Published in the November 2001 edition of "Modern Fishing"
Steve
Starling
The old saying "when the going gets tough, the tough get going"
is a clever axiom, not least because it works at two levels. You
can interpret it as either an escape clause or a call to action.
'Get going' as in depart the scene, or 'get going' as in roll up
your sleeves and get stuck into it. Neat.Over the years, that philosophy has proven especially relevant
to the world of fishing, at least in my experience. When things
are tragically slow and the arse drops right out of the bite, you
have two clear alternatives; go somewhere else, or make the most
of what's left. Both strategies have worked for me.Of course, it's not always possible to stage a strategic withdrawal
by relocating some place else. Sometimes you're locked into a specific
destination for the long haul, and if things are crook, the challenge
is to make the best of it.On my latest visit to the north west corner of Cape York Peninsula,
I was faced with just such a challenge. Regular readers will be
aware that this part of the fishing world is my all-time favourite
stomping ground. The rivers, flats, beaches and inshore reefs stretching
south from Vrilya Point to the Skardon River - roughly mid-way between
Weipa and the Tip - are a piscatorial paradise in my book. In particular,
they're 'nine weight heaved for a born again saltwater fly rodder
like me. That's why I've been there more than a dozen times in the
past decade. I simply can't get enough of the place, nor of Greg
and Jennie Bethune's live-aboard charter operation; Carpentaria
Seafaris. These days, I have few illusions about fishing. Even in paradise,
things can and do go wrong, and the more often you visit a location,
the more likely you are to eventually see it in shut-down mode.
I've experienced quiet days on the
western Cape in the past, but the saving grace has always been that
a 'quiet' day on the Jackson or Doughboy River flats is still better
than a great day in most other places! This year, however, the elemental forces of nature conspired against
us. It just did not feel right on day one, when the prevailing sou'
easterly trade wind (which blows offshore on the Gulf side of the
Cape) swung south then south west and a low swell began to build.
Swell? In the Gulf? In August? No way! By day two, a nasty little low pressure system buried somewhere
in the bottom left corner of the vast Gulf of Carpentaria had done
its stuff and generated a serious two metre swell that creamed onto
the beaches and river mouth flats as an angry brown surf. It diddt
matter a It damn that the weather for the rest week-long stay aboard
the 'Capricorn Mist' was great. The damage had already
been done. The unseasonable swell ran for two days and then took
another day to drop away. The inshore waters It looked like cafe
latte and they simply were not going to clear in time for sight
fishing to become a serious option on this trip. Bummer!For me, sight fishing with the fly rod is what the north western
Cape Coast is really all about. Standing feet apart on the bow casting
platform of one of Carpentaria Seafari's fibreglass skiffs as it
drifts across a transparent flat on the first flush of a making
tide, eight or nine weight fly rod in one hand, Clouser or crab
fly held loosely in the other, eyes full sweeping, scanning, probing.
Shapes flittering. Mullet, small queenies, scuttling mud crabs,
rays and shovelnose sharks. Then, suddenly, the flash of a deep
flank and a yellow fin tip briefly cutting the surface as a big
golden trevally stands on its head and nuzzles into the sand, or
the unmistakable blink of pewter as schooling permit work up the
flat towards you on the tide. Every nerve ending tingles with electricity
and the hairs on your neck bristle. It's heady stuff - and highly
addictive.This year, sight fishing was out. Totally. The flats were filthy.
We were going to need to exercise other options to save the trip.
Fortunately, options are something the Cape Coast has no shortage
of.THE FELTY FACTOR
My fishing companion on this year's Cape sojourn was affable expatriate
South African, Mike 'Felty' Felton. I've known Mike for a few years
now, and have always enjoyed his company immensely and valued his
considerable fishing expertise. In particular, he's a maestro when
it comes to chasing fast moving pelagics on fur and feathers.Mike's a high-powered foreign currency dealer who spends his long
working days in the canyons of the city, chasing percentage points
across the Dow and Nasdaq boards. Come the weekend, he swaps his
tailored suit for a T-shirt and shorts and pursues Pittwater kings,
bonito and salmon on fly with the same cool professionalism and
dedication.Having lost a leg to cancer a decade ago proves no handicap to
Felty, who regularly launches and retrieves his little Haines runabout
single-handed, and casts a shooting head longer distances from a
sitting position than most of us will ever come close to emulating
while standing on two feet.Coincidentally, Mike's wife, Cutty, just happens to run a boutique
importing and wholesale business called Felty's Flies, specialising
in durable, effective saltwater patterns and a range of no nonsense
South African-made fly reels. So Mike's weekend and holiday forays
are actually 'field testing' assignments for Cutty's operation.
Isn't it terrible when your wife makes you go fishing!
Having Mike along on this swell cursed Cape trip was a major bonus,
and his skills at finding, intercepting and then catching schooling
pelagics began to turn our fickle fortunes around right from day
one.SEIZE THE DAY
The same dirty water that had closed out the flats fishing extended
at least a kilometre or two offshore in most areas, before giving
way to the more typical fishy green of the Gulf. Not surprisingly,
most of the pelagic action was taking place along and just outside
this distinct colour change, but that action was sporadic and hard
to read, at best.Clearly, the bait schools had been seriously broken up and dispersed
by the unusual conditions. Predatory fish were having trouble finding
bait, and we were having trouble finding the predators.Fortunately, Mike and I are both not bad at spotting distant birds
and evaluating their behaviour, and often it was no more than a
single tern dipping in mid flight that alerted us to the presence
of a small pod of fast-moving longtail tuna. After that, Felty's
years of experience at this game really came to the fore. He seemed
to intuitively know which way a school would head, and where they'd
pop up next.
It would be fair to say that we had only half a dozen or so good
shots at surface feeding fish during our offshore forays that week,
and the fact that we were able to convert all but one of those opportunities
into double fly rod hookups speaks volumes for Mike's abilities
in this arena. Those sizzling longtails - some of them up to nine
kilos in weight - really saved the day for us, and the bludger and
tille trevally mixed in with them were also welcome.
Felty
with a Barra
I suspect many hopefuls would have given up in frustration when
the first dozen pods of tuna they targeted either disappeared without
trace, or moved too erratically and surfaced so sporadically as
to appear un-catchable. Thankfully, Mike had the experience and
we both had the commitment to our task needed to hang in there through
an hour or more of this frustration, waiting for that golden moment
when a feeding school frothed virtually under our rod tips and we
were able to make the critical cast and presentation required to
connect. It was all a matter of biding your time then quickly and
efficiently combining observation and anticipation to seize a momentary
opportunity When it finally came together, it felt great.On one of our last mornings, up near Vrilya Point, the value of
all this observation and anticipation really came to the fore. Mike
spotted the first bait ball; a barely discernible dark smudge in
the milky water, easily mistaken at first glance for a cloud shadow.
They were small northern pilchards or sardines, looking nervous
but presently unmolested. We cast over and around them, dredged
flies deep under them, and were rewarded with nothing more than
a couple of strikes from small wolf herring. I spotted the next ball. Again, no action. And so we worked our
way gradually north along the colour change, from one bait school
to the next, confident that eventually we'd find some sort of action.
Then Mike spotted a particularly black blob a hundred metres ahead
and pointed it out to me."That's a manta ray," I responded."There'll be cobia
swimming with it I bet' I offered this rather bold prediction
with considerably more confidence than I felt, but as we motored
slowly upwind of the approaching ray, Mike craned his neck, then
shouted with excitement. "You're right! Look, there's a cobia swimming behind it' It takes a real mate to hold back on an easy cast and let his companion
have the first shot, but that's exactly what Felty did. He knew
how badly 1 wanted a cobe one on fly, and even though he's yet to
catch one himself, he handed this one to me on a platter and would
you believe I still nearly stuffed it up?
First cast the caramel-backed torpedo peeled off, lined up my Polar
Fibre Minnow fly and nailed it - and I stupidly struck a nanosecond
early and pulled the thing right out of its gob!Steadying my rattled nerves, 1 fired a second cast, this time beyond
the fish. It ate the fly going away, sucking it well back into its
gill rakers, and setting the hook was a mere formality. Shaking
its head in stunned surprise, the cobe actually tried to hide under
the manta, which took offence and departed the scene with a massive
boil.At only a little over four kilos, that black kingie was no monster,
but a very satisfying catch all the same. I'd finally cast off my
cobia-on-fly curse.Cobia have long been my nemesis fish. For years, all 1 wanted to
do was catch one - on any sort of tackle. When I finally managed
that feat (and it took an inordinate amount of time to do so), next
goal became a decent cobia on fly. 1 say 'decent' because I had
actually already caught one cobia on fly, but at well under a kilo,
it was so small as to be inconsequential.)Id come close so often it was a standing joke, and even my son,
Tom, had taken to referring to me as 'No Cobia' Starling. People
caught these enigmatic chocolate-striped fish on fly all around
me, but I remained a cobia-free zone. Now, with one under my belt
-albeit a modest specimen - 1 felt a weight lifted from my shoulders.
Something told me 1 wouldn't have to wait 25 years for the next
one, although I could scarcely have guessed that it was actually
only hours away! That afternoon, we played the last card in our fish finding pack;
anchored on a patch of rubble reef in about ten metres of water.a
kilometre from shore and began laying down a sparse berley trail
of chopped fish offcuts and bait scraps, then dredging big flashy
profile flies through this trail at the end of a fast sinking shooting
head. Both Mike and I 'would rather catch fish on fly almost any
other way than by 'blind flogging' in a berley trail, but the fact
is we'd also rather catch fish than not catch them. In the end,
you do what you've got to do.The first arrivals in the trail were a trio of very twitchy looking
whaler sharks. They were polished copper with pointy snouts, and
most people would happily call them bronze whalers, but they weren't.
I'm not sure exactly which branch of the extensive whaler family
they actually belong to, but they are sometimes called jumping whalers
or spinner sharks, and with good reason - as we were to later discover.
For a few minutes, it looked like we might actually be able to
sucker one of these two metre bruisers into eating a fly, we and
it says something about our state of mind and willingness to try
anything that we actually gave it a go! Then I spotted a darker
shape zapping through the trail, and lost interest in the Noahs.
Next cast, my Felty Flashy Profile was nailed solidly just out
of sight and I quickly found myself well into the braided running
line on a powerful opponent that appeared happy to slug deep and
take me around the boat several times, necessitating a tricky passing
of the loaded rod under the anchor rope with each circumnavigation.The sharks were still very much in evidence, and 1 fully expected
them to make short work of my hooked fish, which felt like a decent
trevally. Greg Bethune - who'd come along with us to shoot some
video and cut berley - had other ideas. He grabbed a light baitcaster
outfit, tied on a hook, impaled a lump of fish flesh on it and casually
fed the lot to the largest shark in the pack. I will never forget
what happened next. Nor, 1 suspect, will Felty!At that point I was sitting on the poling' platform above the outboard,
pulling as hard as I dared on my hooked fish, which was directly
astern and deep in the water, so I had a ringside seat and a great
view of proceedings. I watched the bitey eat the bait a rod length
from the boat and swim casually away as Greg free-spooled line.
Then he engaged the gears, struck... and all hell broke loose!.The shark immediately accelerated into a blistering surface run,
curving sharply to come straight back at the bow of our skiff, where
Felty was sitting. I can still remember watching Mike's eyes widen
and widen until all I could see was white.The whaler became totally airborne at about Mach 1 less than ten
metres from the boat and as it cleared the water it began to spin
on its long axis, like a rifle bullet leaving a barrel. It came
inboard somewhere up near Felty (who was now attempting to fit himself
into a half metre square anchor well), travelled above our port
gunwale for the full length of the boat and slammed into the metal
uprights supporting the poling platform, some 30 centimetres under
the right cheek of my ample rear end and immediately behind my calf
muscle.The impact was so great that I was very nearly catapulted off the
platform and the whole boat shook like a gong, but those stainless
steel uprights no doubt saved my dangling right leg from being broken.
They also prevented the shark from ending its trajectory inside
the boat, which would clearly not have been a good thing.The 60 kilo bronzed projectile bounced back into the briny, showering
us all with spray, then almost instantly went ballistic again, jumping
and spinning away from us, barely missing my line. At this point,
the braid on Greg's baitcaster went off like a rifle shot and he
staggered backward s, while the shark, now free but still very pissed-off,
made one last spinning leap before vanishing in a welter of foam.All we could really do was laugh. We'd been centimetres and milliseconds
from potential disaster and possible serious injury, yet it now
seemed absolutely hilarious, and for the second time in less than
a minute, I nearly fell off the poling platform, this time in hysterics.The other two sharks remained, circling menacingly under our transom,
but Greg decided not to feed either of them a bait. Felty agreed.
Apparently it had been pretty cramped in the anchor well.
I was beginning to become suspicious about the identity of my adversary.
About the only two hooked critters sharks are reluctant to attack
are members of their own kind and..."Cobia! It's a big cobia!"
I shouted, as the fish finally circled into view after 35 very tough
minutes.
Jack
lives here.
Greg rarely makes a mistake with the gaff, and he pinned the fish
neatly under the jaw and swung it aboard in one smooth lift. At
11 kilos it was more than twice as big as my morning cobe, and to
say I was happy would be a gross understatement. No cobia on fly
for a quarter of a century, then two within four hours. What a difference
a day makes!UP THE CREEK
The other major option open to us with the flats, beaches and estuary
mouths shut down through dirty water were the upstream reaches of
the rivers. This is an area I've tended to overlook on more recent
Cape trips, and it was a joy to discover that the fishing available
was still consistently good.This avenue also offered me a chance to repay some of Felty's excellent
advice and direction on the offshore pelagic front. Mike's the flist
to admit that he's done very little snag bashing with the fly, and
it was a pleasure to be able to point him in the right direction,
and to watch his respect and admiration for barra, saratoga and
jacks increase with each encounter. It was also a joy to spend some
time up in the fresh, where clear waters ran between nepa palmlined
banks and exotic birds of a dozen varieties and colours flitted
between the branches as we skipped our flies under overhanging foliage.
It's gorgeous country.It is always disappointing when a long-awaited fishing trip falls
short of expectations, for whatever reason, and I'd be fibbing if
I didnt admit that my 2001 Cape odyssey was the quietest visit to
that region I've experienced in ten years. The conditions that stymied
our sight fishing hopes were exceptional. Greg Bethune has seen
them only three times in 11 years and more than 200 trips. But bad
luck happens, and it can happen anywhere, anytime.
Unless you are willing to accept that fact, meet adversity when
it is dealt to you and make the most of those options still remaining,
then such crappy hands will always beat you. The solution lies in
seizing the day and making maximum use of every possible opportunity.
It's as simple as that!
