One of the first things I did was check the hand lines that
I had put out last night and wasn’t happy when I found I had been bitten of, on
80lb line! We did the usuals and were at the van park reception at 10am as the
previous nights owners were pulling out. We set up and I spent a few minutes
chatting with some of the other ‘fellas’ around the park about how the fishing
was. Now one thing is for sure you only go on a holiday to Burketown to
fish....there is nothing else to do! It was fishing pretty hard but we were
only there one day so we had better make the best of it!
We hit the baker, who was also last nights world champion
pork chops butcher, and grabbed a few pies and headed to the boat ramp. Along
the way we visited the historic ‘Boiling down works’ and Leichardt tree, which
were about as exciting as they sound. We launched Rufus and with the aid of a
photocopied map we headed 6 or 7kms down stream. Over the past month or so we
have stayed away from bait and have fished for barra with lures (pretty
unsuccessfully) but with the temperature of the water down to 17 or 18 degrees
it was time to leave them behind and start chasing other things using dead
prawns and other stinky delights!
De decided to come for the run, so with a full ship we
headed down the Albert River. The mouth is about a 30km run but we were happy
to go towards salt arm. At a point where there was a circle on the map we pulled
up and fished for about ½ an hour not being able to lose our bait except for De catching a catfish.
We headed up
a small creek just near there hoping to get something, anything to keep the
boys interested. We had only been anchored 3 or 4 minutes when I casually
glanced down at my legs, that were now completely covered in mozzies. The alarm
was raised with the anchor retived in record time and I floored it to get out
to the river proper. Everybody was flapping and slapping as we continued on
trying to shake all of the hitchhikers!
We eventually settled down at saltarm and drifted along with
the wind and current until Sambo managed to catch a little grunter! Finally
something!
We drifter some more until another boat came over to us waring us of
a sand back we were drifting towards and that we should headaround the corner
to a rockbar, “you’ll find it on you sounder”. We did go around the corner but
continued to drift along when all of a sudden I had something of a decent size
on my line that was giving me head shakes that were worth feeling! No sooner
was I on that De was one as well. A few minutes later I had a good size Jewel
Fish, that glows white in the daylight, and De had a decent sized bream. We
drifted over our lucky spot again with no luck and decided to call it a day
having caught a feed!
On the way back De spotted a good 4+m croc sunning its self
and again my efforts to go back and have a look at it were short lived, because
as soon as I swung the boat around it slithered into the water and I did an
about face and floored it, especially this time as the croc was probably a good
50 – 70cm LONGER than the boat and probably weighed more than it, including all
of its contents..
We headed back happy with the result and cooked up the fish
for dinner, De called the local greasy spoon and ordered a family serve of
chips. The last time she did that in Derby WA we had enough to feed 15 people,
well this time we had just enough to go around us four, about $5 worth in
Brisbane, but up here it cost $12!
We settled in for the night watching the State of Origin,
the TV coming out for the first time since Geraldton in WA, at least 2 months
ago. Unfortunately NSW managed to get up for the first time in either of the
boys lives and end what had been a great
day!
A great day and a great win!
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