By Brad Bell
Severe Tropical Cyclone Rusty crossed the Pilbara coast on Wednesday afternoon leaving a wake of huge seas and damaging winds. Given the circumstances, I wasn’t overly confident that we would get much of a window to do anything, let alone head out into the Dampier archipalago for a fly fish.
Sunday morning came around and although TC Rusty was no more, the weather man was still forecasting 15 – 20 knot south westerlies, but, I decided to go anyway. The archipelago has many bays that offer protection in most situations and I wanted to test out some of my new flats flies.
The flies I was using are tied to look like a crab, the natural food for many of the predators that inhabit the northern flats. It is critical when fly fishing the northern waters that the hook point is razor sharp, and the hook itself is ultra strong. Most of the crab flies I use are of the merkin variety tied by Jono Makim on to a Gamakatsu SL12 in either 1/0 or 2/0. The SL12 is by far the strongest hook of this size that I have ever fished with.
My plan was to fish up on to the flat with the tide as it pushed in. We set up on one of the sandbars on the west side of the bay, as this area was offering the most protection from the howling south wester. With the first of the tide came the first of the schools of painted sweetlip aka Blue Bastards. The fish are quite obvious once you know what to look for and as they forage for crabs and other crustaceans on the flats their tails often break the water. This type of behaviour for the non fly fishers out there is known as “tailing”. I lifted my fly off the water and landed my first cast approximately 2 meters on the lead side of the moving school. Instantly one fish peeled off.
The fish tailed on my fly and I started to feel some weight, this is the point where it is critical to have an ultra sharp hook like the SL12. Two big strips to set the hook and I was on! BB’s run hard and fast especially in knee deep water and in a second the fish had me well down on to the backing. You don’t have to be too concerned at this stage of the fight as long as there isn’t any structure that the fish may be able to rub you off on and in my case I was safe. After 5 or 10 minutes I had the fish landed and the battle was over.
We had a pretty epic little session with the remaining push of tide landing three BB’s and two golden’s all on the merkin crab pattern tied onto a Gamakatsu SL12 in size 1/0. No fish lost through poor hook penetration with every strip strike resulting in a solid hook up. I’m certainly looking forward to the next session!
