flotilla of boats anchored up around the reef on the dropping tide. There were plenty of mackerel about but at first they simply refused to eat a fly. They would follow them all the way back to the boat. Then it was on. I'm not sure what changed but for about 20 minutes we had a frenetic time landing and very quickly met our spanish mackerel quota (I thought I had some photos, I hope Tony does).

Most skippers were being very courteous and staying out of each others way. But there's always one who has no clue. Two young fellas drifted well within our casting range, plopped their anchor (twice) and then had the temerity to cast over the top of me while I was fighting a fish.

That fish turned out to be this goldie, which wasn't put off by the wire trace. I swear the fish felt much bigger than this photograph illustrates.

Last night my family enjoyed a fine dinner of beer battered queenfish and grilled mackerel fillets.

Chris