Living on the skinny side of the Capricorn parallel is without doubt a swoffer’s dream.  The wide coastal flood-plains, big tidal rivers and natural marine harbours of Australia’s “Top End” provide endless variety and opportunity for proponents of the long wand, though in truth we are chasing barramundi up here more often than not.  Nevertheless, "a change is as good as a holiday" they say, and for a total change of pace I find myself looking forward to our occasional trips “down south” or across the Tasman during high summer armed with twiggy tackle for chasing trout on the dry fly.

This year was a little different however.  While visiting our eldest daughter in New South Wales over the Christmas break, I did indeed raise a few modest rainbows in the Duckmaloi and Fish Rivers wide of Lithgow with the new 5-weight, and managed to extract a nice hen brown of 47cm from Lake Lyall, but it was a text-message from my Sydney-sider mate the day before Christmas Eve that had me poking through the fly-box looking for something big and ugly.  Karl had negotiated a few hours spare in the late afternoon, and a nearby tributary of the Hawkesbury was apparently in need of some attention!  I had never bagged a bass with the flyrod before, so my participation was quickly confirmed!

By 4 pm I was happily splatting a size 10 NZ-pattern deer-hair cicada around the numerous snags in the middle reaches of the Cattai.  The big surface fly was a 'no-brainer' as we were almost deafened by the incessant waves of chirping emanating from the riparian forest enshrouding the stream.  At times the 6-weight seemed a bit heavy for probing the narrow alleys and confined pockets around the many sunken logs, but when the inevitable happened, it was barely heavy enough!  My first ever bass on fly was a modest specimen of around 25cm, which surprised me a little as the savage surface 'boof' was similar to a barra twice the size, and the first 20 or 30 seconds so close to the timber was heart-stopping stuff!

Extensive rafts of fallen blossom were drifting up and down the creek with the wind to test casting skills, and a population of pesky freshwater herring that could be mistaken for piranha would attack with fury whenever the fly was retrieved through open water.  Never a dull moment!  After missing several aggressive strikes from smaller bass around the snags, I finished the day with a slightly better specimen of around 30cm that gave a good account of itself on the 6lb tippet.  We were back at the mate’s place in suburbia, cold beer in hand, well before dark.  Top stuff!  Little did I realize that the seeds had been sown…

Travelling north to Brisbane after Boxing Day gave us the chance to camp on a mid-northern NSW beach for the night, however a powerful high-pressure cell was driving very strong winds onto the coast so we decided to head inland instead to get away from the weather.  Scanning the map for a likely riverbank refuge, I was confronted with a name etched in my mind from childhood, thanks to the writings of McCristal, Bethune and others who fished these rivers with lures in the 1960s: the Bellinger!  Those early Outdoor magazine articles were liberally illustrated with pictures of monster bass!  …so with the expectation of laying out a few casts during the ‘evening rise’, up the valley we headed.

It quickly became apparent that a boat of some kind was crucial to success on the Bellinger.  Not surprisingly, canoes and ‘yaks’ were the vessels of choice amongst the locals, and one successful yak-angler was proud to show off a nice 45cm fish he had kept for the table.  I was content to wade however, and was rewarded with a few smaller specimens coaxed off the minor snags scattered along the gravel-bar at the crossing.  One aggressive little fellow would have been perfect for a home aquarium!

As the evening progressed, the ubiquitous freshwater herring became totally fanatical and it was impossible to twitch the big dry fly without it disappearing below the surface in a cauldron of clupeid carnivorism!  They were fun though, often leaping repeatedly after hookup.  I wondered what the IGFA flyrod record was for Potamalosa richmondia!

Early next morning the herring were again in plague proportions and I soon gave up on any real chance of a decent bass.  The up-side of this pestilence was realised when daughter Alinta wanted to have a go at fly fishing- “Show me how to work this thing, Dad.”  Not a bad way to learn: every successful cast was rewarded with multiple surface strikes and an occasional hook-up!

Of course her exploits were circulated amongst Facebook friends within the hour, along with appropriate witty commentary: she had caught her first “millimeterie”, and was now a proud member of the “millimeterie club”.  The techniques required to achieve the ‘dead drift’ for trout will be a lesson for another day!

While doing the rounds of the rellies in SE Queensland after New Year, we squeezed-in a weekend visit with the wife’s niece and family at their farm up the Brisbane Valley.  The property has extensive frontage on a delightful deep-water creek fed by the overflow from Cressbrook Dam above, and draining into Wivenhoe below.  Suddenly it dawned on me: both are 'put and take' stocked impoundments!  This could be another opportunity for bass!  Succumbing to temptation, I carefully sneaked the 6-weight smuggler into my overnight bag…

Extensive electrical storms announced our arrival and persisted into the early evening, so I determined to rise with the kookaburras next morning and strip-search the kids’ swimming hole before sun-up.  The grand-nephews beat me out of bed however, and with the 'boundless enthusiasm of youth' they accompanied me down to the creek with their squidgy-rigged spinning rod.  Excellent: they could keep the yellowbelly busy while I prospected the surface for prowling bass with the trusty cicada fly.

Several tell-tale swirls and an occasional chop under the mid-stream flotsam were cause for much optimism as the flyrod was hastily rigged and the first exploratory casts laid out towards the disturbance.  It was easy to become mesmerised by the action of the mini Dahlberg-style cicada in the dawn tranquillity: Splat! …pause… Twitch. …pause… bloop, bloop… KaPow!!  You would think that decades of barra fishing would steel the angler against the sudden implosion of a surface strike, but I hope never to lose that instant shot of adrenalin as a good fish smashes an artificial right on the surface!

The well-hooked bass made a frantic dash for the back end of a very nasty-looking snag, no doubt its daytime refuge, but luck was with me as I held the rod impossibly high and miraculously manoeuvred the combatant back out into open water.  A few more mad dashes for the safety of the timber were similarly thwarted and soon it was time for the fish to play its final card: burying in the bank-side weed-bed!  Again a high rod prevented deep penetration and after a few unsuccessful attempts to get its head down into the hydrilla the fish was slid across the top into the shallows for a thumb-lock on the bottom jaw.  Held aloft, the 42cm prize was admired equally by the captor and accompanying entourage!

Back home in Darwin I am once again thinking about the next fly-fishing odyssey, and can’t help considering wild bass water from South Queensland down along the NSW coast.  I could tie up a bunch of small Dahlbergs with weed-guards for the snags.  Even try tiny crease flies, or gurglers, or…

Well, there’s probably a pill for that these days, and I had better snap out of it in time for the Top End “run-off” that will be upon us soon enough.  I do realize that the obsession is probably not with bass per se, but rather the challenge of fly fishing for new species in exotic surroundings.  And if they will take a big dry fly off the surface with enthusiasm, I am well and truly hooked!