|
|
Lagoon Fishing in the NTIf you like to be able to go for a relaxing swim in the middle of the day to cool down after catching a couple of fish then I would recommend that you don't go to Corroboree Lagoon in the Northern Territory.Though I love fishing the Lagoons for Barramundi, and Corroboree has its fair share of these, the Lagoons provide a lot more things, some not so nice to meet. Crocodiles The basic rules are; 1. Don't place bits of your body in the water. If you trail a foot or hand in the water you are tempting fate. I lost a 4 kg Barra to a small 2.5 metre croc at Tommycutt. One minute the barra was on its side coming to the boat, the next the croc appeared out of nowhere and had the Barra in its mouth. My only consolation was that he was going to have fun pooping out that lure. Believe me Crocs are fast. 2. Don't get between a croc and its escape route back into the deep water. DO NOT approach a croc on the bank and come between it and the water. If it panics and wants to go home it will do so, right over the top of you and the boat. Even a little 1 metre croc can cause a lot of damage. 3. Learn Croc body language. A croc with its eyes just out of the water slowly making its way towards you is most likely stalking you. The safest method to rectify this is move to another spot. Do not try to hit it with an oar, rock or the other members in your boat. If you do get it angry then it may show you another bit of body language. If a croc blows itself up, rises high in the water and shows you its full size it is angry and he's ready to fight. If your in a small boat you are in deep do do. However, if you do nothing to the croc (unless its mating season and he thinks your a rival male) in MOST cases you will not see this response. Sweetheart in the Finnis River attacked boats it was worked out due to an apses in its jaw that the vibration from running boat motors irritated. 4. If you park your boat overnight on the bank, don't leave any fish or food scarps in it. You could wake up to a sunk boat with muddy foot prints in it where a croc climbed in to check out the fishy smell. There is a little back inlet at Corroboree's ramp that comes around to the camping area where you can park your boat. I personally would rather put my boat back onto the trailer as we know of at least one 4-5 metre salty in that inlet (though I have not heard of him coming into the camp site I would not sleep in the open there). 5. If you park your boat on the bank overnight and next morning find a log wedged against it that was not there the previous night, don't go stepping on it to get into your boat. We had a big croc push between two boats in Hardies Lagoon and next morning, in the gloom he looked just like a log. Always treat the crocs with respect but never let them put you off fishing the lagoons.
OK your now rigged. Usually we arrive at the lagoon just before dawn and position ourselves near a big weed bed or patch of water lilies in the shallows (2-6 feet). Up until when the sun actually rises and hits the water the Barra and others will be feeding in these shallow areas and it is not uncommon to see a fish tailing, with a back out of the water or just rising like a trout as it feeds. In these conditions you need to approach the fish very quietly and in most cases you can actual sight cast to the fish. I would recommend that you keep the boat out in the deeper water and cast into the bank and fish. With the fizzers etc it is just a case of cast ahead of the fish and work it back. I prefer the bloop and wait method. Give the lure a quick hit and the let it sit for a second or two. That said I have also taken fish on a straight slow (but noisy) retrieve. The gold bombers are also retrieved with the bloop and wait method. Once the sun is up you will usually find the surface action stops. Before you pull the anchor grab the rod with Renoski and work the area right up against the face of the weed bed. The usual things is that the fish will go into deeper water when the sun is on the water and hide right up against the weed for protection. It is easier for the Barra to stay alive if they only have to watch for crocs from one direction. The Renoski's are good here as they get down deep and with the braid you can tell what is happening. You should be getting as close to the wall of weed and the weed coming off the bottom as possible without picking it up. A straight wind with the Renoski’s (with its big paddle tail) is all you need, not the flick, flick, flick you use for flatties down south (Though stick baits do need some action if you use them). Speed of retrieve depends on the depth of the water. Wind too slow and you will pick up weed on the bottom. Wind too fast and you will see the lure come to the surface too quickly. Either way you won't get strikes. One point of interest here is don't pull the lure (any lure) out of the water too quickly at the end of a retrieve. Always let it sit there about a second or two as the next time I get showered by a late strike right next to the boat will not be the first. Once you've given the weed bed a work over you can then move on. Put the Little Lucifer back on the instead of the popper and start trolling along the edge of the weed beds or lilies. Keep the boat in about 6 feet of water and as close to the plants as possible. You will find some snags (usually old trees or rock bars) but I'm not that fussed on them as I tend to lose too many lures and fish on them. There are areas however, where I will troll but which have no major weeds or snags as such.Near an area known as the 'Ss' here are a couple of gutters and rises that come up on the sounder as you troll the bank but there are no real weed beds or lilies. This area does hold fish, and in some cases very big ones, so the rules are not all hard and fast. First I used the Bomber to test the shallower areas just under and inside the lily pads themselves. Once I'd done this I picked up the Renoski and probed the water deeper down to the lily roots. This day however, I did not strike fish until I put the Renoski right down among the weed clumps outside the lilies, where I got a hat trick of Barra and Saratoga. That is why I have the three rods rigged so I can change lures very quickly. On the drift you may only have a couple of seconds on each feature so you don't have time to change lures on one rod. With this method, if the spot is really fishy, or a proven producer, I may stay anchored there for a long period even without a strike as I know the fish will move about and they will come back into range at some time. I have noted that by anchoring in an area and cutting the motor (even the quieter new models) you will start to find fish coming back on the bite that youdid not pick up on the troll. One such area is a big shallow basin (about 6 feet deep and 50 metres wide) in Hardies Lagoon. Here we anchor on one bank and fish Renoski’s to run just above the foot or so of bottom weed. Most afternoons we would take 30 fish to 10Kg whilst trollers where coming in with reports of one or two fish for the day. Also, it is much more exciting to see a big Barra come out of the clear water and take a lure right at the boat, something you don't see trolling. A third method that is especially good when there are a lot of boats trolling about is to actually go inside the bigger lily beds (some are about 50-60m wide out from the bank). In this case you are looking for little alleys between the lilies, small windows etc. Anywhere that you can put the lure so it can get wet is suitable and hoping a lure across the top of lily pads between these windows is the go. It is exciting to hop a lure up on a pad and then suddenly see the pad bulge up from beneath. You know that when the lure comes off the pad the fish underneath is going to smash it. If the area is quiet you may even
As night comes to the Lagoons you usually start to get fish moving back into the shallows but the mosquitoes also come out, so it is the time to head back to camp. The one point with Corroboree, and most of the Lagoons, is that the fish are usually smaller than the saltwater models. A 90cm, 10Kg fish in Corroboree is a very good fish. Usually, when they get larger, they go to sea to spawn and don't seem to return. Also, in the lagoon, if a Barra comes up dark green, bronze or black don't take it for the table as it will taste of weed. Pick a fish that is steely grey and hopefully will still hold a bit of yellow in the fins. These fish have recently come back from the sea and are better eating.The final thing about the lagoons is that even when the fishing is slow there are other things about that will keep you interested. On one trip we watched a group of Magpie Geese walking on the bank just up from about a group of 2+metre crocs. As we watched them we heard a sound like a jet engine just above our heads and turned to see a sea eagle in full dive towards the geese. The geese took off but the eagle hit one in the back and dropped it into the water. It did not stick as the goose was actually bigger than the eagle. As the goose tried to get its senses back and Anyway, in 2009 I am hoping to spend about a month in the NT, possibly on Corroboree, as soon as they open after the wet season. Hope to see you there. Kev. (Kev Behrens is a Member of the Brisbane Sportfishing Club inc.) |
Upcoming Events
|
|
abound in these places but if you are careful they should notcause you much of a problem. That said I personally would not go paddling in a canoe in any of these areas. At that size your boat profile represent an average sized croc and you may be challenged or inspected by another male. In say a 12 foot dingy you are looking more like a very big male and most of the crocs will be a bit more tentative towards approaching you. That said, in 2007 we saw a confirmed 6 metre croc in the Rock Hole atCorroboree and we then drifted past (very quietly) two 5 metre males which then proceeded to have a bit of a biffo once we went past (Mating season does some strange things to the old hormones and big crocs are usually grumpy old males).
In 2007 we had a good wet in the NT and Corroboree really fired up with fish. On most days we could raise up to 20 Barra, 5-10 Saratoga, any number of huge catfish, small tarpon, sleepy cod and giant mouth almighty. The thing is we caught all the other fish by accident whilst targeting the Barra and using the one set of techniques. To give you an idea of how to fish the Lagoon's lets go through a standard day at Corroboree. The first things I would recommend is having three rods rigged up with about 10Kg braid and about 50cm of 60lb clear trace (I use Jinki). The reels I use are small threadline which only hold about 150 to 200 metre capacity. If a Barra gets more than 100 metres away from the boat in a Lagoon you are usually stuffed anyway. The smaller reels are also better in that they don't have arms like Popeye after a full days casting.
The main thing to remember is that the area is usually shallow and noise should be kept to a minimum. We snuck into the bigger Lotus beds one day and all we could do was lower a soft plastic down between the Leaves and jig it. However, we still caught fish but it was hairy getting them out as the lotus stems are very hard and do not cut easily with the braid as the lilies do.
Copyright © 2010 ANSA Queensland's Official Website | Privacy Policy