Day 62
Karumba
"I'm heading out where the water is much deeper. I'll save myself from saving you......"
I once caught a fish this big.....
I've always wanted to travel to the Gulf of Carpentaria and go fishing. Ideally for Barramundi and catch a huge one that will feed a small village, however, seeing as its too cold in the water for Barra just now, I was happy just to go fishing. I dont do a lot of fishing you see but I do enjoy it though, but really only if it's off a boat.
I convinced Corinne and Phillip to join me and then convinced the charter to take Cayden along too for free - all achieved!
We met at the boat ramp just up from the park just after 7am and were on our way up the Norman River and into the Gulf shortly thereafter. We had our first lines in the water at 7.30 just as the sun was getting into stride for the day ahead. No luck at our first location - looking for bream off a sandbank. The boat off our bow was pulling some in (although small on size). We persevered into another spot but still no luck.
It was then time to get the lures into action and trawl for Queenfish. Cobey had given me the min size regulations for fish caught in Qld the night before and so I knew the min size for Queenies was 50cm. We used 4 lures and we'd only been underway for a minute and bang - a hit on my rod. I saw it thrash about at the surface and run and then nothing - lost it!
We reset and continued the trawl and not long after - bang - another hit. I jumped up and grabbed the rod as the fish ran. I could tell it was a big fish given the line that was run out. I turned off the drag and so began the fight.
I got a good arms workout today reeling and dragging this fish in. It ran about 4 times - pretty much everytime I got it to the surface and we saw colour! I won the battle though after about 7or 8 minutes. My reward was a 1.1M Queenfish that weighed 6.5 kilograms! It's the biggest fish I've ever caught!!
Unfortunately though that's where our luck ran out. No other fish for the rest of the morning were caught - although lots of nibbles felt.
Back on land I had the job of cleaning and filleting the monster I'd caught. We got huge fillets off it - enough to feed all 7 of us for 2 meals!
I cooked up a BBQ Queenfish feast tonight - with the herbal sea salt and a bit of extra virgin olive oil. Massive steaks of fish that we're great eating too! Still more to come too in the next night or so.
Our afternoon was spent relaxing and visiting the Barramundi Discovery Centre. It's the only place in Australia that actively assist in the cultivation and reproduction of Barramundi into the river systems in the Gulf region. They release millions of tiny barra each year so that the species is maintained as a recreational fish species and do that all the tourists with boats can go catch them.
We also hand fed big barra in tanks that are their main breeders. They keep them for 4 or 5 years as breeders before releasing them back into the wild . As its cold for them now they were slow eaters - but all the pilchards were eventually taken.
Tomorrow we leave the Gulf to head towards the East coast. There is a rodeo in Georgetown and we're stopping the night there to go to the rodeo. It will be akubra hats and rm Williams wear tomorrow night! Yee har!