Steve, meanwhile, slipped the net under a 72cm
barra to complete a great team effort.Homeward bound
For our final night we needed to be in a
position to catch an in-going tide from
Lachlan Island back into Derby. The
appropriate tide was an early morning one on
departure day, so we made our way further
south, back through Hells Gates, to find asheltered mooring for our last night.We rafted
up for a shared tea, before spending the final
night on-board waiting for daylight.
After an uneasy night’s sleep due to the
rocking waves we were out of our bags early
and readying the boats for an immediate
departure. Within two hours we pulled in to
the ramp at Derby, looking forward to a
hamburger with chips but sad that our
incredible adventure was over.The fishing
All our fish were caught on lures, mostly
relatively small lures on light tackle. We didn’t
fish with bait at all. That’s not because it wasn’t
suitable – quite the opposite. There were ample
opportunities for bait fishing that would have
been fantastically productive on all manner of
fish. It’s just that it was much more convenient
to cast lures and, in doing so, we caught more
fish than we needed.
For the most part, we fished inshore waters.
The shoreline of the Buccaneer Archipelago is
littered with small inlets and bays, sheltered
passages between islands of various sizes, rocky
outcrops, inlets, beaches and creeks. These
features provided unlimited light tackle
lurecasting and trolling opportunities.
In terms of gear, we each took a spinning
outfit and a baitcasting outfit. As an example,
I took a one-piece, six-foot, heavy-medium
Daiwa TD-TR A baitcasting rod matched with a
Tierra 153H reel, and a three-piece 2.13m
Shimano T-Curve Revolution Travel 703
spinning rod with a Saragosa SW5000 reel.
These proved ideal for casting and trolling a
range of bibbed hard-bodied lures and soft
plastics. To be honest, though, probably 80 per
cent of our fish were caught on a single lure: the
Jackall Transam. These soft-bodied, sinking
vibration baits were extremely effective for both64 | fishingworld.com.au | March 2015
DESTINATIONS: THE KIMBERLEY, WA
ACT BOX
THE BUCCANEER ARCHIPEL AGO
THE Buccaneer Archipelago is a group of
about 800 islands off the WA coast near the
town of Derby in the Kimberley region. It
covers a massive area between King Sound
and Collier Bay near Yampi Sound. The
rocky coastlines are more than two billion
years old, but the islands themselves were
formed more recently as a result of rising
sea levels that flooded the shoreline. The
islands are in almost pristine condition
because of their isolation and the difficulty
of access. The Archipelago was named
af ter the English buccaneer William
Dampier, who charted the area in 1688.F
DerbyThe Buccaneer
ArchipelagoBroome