As predicted by the Bureau of Metreology, last weekend was perfect to fish offshore from Darwin.
The wind picked up again during the week but it should be fine this weekend for an offshore foray, even given that the tides will be in spring mode.
It seems plenty of black jew were caught last weekend.
Charles Point on Saturday produced some excellent jewie catches, as did a couple of spots in Bynoe Harbour.
On the pelagic scene, with calm seas, mackerel were caught inshore at Lee Point and at all the usual haunts all the way down to the Peron Islands.
I heard of one boat which had a great session on ganged pilchards around Bass Reef.
Interestingly, you don’t hear as much nowadays about mackerel caught on bait; it’s nearly all jig, jig, jig.
And why not? In recent years, the advent of tropical jig fishing, using all manner of heavy, metal jigs, has opened up a Pandora’s Box of bluewater fishing opportunities.
What with knife jigs half as long as your forearm, bullet-head metal bristle jigs, and those deadly occi-style metal jigs, from the bottom to the surface, anglers pretty well have it covered with artificial metals.
Couple this with the far-longer-running phenomenon of soft plastics out on the blue, and you have to reckon bait sales in Darwin have steadily declined over the last decade or more.
Yes, you’ve only got to look at the photos that have been published with this column over the last year or two to appreciate how dramatically offshore fishing has changed.
On the barra scene, there have been some great reports.
On similar tides a fortnight ago, the clear water coming off the neaps turned on some exceptional barra fishing up the harbour arms.
The inland barra scene has also been quite vibrant over the last week or so.
Four Mile Hole on the Wildman River system in Kakadu has continued to produce great catches of small barra.
There are bigger fish there too, but trolling seems to be the best way to catch them.
How great is it to be able to fish Four Mile Hole with bugger all salvinia?
However, one hole that you don’t hear much about nowadays is Two Mile Hole which is on the way to Four Mile.
I last fished Two Mile many, many years ago, and it never really did it for me because it is much deeper than its fishy neighbour further along the track.
That was way back in the days when mainly all you cast and trolled were Nilsmaster Spearheads, which run fairly shallow.
But there have been some good reports in recent years and, given the awesome variety of deadly soft plastics that can be fished weedless, I reckon there’s good fishing to be had in Two Mile Hole.
One thing I can tell you is that, once you turn off the bitumen, it’s a much shorter and less-perilous drive along the track than Four Mile Hole.
AJ with a chunky Four Mile Hole barra… better fish like this are mainly caught trolling.
Glenn Hubble loves to fly fish at Four Mile Hole, and proved the point with this legal barra.
