Helifish lifts off to great beyond

THERE would be few anglers in Darwin who would not be aware of Helifish, the locally based specialist heli-fishing company operated by Mark Rolle.

Christine Mansfield, Helifish pilot Ryan Saywell and Jenny Mansfield with Jenny’s silver barra caught on her first cast the very first time she has ever gone fishing

THERE would be few anglers in Darwin who would not be aware of Helifish, the locally based specialist heli-fishing company operated by Mark Rolle.

Helifish has been around for about four years now, and certainly seems to have the runs on the board, judging by all the fish I’ve seen caught on various television fishing programs, social media posts, and the many word-of-mouth reports I’ve received.

Thanks mainly to fronting several series of Channel Nine’s Fishing North Australia, I’ve been lucky to do many helicopter fishing trips, including to remote Kimberley, Arnhem Land, western Top End and Cape York.

It’s something I never tire of – that exhilarating feeling when the chopper takes off at 45 degrees, tail up and accelerating over the tree canopy, or white sand, or rugged rocks, or running rivers, and then steadying at about 200-300m as it buzzes across the countryside. It’s worth the cost of the ride even without fish.

And so it was last Thursday that, for the first time in at least three years, I was once again airborne in a chopper and heading for special, land-based barra fishing spots used by Helifish.

With me were Christine Mansfield and her visiting UK niece, Jenny, who had never been in a chopper or even been fishing before.

Our Helifish pilot and fishing guide was Ryan Saywell, an affable young man who definitely came out of the same mould as so many other chopper pilots I’ve encountered – polite, unassuming, informative, willing, helpful, knowledgeable and always wearing a baseball cap.

He also knew a thing or two about barra fishing.

Helifish does half day and full day fishing trips and ours was the Full Monty all the way to the other side of the Daly River where Mark has negotiated access to a lengthy coastal area of Aboriginal land.

Helifish pilots like to get into places where there is plenty of parking and good access to land-based barra fishing.

On its patch, Helifish has several rock ledge and creek locations that can be fished safely by clients.

For my part, you can imagine how interested I was to fly across the lower Daly River floodplains and around the mouth, thus seeing first-hand how much water has been retained after all the rain that fell in the first half of January.

I can report that there was plenty of water, with creeks like Miller’s flowing a nice colour change, but a lot more would be good to really flood those inland plains.

First stop was a long, flat, rock ledge which I recognised immediately as I had fished it a couple of times from a boat many years before and did quite well on the incoming tide. Conditions seemed ideal as the neap tide was making.

As Jenny had never fished before, it was Ryan’s job to teach her how to cast a baitcaster. I watched with interest as every guide has his own teaching technique.

I was impressed, and so was Jenny because she hooked a nice silver barra on her very first cast.

Of course, the problem with this type of fishing is that you are pulling the fish into the structure, unlike with a boat when you are pulling it away.

Luckily Ryan is a bit of a gazelle, and with easy agility was able to hop down and extend to get a fish grip on to the barra’s jaws as the fish washed around the oyster rocks. He’d obviously done this before!

As always, I revelled in photographing and filming the episode on my modified dual-purpose Nikon.

With other spots to hit around the top of the tide, we fished the rock ledge for less than an hour, but it was enough time for me to hook a near-metre barra on a weedless-rigged Squidgy Slick Rig painted with tasty S-Factor. I’d cast and hopped the lure along the rocky edges in less than a metre of murky water when it was walloped.

As often happens with a good fish in such shallow water with minimal clarity, it came straight to the surface.

It exploded, thrashing tail and head simultaneously, and boiling the water only metres before me. There’s no way you’d call me a gazelle, but I managed to hop across a couple of rocks to get even closer to the fish.

It was still wildly protesting on the surface, clearly not sure of its bearings.

In hindsight, this was not a good thing, and it would have been better if the fish had run off into the bay instead of hammering its head on the water, determined to shed the intruding lure.

That it didn’t do, but it had obviously swallowed the lure right down, giving the 50lb leader I was using no chance against flaying, rasping jaws.

I wound in the slack line, cursing my stupidity for not using a heavier leader with the irresistible Squidgy/S-Factor combination.

We took to the air after several more casts at that spot, but it was futile. The “horse” had bolted.

The rest of the day continued to be a delight and an adventure.

You can’t beat a swimming hole and waterfall that’s accessible only by chopper at the end of an exhilarating Helifish adventure

We caught fish at about half the spots we fished, enjoying a fine lunch in the shade near a bubbling creek mouth on the by now outgoing tide.

By early afternoon, it was getting hotter and the girls were all for abandoning the fish and heading for Litchfield National Park.

We landed at a swimming hole below a waterfall, a beautiful spot that is only accessible by chopper.

They’d both caught barra and a cool frothy dip was just too alluring before the final exhilarating flight over Litchfield and back to Helifish’s Noonamah base.

■ Check out helifish.com.au or phone Mark on 0408 872 212.