HOOK, LINE & SINKER
TROPIC In 2021, the D-MAX took the Hook, Line and Sinker crew from Tasmania to the Top End. Here’s what happened when they hit the tropics.
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ne of the best road trips we did this year was from Airlie Beach, in the Whitsunday Islands, to Cooktown, which was just shy of 1000km. This journey saw us drive past so many famous fishing locations—given we were on a tight timeframe—but the places we did manage to stop to cast a line did not disappoint, with some serious world-class angling experienced. It started out the back of Proserpine one
PLUNDER Sunday afternoon. We’d organised a local gun barramundi angler to take us out on Lake Proserpine, or Peter Faust Dam, as it’s also known. The lake is massive, full of flooded trees and shallow weedy bays. Jono, our guide for the day, told us that an afternoon session on the lake would be best because of moon phase and weather. It turns out there’s a bit of science involved when fishing for dam barra. He said bite time will be at around 2.30pm for about
Giant trevally: you know it’s a good one when you each get to hold half a fish.
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WORDS ANDREW HART
half an hour and could tell this simply from the moon. I didn’t understand any of it, but was happy with an afternoon fish rather than a super-early start after sampling the restaurants and bars in Airlie Beach the night before! As it turned out at 2.35pm and on just my sixth cast of the day, I hooked a beautiful barra of about 90cm and the job was done! We ended up fishing into the night, till about 10pm but didn’t get another fish. Still, one big barra is better than zero. The best tip I learned here was to use the sounder to find the fish. We spent a lot of time driving around the lake slowly, searching for weed edges, bait and fish, which showed up on the sounder. Once we found a good-looking spot, we’d stop and start casting. The next day, we towed our 7.3-metre Bar Crusher XT boat with the D-MAX from Airlie Beach to Mission Beach. Here we unhitched the boat and picked up Dallas, a local kid who told us he’d catch us a jungle perch. The next few hours were spent clambering up one of the most picturesque and scenic rainforest streams in the world. It was hot and humid, but the flowing water was surprisingly cool. As it turned out, this exercise wasn’t the easiest to film, as the boulders where super slippery, and although Dallas was very nimble on his
