Happy Micks Fishing Report

by Mike Chambers

My good mate Tim set out with his crew for Shady Camp last week, sparrow fart, and full of good intentions. Somewhere around Humpty Doo one of the bearings seized. Back to town.

Now this would have been curtains for many, but Tim’s intrepid crew prevailed, and they finally launched later that morning. They fished hard all day for a couple of Salmon, ending up sat the mouth of Tommy Cut. There was one crew onto a good colour change in a creek mouth onto a few fish, but no room to get alongside. They moved to the next creek, didn’t look much just dirty water, and hooked up on a lone ranger, 65cm barra. With not much happening they moved on.

It’s interesting how decison making can affect the outcome of a good barra trip. About an hour later, with talk of maybe going home instead, they voted to go back and have a look at the dirty creek. Didn’t look much different, but there was colour and a bit of bait. Suddenly, a hook up!

About an hour and nearly fifty barra later, worn out and buggered, they left and went home. “The best fishing session I’ve ever had” he said. ” Most of the fish were 70 to 80cm, and I caught the biggest, 91cms all big fat and silver. ”

Puts a whole new bearing on things, dosn’t it!

with Brenton Marschke

Firstly congrats to Athiena and Charlie Chambers, with a wonderful healthy  bady girl ”Lyla.”  All is well and  great effort to both parties. Mike and Aileen Chambers are more then chuffed with their new grandchild (number 7 they think), l did my bit on ABC Tails from the Tinnie with Tim Moore last weekend. l had a great time they are all great fellas loved it, you can listen to the show here.

The fishing has been going along slowly and they have been getting a wide range of fish from bream (sorry Tim) to snapper jewfish and tuna. Even good size Mackerel still coming from the usaul haunts at Lee Point, East Point and they have even been sighted around Channel Island on the in coming tides  chasing the bait fish as the water moves in .

  I’m hearing of jewfish being caught in deeper parts of the harbour,  then just the many wrecks, so have a look around for some good structure off Larrakeyah and you might be surpised. Snapper and Tuskfish,  yes even the odd Coral Trout have been landed. There is some pelagic action off Lee Point with Mackerel and good schools of Long Tails kept fishos on the look out. I have heard it was a bit hard to spot schools working the surface, with a bit of a chop in the morning, but it did calm off in the afternoon. (more…)

   Something has been going on at the “S Bends”. No, not at the Daly. No not at Coroborree,  but down at Shady Camp. How weird is that? Some big silver lean barra have been giving  fisho’s a work out! You may think l  had too much sun over the weekend, and its definitely not the run off but they have moved up the river with the big bait schools. The barrage went gang busters one night last week, as well as the mouth of Sampan. Barra are really on the chew down that neck of the woods. One customer came in with a report of a metre plus fish on a trolled Little Lucifer Redhead. How good is this? Sail fish and big barra in the middle of the dry!…

With the winds starting to back off there have been more and more reports of good reef and pelagic fishing.

There are some good mackerel at the North East Vernons on neap tides trolling 190 Laser Pro’s. Keep an eye out for the birds, whch are a dead give away for feeding fish.

Also on the smaller tides: macks at Lorna Shoals either on live garfish or sandmar bait on ganged hooks under either a float or balloon.

Point Blaze is producing good goldies up to 3 kilos and lots of trickie snapper.

Golden Snapper of size have now moved into Darwin Harbour, there are jewies still at Charles Point and the odd school of tuna are still hanging around 6 Mile Bouy at the top of the itde and the run out. You will also get jewies on the springs in deep water fishing just the turn of tide.

Coroborree

I went to Coroborree during the week with Kevin Eccles. We had a great session in both the main lagoon and Rockhole. We started late and finished at 2 pm, catching about 24 good barra, 15 were well over sixty, at least 10 over 65cms, a couple over 75cms and the biggest was 83cm.

We caught them mainly on Little Lucifer Redhead and Spearhead 67. (Read Dad’s article on Spearheads)

This was the first time I have had a daytime trip to Coroborree for a while. I thought it was quite dirty except for the rockhole.

This year the water will go off early, so get into this good fishing while you can. There is plenty of bait around particularly in the Rockhole and lots of birds.

There are a couple of great barra tides in the harbours this weekend. Launch at lunchtime and fish the low down and the first of the run in and be back in before dark.

This is also the time of year we go to Shoal Bay and fish land locked off the bank. These tides are a bit late in the day for that, seeing as there is a three and a half hour difference, but look for a midday low of around 1.5 to 2 metres and that should get you back into Buffalo by about 5pm. Scrubby Creek is a great place to do this, but there are aother spots in Hope Inlet.

Late September is traditionally a time of hustle and excitement as screaming fans urge on their favourite teams through the frenzy of footy finals.

Much as we enjoy the thrills and spills of the footy end of season extravaganza, it pales into insignificance against the action that is unfolding in Coroborree, Hardies, the Mary and many of the other top end billabongs.

Around quarter final time each year, subtle changes occur in our weather patterns. Those ghastly sou’ easterly trade winds that have plagued a great dry season’s blue water fishing slowly back off, roaring into September like a lion, and leaving like a lamb later in the month. The strong winds blowing across the water each day like a refrigerated air conditioner have been keeping the water cool, in the low twenty degrees. The bigger fish don’t like this; they are sluggish, and doughy, difficult to catch.

But as the winds drop, the humidity rises, and the water warms, the big fish begin to stir. They haven’t done a great deal of feeding for a few months now, and their condition and fitness level has dropped off. Somehow they realize that within a few short weeks, when the rains begin in earnest, the water will become depleted of oxygen, and some will even die in a backwater fish kill. They need to build up their body weight enough to sustain them through the difficult weeks ahead. They start to feed aggressively.

Game on! It’s Coroborree Finals Time!

Along with thousands of other enthusiasts from across the Top End and the rest of the country, we always plan to make a few trips around this time. We reckon the moon is still a factor, and the full moons of September and October are legendary, providing some extraordinary night fishing trolling the billabongs with big shallow running lures. These provide an enticing silhouette when trolled slowly against a sky lit by moonlight and lightning.

. But we still reckon that an old fashioned almanac, a Fish N Tide Watch or one of the new Fish IQ handheld prediction devices is invaluable in deciding not only when to go but also when to be at “that spot.” Although isolated from the tides, freshwater fish, and indeed all wildlife life are sensitive to the cycle of the moon, and it can be an important factor in making decisions about your own fishing activities.

Charlie and I caught our very first barramundi during an early morning September trip to Coroborree with a workmate in the late eighties. Or more accurately, it was seven year Charlie who hooked five fish over eighty centimeters in what is still one of our fondest fishing memories. The bamboo clad bank that we were on, which we fished successfully for many years, has gone now, disappearing in a morass of fallen, dead bamboo. No doubt the fish are still there, but its impossible to get at them.

The lure that we used that day is also one of legend. It was one we picked up along the track on our way to the Top End, chosen unwittingly and quite by accident from the range of strange and colourful barra lures on the wall of the local tackle shop.

It was not until we started Happy Micks tackle shop some years later that we realised the significance of that choice. The number 67 Spearhead, for many years our number one best seller, was the favourite of most who fished freshwater in those days. The rise of the Bombers and Little Lucifer’s, arguably the best barra lure of all time, has sent the Spearhead range into the back ground in recent times. Talk to any Coroborree guide and they will tell you that the Lucifers, and more recently the wonderfully coloured moulded bib imported models, form the mainstay of their working lure collection. They run at about eight feet, the ideal depth for these billabongs. Their hardware is tough, and the two treble have excellent exposure. Lucifers have a tight, enticing action at both low and high speeds, which prompted the begininings of the jig jig jig rod action movement which has pretty much revolutionised the way we troll for barra. But that another story.

Within a few years, Lucifers had taken over the role of Spearheads as the predominant billabong barra trolling lure. However, herein lies the mistake. Anglers new to the game, and there have been tens of thousands since the late ninties, have come to the game without the historical knowledge of what went before. I have noticed in recent years that a lot of anglers don’t even carry spearheads in their boxes. They don’t know what they are missing out on. A Spearhead free September is like a year without a grand final brawl. Unthinkable!

I’ve had a couple of trips in the last ten days. On the first, we found fish on the outside of a big bend, holding in a bunch of lillies some thiry metres out from the bank. We were “loaded for bear” as they say, with just about every Lucifer ever made in one or other of our boxes. The timing was right, the water clean and looking good. No fish!

This particular bank had been quite heavily fishing during the week, and the fish may have been a bit spooked, but they were still showing on the sounder. Time for change. Spearhead time.

There are four main colours that we use at this time. Numbers 67, 70, 90, and 97. All will work during different periods. We chose the two naturals as the water was quite clear. Within the space of about three runs we had three fish. Then came carnage and mayhem as the big boys came out to play. Our lures were new, straight out of the box, and the hardware was just not up to this kind of pressure. You’d think a bloke woud learn over the years! (Best to change the split rings to an Arafura size 3 and the trebles to an Eagle Claw #6. Anything heavier will kill the action).

We were hooking up on big fish, well above 90cms from the size of the buckets that were constantly rearing out of the water behind us. On a normal bank we may have stood a chance, because the fish would have been forced to swim out, but in this situation they just drilled us straight back into the lillies from whence they came. It was fun, but! We noticed that the guides trolled wider on this bank, I think to give their punters a better chance of landing the fish, but they didn’t seem to be getting the big suckers. They seemed to stay right in close.

Later we went into the Rock Hole, and had a similar result, catching plenty on the spearheads and losing the bigger fish to the lilies.

No doubt that with the amount of trolling the key spots that is happening at present, the fish will eventually get a bit wise and spooky. I think this may be where the Spearhead comes into its own. Hand carved from timber, it has two characteristics that the Lucifer’s lack. It has no noise, the Lucifer’s have a distinct rattle. Normally this will entice a strike, but I have had experiences previously where a solid lure will out fish a rattler, and a lot of old timer’s actually don’t like lures that rattle. The other difference ifs that a Spearhead, not being hollow, will suspend in the water a bit longer than their plastic counterparts.

It’s these two points of difference that I believe can make the Spearheads so deadly in this situation. They are different. And just because they have been around a lot longer, fashion just doesn’t work in the water. As long as there are barra, these guys will catch fish!

So next time you are trolling the billabongs, and need to try something different, try running the Spearheads on the inside and the deeper Lucifers on the outside, so that when you turn around just swap rods over. Naturals for clear, fluros for dirty water. The results may surprise you!

We were at Corroboree Billabong on Tuesday. The mission was to get my youngest grandson Tyler aged 5, his first ever fish, and make sure my daughter Nicole didn’t leave town without getting her first barra.

Because there were a few of us the plan was to hire one of Nobby’s fishing pontoons, which are a particularly safe way to fish with young kids as they have a high fence right around them.

One of the reasons I love taking people to Corroboree is the wildlife, which never fails to disappoint. We didn’t leave the top lagoon, but we passed a mob of Brolgas on the bank only metres away, several Jabiru, inummerable ducks and geese, two very big crocs that got a bit angry with us, and a mum and dad goose family with three chicks who wanted to cross the billabong regardless of what lurked below!

Talking to Nobby at Mary River Houseboats early in the morning, and he was saying how good the fishing had been right up until the big winds started about three weeks ago. Nobby says that it’s not so much the cooler temperatures that cool the water as the winds.

Corroboree has very low banks and is quite open, which could explain why we do better in the Bridge Lagoon in the dry season as the banks there are quite high and there is more shelter. Since everyone leaves for down south shortly I was keen to do well.

Tyler was given my own very first rod to fish with, a gift from Nicoles god-father. It’s a very old fashioned two piece solid glass spin rod of about 3 kilos. It’s  been rebuilt more times that I can remember, and accounted for hundreds of European Carp back in the seventies ’cause out bush where we lived thats what was happening back then.

I tied one of the new coloured Halco Combat lures onto his Rod, and our trusty Just Under Guns N Roses onto Nicole’s.

We hadn’t gone far before Tyler yelled, (as we had trained him to do) “I’m on, Poppy, I’m on!” After a bit of coming and going, and some aerial antics that should have won a place in the Olympic diving squad, proudly wound in his very first ever fish, a nice little freshwaterTarpon! Good one mate.

Nicole’s fish was a bit harder to find, and after trolling downstream a bit, I decided to come back to a spot where we have caught a lot of good fish the last couple of seasons. It’s a shallow weed bed only a hundred metres from the ramp, so most people ignore it, but  the trusty Just Under  lured a handsome 73cm barra out from the weeds and made my day, and Nicoles trip.

Nobby says most people he talks to won’t fish the top Billabong because it too close to the houseboats. He says it because of all the boats and traffic that stirs up the mud and gets the food chain going. People would do better to listen to him – he’s been doing this for nearly quarter of a century now and I reckon he knows what he’s talking about.Gun angler Kevin Eccles was on the water yesterday and picked up a few barramundi and saratoga, but says it’s getting harder and dosen’t really expect the fishing to improve much till August. Nobby agrees, but based on the excellent fishing earlier in the year, they both agree that the  build up fishing will be sensational this year. Can’t wait!

Dick Eussen’s new Fishing & Camping Guide to the Northern Territory is a “pearler”!

This is the most comprehensive guide to fishing and camping we have ever seen.

As Rex Hunt says in the foreword “Anglers travel from all around the world to expereince this magnificent environment and it’s greatest fish, the mighty barramundi. But this untamed wilderness just doesn’t have the barra. There are countless species of other sportfish to be caught from offshore right up to the most remote of gutters.

“For over half a century I have been entertained and educated by Dick Eussen” says Rex Hunt. “I can safely say that no one has more knowledge of the Top End of Australia than Dick. Fishing Camping 4 wheel driving, adventuring, you name it and he is the man.”

There is nothing left out of this book. There are detailed maps, which will give visiting anglers, like me, heaps pf imformation on where to go. The book is complemented by stunning photography, and of course there are well documented pieces on how to catch the fish of this unique part of the world.”  Find out more

We sometimes forget that fishing is supposed to be fun!

We can get so intent and competitive trying to catch big fish, and then even bigger fish, that we oft fail to just soak up the time and place as much as we could.

Last Monday Mitch from NT Elite Cycles and I decided to explore a spot upstream from the Mary River Bridge. We had checked it out on Google Earth and it looked possible to either get through on a small stream that went around the back of a rockbar, or maybe drag the boat through.

Unfortunately, we had kind of promised Mrs Happy Mick that we would have a working bee on the partly constructed timber deck on our front verandah. This of course needs to be finished in time for Charlie’s wedding next week –  when all the relations arrive – that sort of thing. When we explained we would be working not on the house but on the deck of Mitch’s boat – well I guess you can imagine!

We hit the ramp early and by about seven had reached the top of the Mary that was navigable, passing through some interesting rockbars and deep still holes that we noted for the trip back. We managed to troll up our first barra in one of these just as the sun hit the water. Not big but feisty!

With a very big tree blocking our path we pulled up onto the sand bank. Our target waterhole was only about 50 metres away, but was so dry it may have as well have been a mile. We planned our tactics while cooking up an early morning breakfast and as we thawed out. It was a bit chilly out of the sun. We were planning to walk around the sandbar and out onto the river bank further upstream. There was a bank that promised a cast into a deep water at a creek mouth. Some good up around 90cms  had been caught  earlier in the month when the water was higher.

We weren’t finished breakfast when we were interrupted by another boat. Now in these remote parts that is not quite what we expected, and were a little annoyed, until, glory be,  ”Tim from Yamba” came putting round the corner in his 3.6m with a 15hp on the back. We helped carry, push, drag him over the sand bar,  and readily accepted his invitation to join him in further exploration. Tim had not long moved to Darwin, but was a keen and obviously profficient fisherman who knew what he was about.

The next couple of hours were a sheer delight. the water was clear deep and green in parts, fast running over sand bars and golden in the sandy shallows. Within seconds we had a triple hookup on good sized Tarpon and Saratoga, and so on and so on. The small tiny just made it round rock bars, over snags and through the tiniest channels, and we were able to progress about a kilometer firther upstream, through some beautiful country and often quiet waters.

We caught inummerable Sooty Grunter, Spangled  Perch ( yes it was that sort of place) and a few barra biggest about 65cms but fat fit and silver. This part of the Mary suppliers most of the sand for construction in Darwin, and so the barra caught here are nearly always silver and excellent eating. AS the waters progress through Hardies and into Corroborree the mud bottom takes over anfd the fish become admittedly a lot bigger but less tasty.

We got back to Mitch’s boat about midday, thank-full all our gear was still there, and both boats started drift fishing down stream casting at snags and rockbars as the water and tempurature warmed.  I caught my first Spangled Perch on fly, and Tim from Yamba showed his expertise in anchoring right in the ugliest of snags and pulling barramundi out on soft plastics.

By the time we pulled out late afternoon we were fished out and totally satisfied with a memorable day on the water. With the water dropping we were probably the last boat through into the top lagoons this year, but we have  bookmarked the spot to visit earlier after next wet season.

The coming week we are landbased – all hands on deck! 

For another article on the Mary River

Fishing Report

As you can see from the following stories there is some good fishing around at the moment. All the Mary River billabongs, Shady Freshwater, Corroborree, Hardies and Bridge lagoon are turning on some great fishing, not just numbers but a few big fish amongst them. The top lagoon at Corroboree is still fishing very well with much clearer water, probably because it has stopped running in there. The Tiger Lilly Bombers are working a treat there. Down below at the Rockhole entrance it is till a bit dirty but is clearing up rapidly and looks like a bumper season, with some awesome big fish coming on in September.

As usual Hardies is producing some big fish early in the day, with a report during the week that they landed a 93cm and dropped “the big one!” By the description they gave of the bucket mouth that sounder like a very big fish.

There is still a small amount of runoff at the Bridge Lagoon downstream, where a lot of very silver “rats” are gainfully emplyed cleaning up the bait! Upstream past the cutting is also still fishing well.

Both the Daly and the South have been turning on some spectacular late season fishing, and there is some runoff to be found on both these systems. The Leichardts rockbar is fishing really well further down the tide, with some of the Nourlangie creeks coming on just as the top of the tide starts to run out. With the Barra Classic starting this weekend the South might be the place if you fancy some trolling. This weekends tides are also ideal for the mouth of the South and perhaps an overnight stay.

The fish on the Adelaide have moved upstream above Goat Island, chasing the clear green water that is moving into the system, and the fish are getting bigger. Kai from Goat Island said the entries in his weekly fishing comp are going from 70’s and 80’s a couple of weeks ago to near a metre this week!

It been blowing a gale offshore all week, in fact one trawler limped home through a forty knot gale with a broken windscreen, but the forecast for the weekend is more hopeful, with easterlies vearing to sou easters and dropping to 8-10 knots Saturday and less on Sunday. The tides are good, and there are plenty of tuna around to have some fun out wide, and also reports of a lot of sailfish off Dundee Wide and Sail City. Last year was an amazing year for billfish and it looks as though this may become a regular part of our fishing calender.

We welcome the activities of Fisheries Police who have been very active monitoring the possession and size limits in different locations each weekend, so be careful – the last case that was prosecuted resulted in the loss of four wheel drives and a boat!