DAIWA FISHING TIPS: DAIWA RELIABILITY IN THE KIMBERLEY BY MICAH ADAMS

I recently had the pleasure of spending two weeks on board a mothership- the Hyland C in the middle of the Kimberly filming for my upcoming season eight of adventure angler.

During the trip, we experienced an incredible diversity of action that culminated in the catching of both barramundi and sailfish in the same day! In fact, we had some impressive sailfishing around the remote Cassini island, west of the Mitchell river. Late afternoon tide changes combined pods of sailfish and bait balls to provide some epic fishing. Watching as many as a dozen sailfish cutting the smooth surface with their sails ablaze then coming straight into the spread and taking a skipping gar off the surface as you hold the bail open on a saltiga spin outfit is pretty cool. Double hook-ups on billfish from a tinnie never get old!

The barramundi were a little quiet by Kimberley standards but the quality of the fish were far from average. Ranging in size from 75-92cm these were quality primed silver barramundi. The biggest of these fish was actually taken on the last morning by cameraman having a day off as we’d caught so many fish, always the way!

A couple of species that are never quiet in the Kimberley are mangrove jack and golden snapper. These guys are literally everywhere and we had some amazing sight fishing in the mangroves for jacks and micro jigging for snapper on the shallow reefs.

One of the coolest but physically exhausting days was mid trip targeting big GTs for the day. Armed with my heaviest saltiga outfit and blooming a big popper all day long is a tough enough task. Doing battle with twenty five or more trevally is massive! We thought we had the fish in the can when I got one around 50lbs before lunch. Later that same day, I would be in the fight of my life against a monster gt that I would land and weigh at 80lb, my largest trevally to date!

One of the toughest things for me travelling to remote destinations like the Kimberley to produce my TV series is packing the right spread of tackle and more importantly, tackle that WILL stand up in a remote place.

Packing for sailfish and giant trevally is pretty simple because you just can’t go past the saltiga system. I packed the expedition 5500 and 8000 models on this trip and really love the saltiga air-portable rods to match. Having 30kg of drag on the big 8000 model was seriously the difference in landing my monster gt.

I’ve long been a fan of the mid priced tatula range of bait casters for my barra and creek work and the latest models are super smooth and reliable. On this trip I also matched these to the latest tatula rods as well and these were absolutely brilliant. The actions are great, the graphite really fast and the finish perfect.

I also took a few lighter spin rods in the travel series of black label and generation black matched to battler and sol 3000 spin reels.

All of my reels were loaded with Daiwa’s j braid and daiwa fluorocarbon leaders.

Like I’ve already alluded to, travelling to remote fishing locations with a film crew is an expensive business and tackle failure is really letting every one involved down. I’m wrapped to be able to pack Daiwa gear on all my trips!