Out at Arnhem Land

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This entry is mainly for people into fishing...

I’ve just got back from a remote part of Australia called Arnhem Land. For those who don’t know, it’s at the very top of the country and is Aboriginal Land. Ordinary Australians aren’t allowed onto this land unless they have the permission of the Northern Land Council. Arnhem Land is about the size of Wales in the UK so we’re talking about a pretty large place.

The boys in our family get together every now and then and go fishing and this time my Dad was good enough to organise a week’s fishing at a fishing camp at Ramingining in Arnhem Land. If you’ve seen the film ’10 Canoes’, that’s where we were for the last week. Most of the actors from the film came from the Ramingining Community.

The camp was on the edge of the Clyde River so we didn’t really see Ramingining much or get to meet the people. We did get to see some beautiful country and lots of the wildlife. In Arnhem Land, the emphasis is on ‘wild’. We had herds of buffalo wander past our camp every day, we saw a few crocodiles along the river and a plethora of birdlife.

The fishing was nothing short of outstanding. We caught so many barramundi, trevally and several other species. Most of the fish we caught we released again after a quick photo but we kept a few for dinner each night. We were spoiled by Ros, our camp host, with beautiful food the whole trip. My favourites were the fresh mudcrab and the tuna sashimi we had most evenings watching the sun go down. All up it was a great experience. Once again, I’ll let the photos do the talking.

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Photos

The plane ride
We flew out from Darwin to Arnhem Land in this twin-prop plane. Fun flight.

The camp
This pic's a bit blurred but you get the idea

Sunrise on the Clyde River
We were up and onto the river by dawn every morning so we saw some beautiful scenery. You can't tell but we were flying along in the boat when I took this pic.

Dads mackerell
120cm and 22lbs. Dad had the knack of catching the biggest fish of several species on our trip. Nice work mate!

Steve with a decent barra
I think it was about 75cm and 10lbs

Roger landing a fish
We hooked into some schooling tuna on the first day. Amazing to catch as they fight for quite a while

Roger with his first tuna
The tuna sashimi we had for dinner that evening was the best I've tasted.

Beautiful beach
We stopped to check out this beautiful beach and had a quick swim to cool off. In the NT with plenty of sharks and crocs in the area, this means a good look around and a 5 second dip and back on the boat! There was a massive midden (ancient aboriginal shell mound) at the end of this beach just out of shot.

Triple hookup
Sometimes the fishing was that good, we all had fish on at the same time. It happened with trevally and in this case with 3 good Queenfish. It wasn't uncommon to have 4 or 5 big fish chasing after your lure. Fishing paradise!

Crocodile dental floss
The floats on our mudcrab pots were mauled by a large crocodile one day. We lost one of the floats and the one left had plenty of big teeth marks in it. See for yourself. Not a good place to go swimming ;-)

Mudcrabs...much better than lobster!
Take a crab pot, tie a filleted barramundi to the bottom, throw it in the river in the morning and pick it up when you get back in the afternoon. It'll be filled with delicious mudcrabs.

Watch your toes!
Our fishing guide Russell holding 2 mudcrabs we pulled out of the pot. The claws on these crabs look nasty and they are. They could take your big toe off if you're not careful.

A platter of mudcrabs
If we didn't have tuna sashimi for entre, we'd have mudcrabs. Can you believe the size of the platter we had this evening!

Roger's largest barramundi
78cm and 11lbs

Comments

[Matt]

the old rog and the sea
Very Hemingway this latest blog - love it! Glad to hear you got out of Mayhico alive and without anything throbbing ;o)