Fishing at Mambi Island

Our third week on the road and we are finally doing what we came here for… fishing! We set up our small tent under a 3×4 metre tarp to stay for a week.

After lunch we did the big task of unpacking the boat and getting it into the water. Without live bait we used lures to troll down the shady side of the two kilometre stretch of the Ord River. As we trolled I counted 34 crocodiles, some are saltwater and some are freshwater ones. There are several huge salties, some about one metre across their chest. We got a strike in one place so we decided to anchor there, and within five minutes we had a barra for dinner! Then we had the problem of not having any cutting boards large enough!

So the next day we went back to the same spot and within 20 minutes we had caught two barras…one each. We were so ecstatic. When we arrived back at the boat ramp our good spirits were soon deflated. Two couples who had been there fishing there for weeks, queried us: Did we have a fishing licence? Yes! Did we each have a licence? No. Did we have a cast net licence? Yes! Did we know barra had to be min 550 and max 800? Yes! Did we know the limit was one fish per angler? Yes! And the definition of an angler is how many licences you have, so apparently we had caught too many. So from then on we caught one fish a day only, which meant Ron had to release a legal barra on the fourth day – what a sad time!

As we were fishing for food, to be catching fish but then having to let them go was hard. There is also a rule that you can only have two barra in your fridge, so we did give barra fillets to friendly people who had been luring for barra for a week without success. Even so, on the last day as we cast our net for live bait and Ron caught a 610 barra in the cast net! Amazing! But we had to release it as we already had two barra in the fridge. Each day we came in everybody in the area would come and see our catch, so I had to resort to taking pictures on my iPad to show them the ones we had to release.

We were the only ones using live bait, but we did have to use lures for a couple of days when we could not find live bait. Some days Ron took 1-2 hours to get 2-4 bait fish and two other days the first cast reaped about 40-50 bait fish, which was a bit scary wandering the shallow water so near to so many crocs! The good thing is I am learning to operate the boat, as it is impossible for Ron to drive and to stand up in the boat ready to cast. We had barra for dinner and breakfast for the 8 days we were there and there are 4 packs still in the fridge.

Not only did this area provide us with great fishing, it let us experience nature on a very personal level. The area we camped is called Mambi Island, below the Ord River dams. Since the dams have been built, which was back in the sixties, there is a constant flow in the channel so birds are abundant. Our tent was right under a Whistling Kite nest, and if you climbed up the bank you could watch the mother bird tear the food apart and feed it to the fledgling. I had hoped the fledgling would fly before we left, but no luck. There was a pair of brolgas in the area that would walk around the edge of the camp, never coming closer than 10 metres to humans. Their walk and colour is so graceful, but they have an ugly, raucous call! The most beautiful bird we saw, however, was the Rainbow bee-eater; there were dozens of these along the stretch we fished. They spent all day flitting across the top of the water catching insects. One night I was sitting under the fluoro light hanging under the tarp reading, when this Brown Goshawk came and flew around my head catching the moths around the light. I love camping and being close to nature!

On the morning of the fourth day we heard droving sounds. When we walked up to the top of the bank, there are about 1000 head of cattle with 5 drovers (mostly females) on horseback and one young guy on a quad bike (he rounded up the strays and looked like he loved his job!). They were new cattle and the drovers were showing them where the water was, so they herded them along the camping ground road. With the danger of skittish cattle going past camps, we were lucky they weren’t being herded past us. They could do some damage! Also, as every step raises dust, 1000 cattle with 4 feet created a lot of dust in the air.

One afternoon there was a fire about 50 km away. The smoke in the air gave a beautiful tinge of pink and purple to the sky that evening. Another late afternoon about 15 yearlings came down to the water to drink. All the dust they churned up just sat over the water and turned golden as the sun set. One day we were not catching anything so we fished till late at a new hole. The cool afternoon air meant that the perfume of the flowers in the nearby trees was so powerful. It was lovely. When we first came here it was unusually cool, about 15 degrees, whereas now it is about 35 degrees. Glad we came in the wintertime! At lunchtime we would take the boat into the cool shade of the huge pandanus and have a picnic lunch, simply enjoying the nature around us.

Unfortunately all good things must come to an end. After four days of being next to this caravan running his generator all day and till 9.30 at night, it was easier to make the decision to leave. He was having trouble with his batteries; using too many electrical appliances and not bothering to keep his solar cells in the sun, I think! Eventually we asked him to turn it off earlier, so the last night he turned it off at 8 pm.

That night we had a quiet, very pleasant sit next to a fire. Normally we only use fire to boil our shower water but we squandered timber for the sheer joy that night! This is our lifestyle for the next 8 months… can you think of anything better?

Image: mikebaird