The first sign of winter was enough for Melbourne-based fisho Daniel Pieper to get a few of the boys from work together and organise a trip to sunny Darwin recently. They arranged a charter with Arafura Blue Water Charters including, barra fishing, fishing in Darwin Harbour and deep sea fishing.
The first day was spent chasing barramundi in the Corroboree Billabong. Trolling Reidy’s Junior B-52 bombers and Little Lucifer lures, in natural, green and gold colours, attracted a few undersize fish; 53cm being the largest, with most fish being around the 30cm mark. A few tarpon and catfish were caught and the crocs were at their intimidating best.
The next morning the boys headed out from Callen Bay into the harbour to chase some longtail tuna and Spanish mackerel. The Arafura boys didn’t disappoint with several longtail landed and a good catch of Spaniards. They chased the schools using metal lures like Halco Silver Twistys and also had good results using soft plastics like Slick Rigs at fast retrieval. Medium to heavy spinning out fits were the main rod and reel setups.
Longtail tuna – great fun!
After an early wake up call the next morning, the fellas headed out offshore to bottom bash for the elusive black jewfish. They used striped tuna fillets and whole squid baits on heavy paternoster rigs with 6/0 hooks and large star sinkers to get the rigs to the bottom. The calm water ensured a magic day on the water, and with the fishing that followed, made sure of it. It wasn’t long before the first jewie was landed and that started a bit of a roll. Four nice jewfish were boated in the morning along with a couple of the beautiful table fish, golden snapper (fingermark). Other fish caught on the day were: tuskfish, catfish, sharks, crimson snapper, striped tuna, cod and sooty grunter.
Another black jew comes aboard.
All in all it was a great way to escape the onset of a Melbourne winter!