Happy Micks Fishing Report

By Brian Lund

Tony Considine got onlto a mob of big goldies wide off Dundee last week. Many of them were over 8 kilos!

As the rest of Darwin are readying themselves to return to work after the four day break I am sitting in the shop looking at the literal flotilla of boats heading home. There have been a lot of very good reports from most of the fishos coming into the shop.

I would say that 90% of the fishos that ventured out for Easter caught their fair share of barra, jewies and mudcrabs. The reports of good catches of muddies have been flowing in from Darwin Harbour, Bynoe Harbour, Saltwater Arm and Shaol Bay. Catches of 12 to 18 good bucks have not been unusual. The unusual thing is that at the moment the crabs are coming from the harbour areas and not from the creeks.A mate and I  went to Shoal Bay last week and secured a dozen very healthy very full bucks in time for Easter.

On the barra scene it seems that the net closure at the Finniss must be just what the doctor ordered as  reports are that are  more barra there than fishermen at the moment. As hard as that is to believe with the number of boats at Dundee on any given weekend. Reports from Corroboree are looking good however very patchy. I was speaking with a local from down the track yesterday and he claimed that he and his family boated 8 nice solid barra but he admitted that there was a lot of water between the fish and still a lot of water over the flood plains. A few others that I spoke to said that they did not do too well with 1 or 2 and others claimed that they were only able to catch good solid tarpon and saratoga. If you’re interested in Tarpon, well its the place to go – they seem to be hanging around in massive schools at the moment.

The Adelaide River seems to have reverted back to being a challenge for barra fishermen with not a lot of reports coming in of fish being caught. On Friday I ventured to the Adelaide mainly to tow back a mates boat that broke down near Goat Island but could not resist the opportunity to try for a barra or two so armed with a Guns and Roses Bomber, a Gold Bomber and selection of Hollow Bellies me and my eldest son attempted to turn Beatrice, Last Cast and some of the other creeks to foam without success. Talking to Kye at Goat Island there has not been a lot of fish caught in the Adelaide River for these tides however there are large numbers of cherabin available.

The few reports that I have received from further afield from Dundee have been mixed with reports of great catches from Channel Point and around the Perons anything from jewies, big reds, trout, snapper and sail fish to it being too rough to get too far offshore for the smaller boats. One customer came in this morning and explained that he and a mate went to a spot about 30 mile off Dundee over Easter and cleaned up on big Red Emperor, big Nannygai and Coral Trout. The reached their bag limit in 1 ½ hours each day. He said that there were sails everywhere out there but they were not interested in chasing them so they left them alone. 

 The upcoming sail fish season will be an absolute cracker if it continues to improve from here. Reports are that there were a number of sails raised and boated that weekend with a friend of mine catching and releasing 3 all around the 1.2m mark.

On the last neap tides I took a couple of blokes for a bottom bash of Long Lost managing a few nice trickies, goldies, cod, red emperor and other assorted reef fish all in the morning with the off shore breezes. Later that day the tuna started busting up everywhere outside of Long Lost. Not wanting to miss out on the fun we went chasing them only to find that there were small and medium sails all through the schools. Not having any sail gear with us we had to just put up with the sails attacking the tuna spinners on our retrieve. Having learnt my lesson I now have a selection of Kokoda Soft Head Pluggas on board in a range of sizes just for moments like these.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 8th, 2010 at 9:05 am and is filed under Fishing Reports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.