queensland 4 Days in Karumba

[silver_rex]

After nearly 3 hours on the plane drinking what seemed to be 1000 rum and cokes. I finally arrived in the middle of woop woop, Mt Isa on the Thursday evening. Met up with my mates from school and off to the Irish for more drinks and pool. The next morning after a maccas breakfast and super strong coffee, we had our destination in sights. KARUMBA situated approx 6 hours north of Mt Isa in the Gulf of Carpentaria. The targets big black jewfish and King Thredfin salmon (barra season closed on the gulf) plus usual suspects the blue salmon and grunter bream.

in the middle of no where!

About an hour out from Normanton I had a hair raising moment when the trailer hitch come off at 120kmph. Thanks f&*k the safety chain works!! Would of been a great start to the trip writing off the boat before we got there ïŒ After our 6 hour drive through the Savannah, we finally arrived! Quick check in to our cabin the next 3 nights, rods organised boat loaded and we were off to fish for a hours before dark. Few casts of the netted got us enough liveys for a dusk fish to chase some jewies.

All the traps were set and less than 10min my mates bait runner goes nuts, solid hook up and short fight later our first was boated. Good start to the evening, but it ended there. We lost our live bait supply to a massive school of catfish ïŒ We called it a night and headed to the sunset tavern for a feed and some beers, pool.

first jewie of the trip

Early the next morning we had high anticipations of an epic day of fishing, except the weather did play the game! Blowing 30+ knots!! We decided to wait it out for a bit, which was a good move by 9am it was totally glassed out. We quickly steamed up river to set the traps then it was time to head offshore to see what was biting. On the way way out we did a troll for approx 30km till we came across on a good show on the sounder near one of the many offshore sand banks. We anchored up and dropped down fresh trawlers prawns and soft plastics. The fishing was insane to say the least! Blue Salmon & Grunter one after the other.

Just on sunset we headed back in checked the pots, and it was fresh Blue Salmon, Mud Crabs and a bottle or Wirra Wirra Sav Blanc for dinner. Not a bad second night to the trip!

The next morning was glassed out again. This time we headed down river to chase some threadfin salmon in the 1000s of creeks off the Norman River. Thanks to Rob i was heavily armed with some quality Damiki lures. We drifted up a good creek about 20km from the ramp. This place just screams barra! The creeks are insane!!

After what felt like 10000000 casts, i snuck a Damiki longbill into the timber. One crank and BOOF im on! Little tug of war and I boated my first Barra, stoked! Unfortunatly this was the only fish boated by me for the day. I had no idea what expect fishing hard up against timber in creeks and the fish won cleaning me out of at least 15 lures for the day lol. We called it a day around 4pm, checked the pots and crab for dinner, this was going to be a tough trip!

Another early start the next day to perfect conditions again. We flogged the creeks but with hits, was dead low and not much water covering the structure surrounding. So we decided to try later in the afternoon on the incoming tide. With the hot weather really kicking in we drifted along with livies and myself throwing plastics on very nice show on the sounder. Going from 2m to 16m water depth in less than 30m with bait everywhere. Livies down and plactics bouncing along the drop offs. We got onto a hot jewie bite, nothing of real size biggest going around the 70cm mark but great fun on light gear!

7†GULP jerkshads did the trick on the jewies.

our typical finish on the water everyday.

Our last day we did a lazy troll along the Norman River for Threadfin to kill a few hours before our drive back to Mt Isa. The bird life is amazing!

We also did a stop over at the Barramundi Discovery Centre in Karumba. They breed Barra for impoundment dams and plus they release hundreds of 1000s of fingerlings back into the wild so its great to see they looking at th future. I got these pics of me feeding the Barra. This 4 frame shot on my Canon EOS 500D, amazing at the speed of them!

pillie GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONE!!!

This is part 1 of 3 of my adventures up North. Next 4 days at Lake Moondarra for the fishing classic then over to Cooktown to chase Queenies and GTs on poppers!

Thanks for reading

Cheers

Eddie

[rumrunner]

geez your a lucky bugger!

great report and pics mate! well done!

cheers Ian

[jeff f]

brilliant place to visit eddie great pics

look forward to the other two reports

[Cowfish13]

Epic report mate! Love the photo's of the birds

[Whiskers]

Just beautiful country up there! Awesome report and fantastic pics

[silver_rex]

jeff f: Karumba is a brilliant place! So isolated and is a great escape from reality. Fished Moondarra today and have some good pics, but have to wait till the comp finishes

Cowfish13: thats only some bird pics. I filled an 8gig card with photos in 4 days lol

Whiskers: Amazing country up here! Too many places to explore in a boat, didnt know where to start

rumrunner: Thanks mate, i do consider myself lucky to see such a great place! Definatlty going back after wet season for the barra run

[Angus]

Great report!

Thanks for sharing.

Angus

[Do$tylz]

wow... thats an awesome report... how the hell did I miss this one??

But where is the rest of the report??

[rastus]

Awsome post thanks for sharing.