Dream hoop-ups off Top End coast

With a sensational weather forecast for the long weekend imminent, I decided to head out on the blue with my good mate Simon Xeureb

With a sensational weather forecast for the long weekend imminent, I decided to head out on the blue with my good mate Simon Xeureb.

On Saturday, we left the Buff Creek ramp early and headed north up to Melville Island. The big 200 Suzi purred as we travelled across flat calm seas, arriving at our first destination with intense anticipation.

Angler Simon Xeureb with a couple of nice macks.

The tides were also perfect, just building after the neaps, and the water clarity reflected this. We tied on a couple of deep diving lures and commenced trolling.

Almost immediately, my classic bluewater lure was scoffed by a good fish.

From the dogged head shakes I could tell it was most probably a trevally, and a couple of minutes later my suspicions were confirmed.

At around 7kg, it was a nice fish, and around the average size usually experienced in this area. We continued trolling and I hooked up again on another trevally straight away.

Simon’s lure was also grabbed on the way in. However, he had a nice Spanish mackerel attached.

As we bought our fish in there were many other trevally around following them in. Simon placed his rod in the rod holder and then dropped a jig over the side with his other rod and soon hooked up on another trevally. A triple hook-up! This mayhem continued for some time until we were sick of hooking and releasing trevally.

We then started casting the lures around on our spin sticks and cranking them in at speed to see them crunched by big macks right near the boat. Another double hook-up, but this time on big macks.

We landed both of these macks and kept them before moving on to try for some other species. We dropped into a small creek on the incoming tide and landed 10 barra up to 65cm and a couple of nice threadies. It was a great way to end another good session fishing the magnificent, fish-rich waters of the Top End.