Darwin fishing trip

[Salad Fingers]

Hey guys! back from a week up there and loved the place I ended up doing a half day charter...
... said that the harbour had been fishing bad so took off to some ground just outside and west of the harbour. ...

2 blokes out of 11 caught a nice Jew each (about 4kg) but taht was it...

I'm not really complaining about it as I know it can be a little hit and miss especially if your only fishing for a couple of hours... Next time I head up I will be organising it on good tides and have a nice 2 day charter setup b4 hand

cheers
Brandon...

PS: I couldn't believe the amount of Archer fish swiming around all the warf's and poontoons in and around darwin!! was amazing also your mud Skippers grow dam big too!! I saw one that would have been near 20cms long

Hi Brandon,
Firstly congrats on getting up here and getting stuck into it! More the merrier up here doing this sort of stuff i reckon. It's a fantastic place up here and I love it too!

I just would like to emphasise (sp?) the stuff about the hard reef fishing in the harbour. It's almost totally 100% because of the Charter operators and pro fishers that the harbour has such poor reef fishing. Jewies don't appreciate being totally fished out of a single area. Only now are the charter opperators figuring this out, now that they have to drive so much further to catch anything bigger than 30cm from the bottom.
It's a tragedy what has happend to the reef fish fishing up here.
The professional jewie fishers that hammer charles point every year don't help either.

Day charters are now going as far as Lorna shoals/Bass reef (prolly 60/70 km out) daily, and sometimes as far as the peron islands. Over the years they've just pushed further and further out and the fishery has never recovered.

I don't have a problem with fishing charters at all so long as they treat the sea with respect.. and they are now slowly becomming more sophisticated and smart with their fishing, introducing a 1 jewie per person quota, it's just that the damage has been done and will take years or possibly even decades to recover.
One positive is that this year has probably been the best in a LONG time for coral trout captures, hopefully it is indicitive that the overall health of the system is improving... we will wait and see..

[frenzy]

have been with equinox twice , both time cleaned up on goldies and good jew.
few reds thrown in and plenty of laughs with the crew.. highly recommended