This trip was organized by Dave Woodburn, the man behind TOPTAG, a program of tagging fish for research in the Northern Territory. The aim of the annual trip is to target Black Jewfish and Spanish Mackerel, and of course have a damm good time in the process. Originally up to 8 boats were supposed to make the pilgrimage, however, on the day only 4 rocked up at our meeting place, the Noonamah Pub, just out of Darwin. A last minute top up of the belly and car saw us depart Noonamah about 9.30 am on the Friday, ready for the 5 hour trip into Aboriginal land, accessed via the La Belle station. I had heard stories of the infamous road into our fishing spot, however, with that she'll be right mate attitude I thought that my 1.5 ton, dual axle rig could handle all that I had heard. Jeez, I'd driven it for the last two years over some pretty shocking roads, and it hadn't let me down yet. What I wasn't really ready for was going through huge vertical washouts, about six feet wide and four deep. The car went through alright, however, I was a little concerned when I looked in my right hand mirror to see that both right hand wheels of the trailer were off the ground, and my boat balancing on two wheels. My heart rate increased rapidly, and I felt an extra lump on my seat, however, through not panicking and keeping the car moving slightly (or shear arse I think) I made it through. There were three more just like it, also huge areas where others had been bogged and you had to balance just out of their wheel ruts, and generally, bumpy shitty 4 wheel drive tracks. We finally made it to the beach at about 1.30 pm, better than expected, however the fun was only just about to start.

The boys inspected the beach, and the decision was made to get the boats in before the tide went out too far, so off I go down the beach, pick my spot, turn around, throw her in reverse, back down and then it happened, I sunk. 20 meters from the waters edge, luckily on an outgoing tide. We decided to unhook the trailer, tow the car out, push the boat off and tow the trailer out. Sounds easy don't it, as luck would have, it wasn't. After our towrope broke three times, we had the car out, followed not long after by the trailer. The others, learning from my mistake launched their boats 50 meters to the left and had no trouble, as the tide went out further, It revealed that I had found the only section of mud on a fair stretch of beach, just lucky I guess. After realising that it would be about 11 pm before we would have enough water to get out and go fishing, the decision was made to winch the boat back on the trailer, much to the disappointment of our companions who, by this stage wanted to go fishing. We achieved the retrieval of the trailer with the help of Dave's winch, until it decided not to play anymore, then towed it out on a long rope. We finally relaunched our boat in the correct spot (making mistakes is the best way to learn someone once told me, I learnt quite a bit during the weekend). The next few hours were spent by some fishing, and by others getting the camp ready.

After a BBQ tea we headed to the famous Channel Point, a big Jewfish haunt, which was only three km away. After arriving and sounding around, I found a beautiful ledge, going from 10 m to 32 mr. Anchoring on the ledge proved difficult however, after a few attempts I was happy and the lines went over. The sounder was showing huge amounts of fish, however, no action. We waited for about half an hour, then bang, three lines went off. Unfortunately, only one fish was hooked, and my fishing partner, Luke Cain, landed a nice Jew measuring just over 1 mr. Statistical information was taken, a tag inserted, took a photo then sent the Jew back down to the bottom, via a weighted decompression device to aid in the fishes recovery. I caught two more Jew for the night, the biggest measuring 110 cm, both were released with tags. At about 1.30 am, we decided to call it a night and crawled into bed, two very weary fishermen We awoke about 8 am, had a quick BBQ brekkie, over a few fishy stories and decided to give the pelagics a go in and around the Perons. My boat was about 100 mr away from the waters edge at this stage, no problems I thought, I'll wade on out, wrong, when the water was up to my shoulders, and the boat was still 50 mr away, I decided that there was safety in numbers and went back to shore, grabbed Luke and we both swam to the boat. At least I reduced my chances of being attacked from a crocodile by 50 % (I think we would have given Kieren Perkins a run for his money we swam so fast). Trolling around we caught a few cod and a GT, however, the weather looked like it was going to stay fine, so we decided to go to kellaway reef, about 20 km away. It actually took us three hours to get there. About 5 km into the trip we could see birds working everywhere, a quick detour saw us in some really hot action with Tuna and Mackerel. On nearly every cast with a Raider Lure I was getting a hit, with most boated. Luke being a keen fly fisherman tried his hand at getting one on fly. Although Luke never actually hooked one, the excitement of watching mackerel and Tuna follow the fly and mouth it is overwhelming, visual fishing at its best. Maybe next time we will be luckier. When we finally arrived at the reef, we anchored, threw our baits over and started to berley by bucket, and creating a pilchard ladder. We were aiming to target some big Mackerel, their presence was immediately obvious, as we were only getting the heads of the reef fish to the boat. Finally I managed to drag a live Stripey on board, as quick as I got it in, I threw it out under a float. The line didn't even have a chance to get wet, and I was on. At first I thought that it was a shark, it was very powerful, however, after quite a long fight, Luke yelled out, from the top of the centre console where he was videoing, "It's a huge Mack", to my excitement. We finally boated it, followed by the insertion of the tag, and of course the photo (in the excitement I forgot to weigh it, as it would have easily been a masters capture).

We continued to fish out wide for about an hour, where we boated the best 1/3 of reef fish I have ever caught, I hope the Mackerel enjoyed the other 2/3. To boat just the head of an estimated 60 cm sweetlip time after time was too much for me, so we headed back inshore to prepare for the big Jewies that night. The trip back was also very slow, we just couldn't resist catching Tuna, and Mackerel. We made camp at last light, had a quick feed, got the aeroguard, and we were off again, to that great Jewie hole.

We headed straight back to the GPS spot from the previous night, found the ledge and waited. Before long we were boating small sharks, however, no Jewies. As Luke and I were waiting for the big hit, the effort expended on the whole trip caught up with us, getting out of the chair to check our bait was becoming a real effort. I landed one more big Jew, then we decided to call it a night, we were both completely exhausted.

The next morning at low tide we retrieved my boat without any dramas, packed up the camp, and headed back about 11 am. On the usual pre inspection check of my trailer I realised the extent of the damage from the drive in. Broken suspension on the left hand side, and a little bit of rust holding it together on the right. A bit of bush mechanical work was carried out via a few tiedown straps, and she was as good as new, well not really, however, the old girl got us home, even if we were doing 60 kph on the highway.

The slow trip home gave us plenty of time to reflect on an excellent weekend of fishing, some people question why we don't want to leave the Northern Territory, I question why people do.