4 minute read
Hook, Line & Sinker
TROPIC PLUNDER
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.
WORDS ANDREW HART
One 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 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 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.
Giant trevally: you know it’s a good one when you each get to hold half a fish.
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 feet, Mike the cameraman and myself were not! We spent the whole day trying not to break a hip. It was slow going, but we captured a spectacular little segment for the show with a beautiful jungle perch being caught in the last part of the river we could reach. These are native Australian fish, about the size of a bream and they’re stunning to look at.
With sore legs, we successfully made our way back to the D-MAX and we were off to Cairns. Next morning, we were heading some 30km out to sea to one of the many reefs that make up the Great Barrier Reef. I was joined by Al Simpson who is a fly-fishing legend. We spent the next couple of days fishing the shallows at the very top of the reef. With the water only around a metre deep, it was all sight fishing and we managed to catch a massive trevally and a whole range of reef fish, such as big coral trout.
This is world-class fishing, which also produced permit and bonefish (the Holy Grail of fly fishing). The spot is somewhat protected by the weather as you need a boat big enough to get you out to the reef, but small enough to allow you to sneak around the flats in a metre of water. Turns out the Bar Crusher was perfect!
The final fishing trip of the far north saw us tow the boat to Cooktown. From Cooky, we headed out 50km and tried to catch a giant black marlin, which this area is famous for. Despite missing a couple of marlin, we didn’t catch the big one we were after, but it still made a great episode in a very special part of the world.
Hook, Line and Sinker airs on 7mate and is also available to stream on 7plus.
