FISHING
NEWS FROM NORTH AUSTRALIA
With Alex Julius - 29 June 2006
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Each year, usually by the middle of June when air temperatures drop and estuarine waters follow suit, vast schools of our northern pikey bream gather along our coastal bays and up the saltwater creeks.
Both Darwin Harbour and Shoal Bay are as good a place as any to experience this annual bream run.
The word at the moment is that bream are starting to move in around Larrakeyah, up Pioneer Creek and all around the Rock in Shoal Bay.
If you have a boat, catching them is quite easy.
At Larrakeyah, just anchor in any of the little bays from the point back towards the Naval Patrol Boat Base, preferably at night on the last half of the rising tide.
It’s best to use a light line on a suitable rod and reel — 4 kg monofilament breaking strain is fine, and a thin braid line like Platyl Millenium is perfect.
With braid, you’ll need a light mono leader.
Use just enough lead running on the line to get the rig to the bottom, and bait up onto about a No 4 hook with small, whole prawns. Lure casters should look to small plastic shads, grubs and prawn imitations.
Often the bream are quite small and should be thrown back, but there are plenty of good ones as well, along with the occasional solid ock-ock.
The Rock can be fished on any tides for bream, but I rather fancy a rising tide in the evening.
Visit our incredible fishing destination:
ARNHEMLAND BARRAMUNDI NATURE LODGE
 Competitors in the 2006 Kids Classic practice their casting from the beach.
Jason Clark with his first ever barra. He caught the 71cm fish at the Daly on a $15 kids combo from Top End Fishing Supplies. |
Fritzy from WA fished North Gutter aboard Tere Tiki, and looks very pleased with his 20kg mackerel. 
Shore based anglers will have success wherever a rising tide covers rocky foreshore areas.
The pikey bream is found only in the tropics.
It ranges from Shark Bay in WA, right across northern Australia and as far down the QLD coast as Rockhampton.
It is different to both the popular silver bream found along the eastern seaboard from central Queensland to northern Victoria, and the southern or black bream found along the coast and estuaries from southern NSW right around the bottom half of Australia and up to Shark Bay.
For starters, the inside of its mouth is black and its overall appearance is usually much darker than the silver bream. Although a popular table fish, I don’t think our version is quite as good to eat as the southern variety.
Pikey bream are extremely aggressive little predators, readily taking lures and flies meant for other, often much bigger, species in the saltwater creeks.
I remember once hooking a pikey on fly off a beach south of Darwin.
When it came into the shallows, there was another one with it, biting the trailing feathers and glitter of the fly attached to the hooked fish’s mouth.
According to Grant’s Fishes Of Australia, the pikey bream grows to 560 mm, which would put it over the 4 kg mark.
I’d love to hear from anyone who’s caught one that big because the biggest I’ve ever seen was about 1.5 kg.
The pikey bream is a terrific family fish — kids love to catch them.
Along the harbour during the dry season you can catch dozens in one session, but it’s best to take only what you and your family need for a feed.
One good way to prepare and cook them is to gill and gut your fish, scale them, score the sides and then grill them whole, basting with a mixture of lemon and olive oil.
There is a great run of crabs in Darwin Harbour at the moment, with the best catches coming from Middle Arm. Raw chicken pieces or fish frames seem to be the best baits.
There’s also a bit of mackerel mania going around.
Ron Voukolos from Fishing and Outdoor World told me schooling Spanish Mackerel have well and truly taken up residence at Bass Reef off Quail Island.
On the other side of Darwin, to the north-east, macs to 14 kg were chomping on baits and lures just east of the Vernon Islands.
According to Craig Grosvenor of Got One, whopper macs have also been turning up much closer to the metropolis of Darwin.
The natural and artificial reefs in the vicinity of Lee Point, in particular, have produced Spaniards to 20 kg.
To be even more precise, the Bottle Washer artificial reef yielded some beautiful big macs on Halco Laser Pros trolled across and around the structure at speed.
Another pelagic species about in numbers at the moment is the longtail tuna, but it can be hard to get within casting distance of the flighty schools.
You need to be cunning when approaching a school of surface-feeding longtails – shut down your engine if possible, and drift with the wind towards a school before casting small chromies or maribou jigs.
Once they’ve landed, give them a couple of seconds to sink, then crank them back like mad.
Speaking of maribou jigs, Matt Burke and his mates brained quality golden snapper at Lorna Shoal on the weekend.
Once they had their bag limit, they had to move away in order to target other species.
Alex Julius Fishing Media
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