![]() ![]() I figured my best chances were probably a small trevally or a little queenie that I could take home and turn into numus (pickled fish), which is a bit of a favourite in our household. ![]() Snipping the big streamer and its short wire bite tippet from my leader, I tied on a nondescript little green and white Clouser fly built on a relatively fine gauge No. Still, I cut the motor and deployed the bow-mounted Minn Kota electric. ![]() It was a bit of a “nothing” state of the tide, and I figured my chances of success were fairly slim. Maybe, just maybe, I could still salvage a fish from this blank day…Ī rising tide had already inundated the flats and flooded well back between the trunks of the mangrove forest. This had occasionally been a happy hunting ground for me in the past, producing everything from bream to barra. Dead ahead, the northern shore of Channel Island beckoned, sparkling in the Dry Season sun. I really should have gone home, but I wasn’t quite ready to give up yet. Giving the boating exclusion zone around the gas loader a wide berth, I continued into Middle Arm, still hoping to spy a patch of feeding longtail tuna, but the placid waters remained unruffled by anything other than the afternoon’s dying sou’ easter, a wind that would all-to-soon be replaced by a stiff sea breeze from the north. However, apart from an array of pleasure and work boats in all sizes and colours, there was little else to see. On a whim, I swung the CrossXcountry’s bow south and arced out across the wide mouth of East Arm, toward the long gas loading jetty on Wickham Point, eyes peeled for bird life and any sign of surface activity. Damn it! It was too nice a day to go home early… surely I could give it another hour or so? Jo with a lovely longtail from Lee Point, two days prior to the queenie encounter.īack inside the Harbour and away from the nagging sou’ easter, I was able to open up the Yammy and speed toward the boat ramp at Dinah Beach, However, as I drew level with Parliament House, it seemed to me that the breeze had eased and the broad expanse of Darwin Harbour twinkled green and relatively calm under the early afternoon sun, with Sunday boat traffic carving in all directions across its placid surface. Disappointed and a little battered by the short, steep chop, I eventually admitted defeat, wound up my fly line, hauled up the pick and turned the bow for home. Despite trying all manner of retrieves, I failed to draw so much as a bump. Again and again I worked my big streamer fly, rigged on a short length of single-strand wire, through the trail. I persisted, and ended up spending a couple of hours anchored on our mackerel marks off Lee Point, feeding a steady stream of small fish off-cuts into the swirling tide as berley. Surface activity and bird life was also noticeably lacking. The sou’ easter was back chopping up the sea and robbing it of that emerald clarity it had offered the previous week. However, as soon as I rounded East Point and left the Harbour behind, it was obvious that conditions had changed. Two days later, I headed out again, this time on my own, and with the 9-weight fly rod rigged in the hope of tangling with a few line-peeling pelagics. When we were finally able to get away, it was obvious we’d only just caught the tail end of the hot bite, but we still had plenty of fun on the macks and tuna, coming home with a lovely meal or two of fresh fish for our troubles. The fishing grapevine had been buzzing for a few days with news of everything from queenies to giant herring smashing bait in this area, and Jo and I had been chafing at the bit to get amongst them, but found ourselves repeatedly frustrated by work and family commitments. Jo fights a hard-slugging longtail tuna off Lee Point on a classic Dry Season day. ![]()
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