OK, so I am back from a great fishing trip to the Gulf of Carpentaria in the Northern Territory of Australia. A bit of a mixed bag - on the one hand it was the best barramundi fishing I have ever experienced, while on the other hand we had some dramas that threatened the whole trip from early on and still have not been completely resolved.
I thought those of you with a passion for fishing and building boats may like to hear what a 2,500 mile trip to a very remote area to fish, with a 22' modified Mangusta hull from this forum looks like.
THE PLAN!
1) I would drive my Land Rover Discovery 4 from my home in Townsville in Nth Queensland (blue dot on the right) with my 22' boat (f@#%ing Big Barra Boat) in tow and drive 560 miles to Mt Isa in the north-west of the State (yellow dot in the middle), pick up my son and a mate off a flight from Brisbane in the SE of Qld and continue the drive to what is known as the King Ash Fishing Club, a further 680 miles into the NT (green dot on the left) - for a week of barramundi fishing.
You can see the output from the GPS tracker on the boat, for the final part of the trip - too many data points to display it all!
We had a cabin booked at King Ash Bay (KAB) for the week but part of the plan was to run down river, out into the Gulf and then east to the Robinson River, which heard had good barra fishing. As that is a 66 nm run from the KAB boat ramp, the plan was to overnight on the boat in the Robbo R and then fish our way back to KAB the next day.
In order to provide some shelter on the boat, as November can be the start of the 'wet' season in northern Australia, and something to attach our croc protection mesh barrier to, I added some easily removable infrastructure to the boat to support a tarpaulin shelter (see pic below). I suspect that Jacques may be horrified with what I have done to his beautiful design, but its OK - it is sitting in rod holders and lifts right off!
The 560 mile drive to Mt Isa was an easy and uneventful 10 hrs - 2015 Land Rover Discovery (Disco) tows the boat effortlessly.
I over-nighted in a motel and was due to pick my fishing buddy up at the airport next morning. We were down to just two of us as my son had to cancel due to work issues. Imagine my surprise when next morning when the Disco would not come out of park!
What a horror! It seemed like the fishing trip was to be cancelled. Mt Isa is a small, remote mining town and it soon became apparent that the road-side assistance contractor knew nothing about Discos, so it was soon on a truck back to Townsville and we were stuck in Mt Isa with a 22' boat and no vehicle. Fortunately we managed to rent a mine spec'd Landcruiser pickup that was equipped to tow the boat - so the trip was back on. It was lucky that my son had pulled out as the pickup only had two seats!
We had planned to drive straight through from Isa to KAB, but as we were now about 6 hrs behind schedule, we camped on the side of the road about half-way along and continued to KAB early the next morning.