It was with great anticipation that a mate of mine Anthony, a primary school teacher who suffers one of the cruellest cases of Fishalitis I have been witness to in many a year, and I launched “Cud-jingaa” my 5m GS Marine Hydracraft from the community Barge landing of Maningrida. Our destination was to be a large rocky bommie known as “Mumbo” that is 8klms from the barge landing. Mambo is roughly 1klm long and no more than 50 mtrs across, however only 60 mtrs is exposed at low tide. Around this rock I have caught a variety of fish with the most common being trevally, queen fish, mackerel, sharks (bronze whalers) and a few coral trout.
It was agreed well in advance that this trip would be fly only (much to Anthony’s delight) Due to the fact that Mumbo is loaded with the previously mentioned fish we were more than hopeful of getting our rods bent and arms stretched. Our weapons of choice were 8wt & 7wt fly rods with a combination of intermediate and floating weight forward lines. We were aiming at fishing a max depth of 4mtrs as the total depth was 5mtrs, you can ill afford to touch the bottom as its all sharp rock and the reef dweling species will brick you quick smart. Also I have found staying a minimum of 1mtr of the bottom allows me the distance to fully load the long wand and lift coral trout, golden snapper and cod off the bottom. Most of these fish are only 30cm to 45cm, the bigger models can, and often do, leave me with sore fingers, busted line, lost fly’s and treacherous thoughts of less sporting methods to subduing these bullies.
Within 15mins we had arrived at our destination, the tide was only one third of the way out which gave us ample time to rig up, watch the water and blow the dust off the casting arms. Anchoring at the southern end of the exposed rocks was not very rewarding with no surface activity and one little queen fish landed after 20 mins.
As the tide dropped it became evident that I had not put the boat where I had intended, so after moving another 20mtrs south along the rocks I found the set of rocks I was looking for. Large rocks jutting out at a right angle to the main rock body forcing the out going and incoming tide currents to sweep past creating both back eddy and pressure wave. We anchored 20mtrs off to the left of the rocks on the pressure wave side and commenced casting. Our first three casts went unmolested, however on my fourth cast my retrieve stopped solid as the little clouser was crunched, and a short but torrid battle took place. There was no doubting the culprit … yep! as a little trevally of about 35cm came into view we could see 20 -30 of his mates following him and within seconds Anthony was loosing line to another strong little fish.
After catching 10 or so little trevally and queen fish, Anthony belted out a big hookless popper on an old threadline out fit (that I kindly divided into 4 parts for him later that day). The big popper had only travelled 5m before it started getting smashed hell west and crooked by a school of bigger trevally, some of them would scream off 10 – 15 mtrs with the hookless popper determined to not let it get away. Within 4 or 5 casts we had a school of decent fish lit up and right at the boat. My first cast (more a drop over the side than cast) I let sink 3m, on the first strip of the retrieval a fish of about 5 kilos raced over to inspect the poly fiber mullet fly, on the second strip about 8 big fish materialised around the fly and before I knew it, the line had jumped tight in my hand setting the hook. Now I was on and hollering like a lotto winner, however the hollering soon stoped as the fish did a u turn and came straight back to the boat going under the anchor rope and heading towards the rocks. After some fly fishing gymnastics, its not easy passing a long wand under the anchor rope as a 6 plus kilo trevally puts on a “don’t argue”) Once clear and leaning back on the rod again, I was able to turn and lift the fish over the rocks and point him to clear water. As the fish swam away from the rocks I backed the pressure off a little and let the fish swim well clear, then I gave it to him again increasing the drag pressure, on feeling this extra pressure the fish bolted straight out to deeper water where I was able to wear it down safely and within 10mins we had him at the boat.
This system of backing off the pressure/drag to allow a fish to swim away from rocks, snags, jetties etc is pretty much a necessity when land based fishing for big fish or sharks. Old wharf fishing rule “don’t bring in green fish”.
Anthony was kind enough to take photos and do some recording of this session while the author pigged out on a fish a cast. A mans heart is only so big and after the third trevally was boated Anthony found himself being stretched by a good fish that took 60m of line in about six seconds. This fish had us guessing what species it was, as it was too fast to be a trevally and wasn’t jumping like a big queenie should. After 5mins of constant pressure Anthony got colour and called it for a queen fish of around 90cm. This was just one of those rare queen fish that don’t jump, preferring to run hard and stay deep. Good work by Anthony to land this stubborn fish.
After 4 and a half hours of this hot fishing action we decided to pull the pin and head home for a cold beer and a debrief on the days fishing. The sessions tally looked something like this: 22 trevally, 11 queen fish, 3 coral trout and 1 golden snapper. We kept 1 coral trout and the golden snapper for a feed. All other fish were released so we can go and do it again and again. You have gotta love the logic of that!
Big green flies kicked ass this day !
Chris holds up a nice trevally taken on the infamous green fly.
