PARADISE - THE NEXT FLOOR - EXMOUTH - PART ONE

Now we who  live in the fishing paradise called the NT are very spoilt, great fishing, both fresh and saltwaters, heaps of flats for us fly fishers and great weather (Most of the time anyway),  but there is another paradise for the saltwater fishers that is probably the next floor and an A grade spot for A grade fishing, the NT is A grade too, but a different game, like AFL -v- NRL, both A grade but different if you get my meaning.

 Cathie and I have been very lucky with our fishing in the NT, where we both started our fly fishing, but at times we have often thought that our luck was more arse than class because of the fish numbers and the environment that they are in.   Exmouth is different, and arse does you no good in the crystal clear water where the fish can see you coming from a long distance and will take off at high speed, so fast accurate longer casts are required there because there are no lazy barra laying in the cloudy water.  Have a look at this permit moving in the clear water, you don't have much time as it zig zags across the bottom at high speed.

Crystal clear shallow water with speeding permit photo courtesy Jono Shales and Exmouth Fly Fishing

Now that was just to whet your whistle.....lets start with the trip there....you have to fly to Perth, then catch another smaller jet to Exmouth (Learmonth) then there is a 35km trip to Exmouth township.
Nearly forgot to mention, Qantas (our mates) upgraded us to Business Class, so we had entry to Qantas Club and Business Club....unbelievable.

  Jono Shales from Exmouth Fly Fishing (click link) picked us up and took us to his holiday house (click for full tour)for the fly fishers. Three bedrooms, two bathrooms, wifi, bbq and beer and wine!!! in the fridge for us....

High ceilings, air cond. beer and wine....doesn't get much better.

Cathie settling in....hard life?

Rod racks with shower attachment on hose to wash the rods made cleaning easy.

Had ribs and pizza delivered for dinner, courtesy of  BBQ Father  (click for menu) and planned to go out after Cathie's Black Marlin the next day because the winds were favourable.

Drove around the next morning to the other side of the peninsular and launched at Tantabiddi ramp after visiting the Lighthouse to have a look at the Coast

and you would not believe, within a couple of kilometres of the ramp there was a welcoming committee of whales, waving to us and helping a calf swim north.  We started counting the sighting we had of these magnificent creatures but after 112 on the third day we gave up.  They would swim with you like  dolphins, pass under the boat in clear water and the tourists boats were putting their clients off into the water to swim with them, really mind blowing, especially when they breach and leap clear of the water.  We have a lot of footage of these, too much to put on this blog, but unbelievable stuff.

These are rolling after the breached, this is copied from one of the videos.

Better get back to the fishing, looking for Sails or Marlin....after Jono took Cathie through the requirements for this type of fishing.  He re rigged our lines and we had a double tube fly on the rig with two hooks.

Cathie and Jono.   Ready to go.  Jono is trailing a Teaser.

An Exmouth Marlin photo courtesy of Jono Shales and Exmouth Fly Fishing

While we were chasing the billfish, the whole area around us, and I am not exaggerating, there must have been square miles of tuna busting up and millions of birds.  Sails were jumping and black marlin were surfing the waves, but sadly Cathie did not get her billfish, but there is always another day...but what a couple of days.

The wind changed and the next day we went into the gulf.  Whales everywhere, again crystal clear water and Dugongs in the water....

Saw a lot of these, you would see a clouding patch and a Dugong would come out of it...photo courtesy of Jono Shales and Exmouth Fly Fishing

 The flats in the area do not have the big tidal movements like we do up here, I believe that 2m is the big tide, so you can spend a lot more time over the sand, reef areas and you would not believe the size of the blue bones...missed them, but got a queenie........ so Jono said that we would have lunch on a small sandbar and there would be goldies there....he was right...there were macs too.

Lunch  with goldies, macs and if you wanted to put out a small fly ..heaps of good size bream.

One of the Goldies coming in photo courtesy of Jono Shales and Exmouth Fly Fishing

A golden goldie..photo courtesy of Jono Shales and Exmouth Fly Fishing

and guess what else was around.....these were all over the place..and some right at the marina.

Non stop action with the Tuna....but lactic build up makes them very hard to hang onto after fighting numbers of them

of longtails around too, sharks took some of them after fighting them to the boat, and lost one  while talking too much and not concentrating.   All fishing was on barbless hooks.

We did a bit of tackle testing too, but will keep that for another blog, but don't forget to regularly check your knots and lines (Something I forgot to do).

Don't wait until you are in the veterans group to do this type of trip, it is an A game fishery, and you need to be on your game.

Last night in Exmouth tried the JALAPENO POPPERS at Whalers (click for menu) and what a blast they are!!!!!
        The Bassetts