Sunday Territorian 5 Nov 2017
Sunday Territorian; NewspaperNT
2017-11-05
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English
Community newspapers -- Northern Territory -- Darwin.; Australian newspapers -- Northern Territory -- Darwin.
Nationwide News Pty. Limited
Darwin
application/pdf
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Nationwide News Pty. Limited
https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/C2019C00042
https://hdl.handle.net/10070/281596
https://hdl.handle.net/10070/414381
54 FRONTIER FISHING & HUNTING SUNDAY NOVEMBER 5 2017 NTNE01Z01MA - V1 S eeing stacks of big barra on your sounder is guaranteed to get the blood flowing. With modern sonar you can sometimes see the shapes of the fish, making for easy ID. But seeing them and catching them are two different things. Fishos are seeing them stacked at places like the mouth of Leaders Creek, and in Shoal Bay, but catching them can be tricky. Even the smaller harbour barra are teasing, with plenty of fish about, but playing hard to get. That said, plenty have been caught. If you are in the right place at the right time you could experience a truly wild barra bite at this time of year. Storms will get stronger and more commonplace as the year progresses, making water conditions more unstable, so the sooner you get out there, the better. Billfish have also been teasing fishos. Last weeks XXXX Gold Billfish Classic had a record result, but a great many more fish were seen but not tagged. There were tales of big marlin lost after long fights. Darwin fisho Melita Rogers was fishing with husband Jason and Reidys Lures Col Burdon when she hooked a big marlin. This was after their teams effort was delayed with trailer trouble. The big fish broke off after a long battle. Melita said: We had plenty of mishaps, chances and laughs. Over the three days we went 6-5-0 including one marlin that I fought for three hours. It was my first marlin and I hooked it with five minutes to go on Day One. I was devastated when I lost it. Oh well, well just have to have another shot. Congratulations to all the teams that tagged fish and to those who just got out and had a go. Jason said they had a great session catching dolphin fish during the competition. Another one who missed the big one was 16year-old Mitchell Standaloft, who played a marlin for more than four hours, before handing the rod to his uncle. Black marlin are a gruelling fish to catch, even in the sub-100kg size. Marlin are famous for jumping, but much of the battle can be a hard slog down deep. Darwin Game Fishing Club said a record number of fish was caught in this years billfish tournament, with 23 sailfish and three marlin tagged. Dundee guru Kurt Williamson, of team Firefox, said there were plenty of sailfish 45km out from Dundee. We tagged one marlin and two sails. We dropped five sails and a marlin, he said. In reports, Fishing and Outdoor Worlds Chris Hurt said he did seven days of professional guiding in the harbour last week. We got barra but they were not as easy as they should have been, he said. They were good harbour tides and the fish were feeding but there was only one day out of the seven when they boofed seriously. Last year I did the same tides about the same time and my client caught 25 fish in one corner in one afternoon. You expect that to happen, it can be a real frenzy, but the fish were a bit quiet. This last set of tides, what crossed my mind is that the bait is there and the threadies are there, but the barra just dont seem interested. The big tides were new moon tides which should fish well, but this time of year it is not normally an issue if they are new moon or full moon tides. We are seeing the fish, and some activity, we just arent getting the big reactions. But we are hearing good reports from Shoal Bay, as The Rock has been producing, there are big breeders there. They should be biting through to December, they might just be a bit late this time. We are getting a few more storm cells now. On the Sunday morning when we did get harbour fish we had a big storm in the morning which I think pushed the bait out of the system a little. We also see the occasional golden trevally out there, but they prefer that area around Doctors Gully. There are plenty of queenfish about, they are much the same in numbers each year. But the bigger queenfish are harder to catch, we get smaller ones, the bigger ones are probably focused on bigger bait, I have seen some huge explosions in the creeks but you throw a lure and get nothing. The threadies are getting around but we havent caught as many as usual and I havent seen the big tarpon schools in the harbour yet. We have been getting the odd jack, I told one client that we didnt get many jacks in the have you got a catch to brag about? email it to frontier@news. com.au Hooked up Whether youre trolling for a big barra on the Daly, flicking a plastic into the lilies on a Kakadu billabong, or chasing macs on the blue water, weve got you covered matt Flynn Fishing Glenn Fontaine took his three nephews Damien, Derick and Darrel from Melbourne off Dundee last weekend and bagged this beauty 30kg cobia Ashleigh Baldwin snagged a decent barra while fishing in waters off Maningrida