Karratha

DAMPIER/KARRATHA

Troy

Honey What a month of weather it has been since the last Karratha report. If we go back to the wet season, which due to no cyclones or tropical lows, the Karratha region has only experienced a couple of mild showers. Move forward all the way to mid-May through to mid-June and there has been three out-of-season weather cells move through, with each getting stronger.

At the start of May, Karratha was recording 180 on the soil moisture meter, with a range of 0 to 200, 200 being in drought. It was looking like a very dry year for the region but move forward four weeks and the highway in and out of Karratha was closed due to flooding, the creeks and river systems are all at full flow and there will be plenty of movement from species like mangrove jack, bream, spangled perch, barramundi, red claw, and mud crabs. It’s going to be an exciting dry season.

July is here and we still have quite a few blue swimmer crabs being caught in bays and harbour and plenty of reports of bag limit catches of prawns coming from Nickol Bay. This will end quick with the trawlers working the grounds so make the most of the first couple of weeks of July. Fishing from late afternoon into the night, caught out.

Demersals are running hot this dry season but before you head out wide, I strongly recommend spending a day with little wind and preferably neap tides in any of the bays around the islands that are full of reef, bommies or seagrass. Squid catches have been plentiful throughout June and that will continue into July as the water remains cool. I find the high tide change is best where the water clears up and gives you more ground to fish with the lesser risk of a coral trout, saddletail seaperch and chinaman fish. Venturing out further into the 60mtr to 80mtr mark, the goldband snapper are schooling in large numbers. They can be tricky to find but once you get on to a patch the hook-ups on bait or fresh squid are thick and fast. Bluebone are being caught in close over the rocky outcrops around the island and all along the Dampier, Cleaverville and Point Samson coastlines. Use your leftover cooked blue swimmer crab shells, broken up into small pieces as burley feed before coming back to the surface to rest.

The sports anglers are having to work a bit harder this year for the sailfish as weather conditions have been challenging at times and the large numbers of garfish are keeping them well fed. Although, the latter has also been attracting the sailfish in close to the islands making it easier to locate and raise them. The billfish comps from Exmouth in the Gascoyne to Broome in the Kimberley will all be holding their annual

The king of the table fish is arguably the coral trout, which are in abundance in Karratha. The author consistently works the 15-20m mark with Ocktajigs and soft plastics to lure out the iconic species from their coral bommies.

Karratha is in the peak of demersal season and the reds are not only in good numbers but also great size, as Scott Medling proves up on a trip out past the islands last month.

use a bright prawn light to attract them to you boat and simply use a prawn dab net to scoop them up as the tide brings them past your boat. I find anchoring up on the larger tides works better than motoring, but both produce good results. Individual bag limit is 9L per person and it is advisable to read the WA Fisheries rules for using nets as there are 4 types of nets with restrictions and it is easy to get prop strike on the bommies. Flicking or trolling a couple of jigs in the water for a few minutes is all it takes to find the squid and before you know it you will have a bucket load of the finest Pilbara demersal bait or the best accompaniment to go with your freshly battered fish fillets.

The 20-50m zones are producing exceptional catches right now of red, blueline and spangled emperor, rankin cod,

Nickol Bay in Karratha has had a fantastic blue swimmer crab season, as have the other local bays, with the season winding up by the end of July.

to bring the bluebone into the back of the boat or the rocks you are fishing off.

If you do head out wide in the deeper waters chasing the goldband, troll your lures between drifts or changing spots as there have been a few yellowfin tuna being landed. This is also where you will more commonly find the marlin off Dampier, especially above the deeper trenches or ledges where they dive on to billfish comps over the next couple months, and it will be great to see how they all go. I will bring you the results and some photos from the Dampier comp in the August issue.

The recent rains will have flushed a few mud crabs out of the mangroves and now we have had a couple of spring tide flushes through the creeks it will be time to start working the systems for mud crabs with drop nets on the Blueline emperor are a superb fish in terms of both fight and table fare. They are plentiful in Karratha with the larger sizes over 500mm preferring depths around 20m. The author uses small jigs and soft plastics to target blueline with regular success.

spring high tides or walking the mangroves and shallows on the spring lows. For me though I will be heading up the inland rivers now all the tracks have dried out and spending time catching red claw and enjoying the cooler weather with campfire cockups. The rains caused all the rivers to run hard and the water to stretch out right across the plains so we will start to see the red claw turning up in many areas we haven’t seen them before. As the red claw are an introduced pest that cannot be let go back into the water, are now in abundance in the Pilbara and are truly a delicacy on the plate, what better way to enjoy some stunning Pilbara camping than cook up a freshly caught batch of red claw in the camp oven or over the open coals.