THE plane touched down at Snake Bay, the door opened into blistering heat and humidity high enough to swim in. Welcome to Melville Island.
A quick trip to Melville Island Lodge and we were soon relaxing with a cold drink and the humid air was stirred by the ceiling fans and a cooling sea breeze. Waz, head guide and my brother, was straight into tactics for the fishing to come over the next week. The plan was to hit different water every day and have a good look about the island, as well as have a day on the bluewater.
Rob Sutherland “Nulla” and Wayne Carpenter and myself were to share a boat for the next week, with Waz not only acting as guide but a fishing mate, something he never does when guiding clients.
Day one saw us fishing a river system west of Shark Bay, dropping plastics on to the reef on the way back to the Bay, and a flick at some snags before heading back to the lodge.
In the river system early next morning, the first snags we stopped at saw us into fish straight away – a red tide of jacks was on the chew.
Waz had set us up with a couple of rods each, Nulla and Wayne with a couple of baitcasters and me with a baitcaster and threadline. I noticed that the boys were getting a few fish on hard bodies and our guide was racking up a good number of fish using soft plastics. Monkey see, monkey do … I soon switched to the left-handed Shimano threadline with a soft plastic. The plastics weren’t getting a quarter of the way to the bottom before being scoffed.
Waz displaying a typical quality golden snapper aka fingermark.
It was during a hot bite that a jack swallowed my plastic and I lifted the rod to prevent the fish from making it back to its snag. The Penn rod (apparently one of Waz’s favorites) snapped like a carrot into three pieces, I skillfully went straight into handlining mode and wrestled the fish to the boat. Expecting accolades from the others on the way the fish had been kept out of the snag and retrieved, instead I copped heaps … and it continued for the rest of the week. After that afternoon it was also soon common knowledge that my tackle bill was already up to $300, and I heard the name “High Stick” many times over coming days.
Waz helped us catch and release over a hundred fish a day every day we went out. The others weren’t matching those sort of numbers and the difference was soon found to be that they were sticking to hard-bodied lures and peppering snags with casts whereas we often had four anglers in the boat fishing bibbed lures, poppers, fizzers or plastics. And where the lures might pull a few fish the soft plastics continued to catch fish after fish.
“Hit and run” was the tactic employed by Waz and certain snags and drains fished better at certain stages of the tide. We would systematically try each before moving on to the next location. Some snags or drains returned fifty plus fish, with double, triple and quadruple hook-ups reasonably common. Other spots might give up a fish or three, or nothing!
Dropping Nuclear Chicken Gulps on a patch of reef in between our river system and Shark Bay saw us straight away into fish; triple hook-ups were the norm but we soon tired of pulling dozens of big golden snapper to the boat and releasing them, some of the fish were weighing in at around 16lbs!
Day after day we managed to upsize to big numbers of fish and bigger fish at places like Robinson Inlet, Jessie River, Goose Creek, Shark Bay, Snake Bay. Trolling deep divers accounted for the largest of our barra at 95 cm and another client trolled up a 101cm beauty.
The boys accounted for some top barra on the troll.
In Goose Creek it seemed as though the poppers and fizzers were going to give softies a run for their money on the resident saratoga, but after the dozen or more that could be taken from the top a switch to plastics saw the bite continue below the surface.
After a week of fishing I have no doubt that plastics took the greater number of fish; six days of solid fishing saw over 600 fish caught and released, although having a guide fishing alongside us made our tally a lot better. I counted 13 barra landed by Waz in nineteen casts, he knows where they are sitting and how cast to them and ultimately to catch them!
The bluewater reefs produced plenty of quality sportfish including black jew.
If you get the chance to visit one of the best fishing lodges in the north of Australia do yourself a favour and do it. Take along some Berkley Gulps and a selection of other softies including Z Man paddle tail minnows and you’re sure to have a ball!
