Fishing at Wiligi

We’ve been fishing every day here so far – and boy have we had some fun! There are plenty of places here for GT, Golden Trevally, Spotted Mackerel, Rock Cod, and Queenies. All caught using lures on the troll. We’ve tried crabbing with pots but all that we got was 1 muddie and some sharks as well as bunch of wrecked crab pots courtesy of the sharks. There aren’t too many creeks on the northern side of the Cobourg peninsula so we had to go a hell of a long way to find a place that looked good to set them. On both the setting and the retrieving trip the trip back to camp involved a long trip (30Km by sea) traversing a bloody horrendous tidal race which was no fun for the boat driver (me!). Oh well. On the plus side, on the first day of the crabbing trip we happened across a school of frenzied birds and bait fish. We caught a heap of HUGE Queenfish and we had a truck load of fun catching them (and releasing most of them once we have enough for food). The second day was redeemed only by Bruce catching a nice Coral Trout while trolling back near Wiligi.

The next day we discovered a place near Valencia Island were the bottom drops from 15m to 30m in a near-vertical wall. In the 30m hole there was the mother-of-all bait balls visible on the Echo Sounder. We decided to try something new – Micro Jigging through the bait ball.

Well I’ll be damned! It turns out that there was serious fish around that bait ball!! We had numerous hook-ups that went off like freight trains heading to Indonesia! I hooked something that quickly unravelled about 200m of line then up in the distance there was a kerfuffle in the water that was a big shark eating my fish! Picture this: Shark surges up from the water, there’s a wall of red water erupting at the end of my line, another 20m of line unspools and everything goes slack. Holy shit!

So the next day we go back and ditch the micro Jigs in favour for big Knife Jigs. After a few more hook-ups and a long fight, Bruce landed a nice Northern Blue Tuna. Since I have Soy Sauce and Wasabi on the boat we dined on Sashimi in the boat on the way home. We’ve been back to that spot a few time and we can always find the Tuna near that bait ball.

But too much fishing can get old, so tomorrow we’re going to take the boat up to the tip of the Cobourg Peninsula on the trailer and then head up Port Essington to check out Victoria Settlement.