Facing West

What does a westerly aspect have to do with anything, especially in an area as vast as the tropics? Here’s a clue: get out your map of northern Australia and look at some of the most iconic locations for fly fishing. Almost all of them will have west-facing flats with creek and river indentations.

Nothing makes fly fishing more enjoyable than a gentle breeze blowing across your shoulders to ruffle the surface and help lay out long, rolling casts in search of tropical speedsters. The quite settled patterns of weather throughout the dry season (April – October) bring predominantly southerly and easterly winds, making the sheltered west-facing flats and stretches of coastline easiest to fish.

This is certainly not a hard and fast rule. Fishing east-facing locations is pleasurable when the weather allows things to clear up, but even on the east coast, it tends to be the inside sand bars or the west-facing beaches inside the bays which lend themselves to fly fishing.

When fishing with a westerly outlook, having the sun either behind or above makes life easier. It becomes harder to spot fish and to read the water when the sun is lower on the horizon, however, more often than not the flats fishing will be best from early morning up until lunchtime. Quite often an afternoon sea breeze or patchy cloud can spoil an afternoon of sight fishing, so mornings are the best. And where do you want to be looking in the mornings? West!

A Google Earth picture of the north Australia coastline will tickle the desires of anyone who’s seen those magic magazine photos: isolated sand cays fringed with reef, vast stretches of white sand bordered by red cliffs, and river mouths teeming with fish. Yet so little has been truly explored by fly fishers.

We become locked onto targets, like an obsessive ornithologist chasing that last bird through the scrub. Perceptions are formed, techniques are refined and lifetimes devoted to the pursuit of dream fish. Perhaps we can all be accused of narrowing our scope a little too much, and it is only natural with the daunting number of species on offer in such a wonderland of options. But an alternative is to start with place rather than species.

Let’s begin with a few magic set-ups with a comparatively low tidal range, as much to digress about the fish that might be there as to consider the fish that are definitely there. Many of these spots require negotiation with traditional owners, permits and a true sense of adventure, including due regard for crocodiles.

East Coast Cape York to the Tip

Check out the myriad of coral reefs and sand cays in Princess Charlotte Bay. A low flight over these huge shallow reef systems reveals an amazing plethora of life. Dugong, turtles and sharks cruise leisurely with the high tide as it climbs the reef, pouring across the flats into shallow lagoons many miles in circumference. Hungry packs of queenfish and trevally with mackerel and tuna work the points, and permit and golden trevally drift across the shallows. Bonefish — always bonefish — in the distance. Flies are not something to become attached to in these parts. They usually end up adorning whichever rock, reef, crevice or root is nearest to the hook-up!

Eastern Torres Strait Islands

Without a doubt one of the most spectacular island groups within Australian waters. Anywhere east of the central islands usually has clear water throughout the tidal range. Sea breeze can be a real deterrent to fly fishing, making the need for a westerly aspect even greater. Imagine transparent waters where truly wild fish slide past sand bars, through gutters, slicing through schools of sardines in frenzied attacks. Imagine pairs of really large permit patrolling the shallow reef edges awaiting the incoming tide alongside tailing packs of 30 kg hump-headed parrot fish.

Eastern side of Gulf of Carpentaria

A true species haven, this stretch of coast is punctuated with pristine creeks and rivers spilling out onto beautiful green-tinged west-facing flats. From the tip of Cape York down to Karumba are about 500 km of beach and sand flats, alive with fleeting mullet, flicking shrimps, scampering crabs and every predator that eats them. The sun peeks over the red cliffs behind your shoulders, lighting up the picture. Through your polaroids, smudges in the sandy gutter turn into blue and threadfin salmon, barramundi, tarpon, giant herring, queenfish, permit and golden trevally.

North-West Gulf of Carpentaria —

East Arnhem Land

Little-walked beaches with the odd stretch of white sand and endless flats. Watch milkfish up to a metre and a half long swarm over shallow reefs, monster barracuda in just a few feet of water and swarms of mangrove jacks departing shallow mangroves to cross the flats.

From Groote Eylandt all the way round to the Wessel Islands, a hundred lifetimes of fly fishing opportunities lie under-appreciated and seldom visited. I was lucky enough to spend some guiding days-off aboard the MV Phoenix One, searching for fly fishing prospects within the tiny bays, flats and silica-white beaches of this area. It was incredibly fortunate to have such great small platforms to fish from in such a remote location.

With time and distance on your hands, it’s possible to sneak into west facing Wessel Island bays where shuffling bait near the sandy shore of a tiny alcove becomes a fly fisher’s dream. The odd large queenfish dashes in close, metre-plus giant herring terrorise baitfish against the shore, and garfish skip hurriedly across the surface, laid slick calm by the gentlest offshore breeze. Golden trevally hang just over the drop-off and above them a huge school of nervous milkfish does laps of the sloping sand- grit beach.

Tourism and Events Queensland

East of Croker Island to Cape Don

Shallow coastal bays and blue-green current lines running along clear beaches make this area attractive for fly fishing. The remote offshore islands to the east of Croker Island (Oxley, New Year and others) are just crying out for attention.

They are not easy to reach, and most anglers who make it this far out in power boats are just keen to fill the Esky with a few trout, mackerel and other reef fish. But spend a week out there in a calm November swelter, and you’ll find an array of reef and pelagic fish swimming very close to shore in breathtakingly clear water. It’s a place where a mackerel, trevally, coral trout, dart, permit or bonefish might grab that next fly flung at a moving grey ghost.

Tiwi Group round to Daly River

Barra on the beach, swimming in schools and chasing a feed. Shallow gutters running from north-east to south-west with hordes of queenfish, trevally, blue salmon and barramundi willing to give chase to a fly. Imagine a calm, shallow depression just a few feet deeper than the surrounding flat. Neap tides see fish school in these depressions. As the tide makes, black jew, grunter, salmon, barra, fingermark and all manner of others might sneak in. Anchoring up on the flat just upwind of the depression and rolling out long casts with a flashy Deceiver fished on an intermediate line… pluck, pluck, stretch!

Far North Kimberley Coast

With a tighter tidal range, the far northern Kimberley coast offers a bevy of coastal and island set-ups providing incredible and unspoilt fly fishing opportunities. Hordes of charter operators traverse the Kimberley coast. But in truth, absolutely nobody is fishing the flats and certainly not with fly gear. Even at the mouth of the Drysdale River, anglers just doggedly fish for queenfish and barra, ignoring the acres of huge slurping milkfish on the outside gutter but within casting range! This is a very shallow piece of coastline and invariably a gutter runs along much of the shoreline, with others running in parallel as you head offshore. Options out around Cassini Island and Long Reef remain relatively unexplored, providing stunning remoteness and a lengthy species list.

The next twenty years will bring much more attention to some of these remote west-facing flats in the tropics. Just reaching some of these places can be a lifetime’s work for some. But if you spend your life working in such places, opportunities become far more plentiful. The real challenge is to put aside the generic tropical tackle and break out the 4-piece 8-weight with a handful of bush-tied flies, ready to capitalise on some relatively obscure fly fishing opponent.

Australia is blessed with a mass of first class options in the far north, with a relatively small yet dedicated bunch of guides and fanatics. It will be interesting to watch advances in equipment and tactics in the years to come… Always searching west for that next big thing.

www.wildrivercompany.com.au

www.phoenixone.com.au