Australia: Along the Fatal Shores with Peter Morse
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Hey guys –
Don’t miss this week’s podcast (on special preview here), Australia: Along the Fatal Shores with Peter Morse!
This show has a special extended running time of one hour, because Morsie’s experience was just too damn vast to fit into a half hour program.
Have a listen and post questions and comments here; Morsie’s promised to answer our questions (and post images of all the weird fish he describes).
Zach
Isn’t technology an amazing thing – Thanks guys 😕 ::)
I’ll post a string of images here. I need to get my new Guinea images scanned, they’re all on slides and to do that I need to be game enough to open the filing cabinet all my slides are kept in. That scares me.
Our tarpon – Megalops cyprinoides.
This a fairly large one caught at a Cape York river mouth.
Indo Pacific permit (We’re unsure whether these are Trachynotus blocchi or Trachynotus Anak or something else altogether) – they’re being examined.
Four of 5 permit landed froma single milling school.
Alan Philliskirk and Dan Blanton with a Weipa GT.
Gold spot trevelly – Western Australia – angler Craig Radford.
Golden trevally – our premier flats species. These get up and tail.
Cheers guys – by the way Mat took the pic of the bonefish I’m holding – was in New Caledonia with me and Charles Rangely-Wilson.
Here’s the tail end of a bait ball bust up near Weipa. That’s a longtail tuna in the water coming straight at us.
Some of the best tuna fishing is sight casting to single cruisers using poppers – Crease flies are excellent but this popper is made with round foam and is tied in the gurgler style – I call it a “gurgle pop”.
Tom McCullough of Cortland with a longtail tuna erroneously called by some a “northern bluefin”.
A baitball south of Weipa – 5 different species of bait and countless predators, tuna, several species of mackerel, queenfish, several species of trevally – this lasted 3 hours but the predators stayed deep most of the time – you can see a big flash in the lower right corner from something.
Rod van Beek with a queenfish pulled off that baitball.
A beach caught queenfish, seen cruising on the incoming tide in water barely deep enough to cover its back.
And if you want to read a bit more about our New Caledonia trip you can find some info here http://www.flyodyssey.co.uk/2007/09/trophy-bonefish-new-caledonia.html
Cheers
MatMorsie, In your podcast you mentioned something about using a fly the size of a opossum. Â I understood it as a joke, but how big (photos possibly) are the flies that are used on the 12-14 weight rods. Â And, are the big rods used solely to keep the bass from getting wrapped in underwater structure? Â Â
Way to go!! Morsie…
I should make a good pot of tea before I listen to the podcast!!
The photos are superb! I always want to visit  Cape York… now there is some awesome images!
Thanks for the sharing! 😀Rusty the New Guinea bass flies are big and often heavy, imagine a 4/0 black ‘n barred – I’ll find one somewhere and get a pic of it – but the rod is mostly necessary for the extraction. A lot more guys have gone to New Guinea since I was last there and caught these fish on fly, some using 10 weights for the smaller ones. Because I got malaria up there my wife has basically banned me from returning, but I will go back……. here’s a link for the lodge that is still currently operating and doing well by all reports.
http://www.baiasportfishing.com
These pics are from the wetland billabongs of the Northern Territory.
Early morning saratoga hookup from amongst the lily pads – angler is Toby Evans.
The beautiful and primitive saratoga.
We fish for the saratoga from first light to mid morning then when the water warms through the day the barras become active – Â barramundi are always the main game.
They have big mouths and feed by implosion most of the time.
Marabou style whistlers with plenty of movement in a wide range of sizes and weights from size 2- 2/0 are our best pattern.
These things like barramundi as well – this croc is a round 14 feet long – its the one I mentioned in the podcast.
This croc was chomping on an 85cm barra -that’s out around 17-18lbs.
Little tarpon are extremely prolific.
Zach, That was a big specimen but was OK. We had a particularly belligerent one follow us around the year before. This is a pic of it coming across the billabong at us.
Solid podcast Morsie! Arguably the best one yet!
I love the photography as well! The bait ball photo is the bomb!
Fantastic Podcast. Great hearing your voice, mate.
Zach you should think about having Bob Wyatt on. Great work.
RichFinished this great podcast last night! It’s awesome!
Morsie, I was wondering the tippet size you used for the bass…20lb? How about the trevally?
Have you ever break your flyline?Just about the only fish species i’d go way over the “limits” with as far as tippet is concerned are the New Guinea bass and then its 40-60lbs. Fly line strength was an issue for the guys. Leviathans take care of that these days.
These are fish I didn’t mention, don’t know why, they’re one my favourites. We call them Spanish mackerel, not at all like your “spanish”, more like your kings but these grow to 100lbs and are great eating. Many teeth and are close relative of the wahoo. This fish was caught by Rod van Beek in Weipa.
Morsie
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