More Of the Small From Darwin Shores.

It occurred to me this afternoon that some of the most rewarding fishing experiences are not the times when one bags out on big fish - although we certainly all hope for that - but when, instead, the fishing is hard going; the fish seem to have either shut down, or else there are just not many specimens about.  On these occasions an angler must have recourse to every ounce of fishing ingenuity to tempt something to gobble a lure... not to forget a healthy dose of stubbornness.  Finally, after trying every conceivable technique, lure and colour for an hour or three, gritting teeth and refusing to let the sea win, the effort pays off with a fish or two.  Such ordeals, with the hard-earned reward at the end, are what fishing is all about for me. It is where one really learns how to catch fish - listening to the particularity of ones location and really working with ones angling skill-set - such that one can, eventually, catch at least one fish every time one goes fishing.
Suddenly that little rock cod that is an annoyance on a day when barra are rolling around in the shallows and snapping at plastic paddle tails becomes a piece of gold whose measure is sweat and effort in an angling desert.  What makes a good angler is not, as the common belief runs, patience.  Rather, it is a lack of patience, a stubborn desire to not leave without a fish, sensitivity to the fishing location and frantic experimentation. Well... we must tell ourselves such things: there is always a smidgeon of luck involved.
So here are some photos from just such a session.
First up was a little fingermark, just after a fellow angler - who had done quite well the day before - gave up.  The sun was beating down and the fish just were not playing ball.  But I wasn't letting this work-free day slip away so readily without a damn fish, so I kept plugging away, changing lure every few casts.  The fingermark slipped from my hands as I poised the iPhone for a snap... I am still getting the hang of just hanging onto wet fish whilst standing in water and twisting a camera phone in my other hand.  So here is a flick of the first of a few cod on a Megabass X-layer.

Then this little fella jumped on the X-layer, a lure almost the same length as the creature's ambitious body. I'll have to do a bit of research into what the hell it is.  It had poisonous looking spikes under its jaw, and a mouth of boney plates that could crush shell: I was silly enough to let it clamp down on my finger for a second.  An anime escapee perhaps? A finned and scaled peg fallen to water from a washing line?

"Take me to your leader..."; bad pun.

Then a surprise catfish on my favourite flats barra coloured medium sized minnow.  Gold and red-ish.

Smith make beautiful lures for beautiful fish.  What lovely eyes you have!

These catfish sure know how to take drag.  I was hoping it was going to flash a bit of silver, then leap and show itself as a decent barra.  But beggars can't be choosy.

And finally a bungy-jumper on a Megabass Flap Slap, which I hoped would imitate the herring harbour fish like to suck down at this time of the year.  Instead it inspired a cod to some extreme sport.

So after sensibleness would have long called the day fish-less and settled for a beer, I managed 3 cod, that odd little plate-mouthed critter, a fingermark and a catfish.  Nothing big, but persistence paid off.

Later that evening I hit 'Pond X', but didn't have to work so hard: 3 barra in an hour, plus a hatchback version of a giant herring and a tarpon.

My first barra on a Megabass Griffon. Shallow diving with a tight and frenzied wobbling action.

Only the finest quality iPhone photography! 

Secret Megabass Barra attractor with inlaid mother of pearl... and a much tougher lure than the Vision 110. 

The tarpon had quite a few snaps at this gold Smith Camion, but only one could commit.

Folks up North seem to call these herring Ladyfish. I guess fisherman get lonely too.

 I know there are more of these giant herring around (another "Secret Spot X"...) and they are great fun on light tackle.  This night they were mostly splashing about just out of casting range.  I was lucky to get this on a big stickbait.  For my 'tackle enthusiast problem', this is enough of an excuse to look into buying a rod just for the purpose: fishing light lures and unweighted plastics in an area where I need to cast them the better part of 40 meters while surrounded by scrub.  So I've ordered this... Evergreen Kaleido Designo... a rod utterly unsuited to most Northern Australian fishing. Unless you also like chasing sooty grunter and barra in small streams!

I think someone else must have been consumed by the rubbish I have to wade through when 'Pond X' is flooded at high tide, with only a single shoe escaping the maw of rubbish and mud.  A jogger hopefully.