Alex's Column 11 December 2025
- NAFA
- Dec 12
- 4 min read
Last week I wrote about my Italian friends, Marco and Fero, who had been visiting me as part of their international fishing travels.
As it turned out, they hightailed it out of here to Bali earlier than planned as they saw no point in hanging around for Cyclone Fina… and who could blame them?
However, one trip that did go ahead as planned was a day offshore from Dundee with Barra or Blue Fishing Charters.
The trip took place on the Wednesday while Fina was hovering threateningly in the Arafura Sea.
Barra or Blue is owned by Lincoln Kirby who has a pretty slick operation at Dundee.
I had a gander through his place and it was a hell of a surprise: lots of varied accommodation from spacious rooms to cabins – all with air-con – two kitchens, lounge and verandah areas, and a big open-air shed with bar facilities and “drinking” furniture.
All up, there’s accommodation for 18 people and that can be just for bed-and-breakfast bookings as well as fishing groups, plus meals can be catered for as required.
There’s a big boat shed too, which he needs for his five sportfishing boats.
Our trip offshore was aboard his spectacular 8m Contender which is a real sea cruncher.
More importantly from my perspective, our skipper/guide for the day was Kurt Williamson who may well be the most-experienced and talented bluewater angler in the Top End.
The number of billfishing tournaments he was won across WA and the NT is testimony to that.
Surprisingly, the seas were kind that day as Cyclone Fina was still nearly 400km away from Dundee.
Just as we were departing, I asked Kurt what his plans were for the day.
“I don’t have any,” he said. “You know how many options there are fishing off Dundee Alex, so we’ll just head out and see what we find.
I did know that he had been fishing the big Dundee offshore artificial reef a bit, and that it was crawling with big black jew.
I also knew that mostly his clients couldn’t extract them from the concrete pylons that they lived amongst.
“I think they must be covered with barnacles because, if you don’t muscle a hooked jew up and away from them immediately, you just get cut off,” Kurt told me.
“Plus there’s the shark problem as well – the grey coats just love eating jewfish,” he joked.
First up, we headed wide of Point Blaze, out around Sail City, and there were birds hovering over tuna and mackerel bust-ups.
Kurt pulled up on some shallow reef he knew and the lads had instant hook-ups on their jigs.
Mainly the fish were small macks; the bigger ones bit through the mono leaders.
As is so often the case when jigging, switching to wire traces also switched the fish off.
Our catch included a couple of red emperor which are always welcome, and the sight of feeding mackerel flying high through the air meant some fast trolling big deep-divers and skipping surface lures was a no brainer.
Strangely nothing jumped on to these offerings; not that we trolled for very long as Kurt was keen to get to the artificial reef in time for the low tide.
That was a bit of a run, but well worth it: the boys hooked jew straight away, and got smashed straight away too.
A couple of small jew came aboard but the big ones knew the game and my Italian friends were still learning it.
They were certainly equipped with the right gear: Shimano Stella 20,000s, 60kg braid and rods to match.
Kurt summed up what was going on when he said: “I think that’s seven nil to the jewfish.”
Marco, a great angler, was beside himself with anguish; it’s a passion for him to collect new species and not being able to land a big jew was giving him apoplexy.
“I want one of these fish,” he said.
As long as they kept biting, I felt Marco would nail one; however, Fero – lovely bloke that he is – is nowhere near the angler that Marco is and I didn’t give him a chance.
Marco was unlucky once when he had a big jew close to the surface, only to have a mackerel bite his swivel and cut the braid.
The big tide was starting to move and there hadn’t been a bite for at least 20 minutes.
That’s when Marco’s luck changed: suddenly, he was hooked up, the rod bent to the max on a locked drag.
He short pumped like a man on a mission and the fish came up and away from the concrete guillotines.
As it neared the surface, under Kurt’s instruction, he wound the drag back a bit, and soon enough a big, shiny jew popped to the surface.
Kurt made no mistake with his fish grip and hauled the silver beauty aboard.
That’s when the Italian emotion came out big time and the air was getting bruised by Marco’s pumping fist.
We high-fived and I got on with capturing the photo evidence.
There was not much change out of 120cm – a bloody good jew for sure.
It had been a successful day and, for Marco at least, one not to be forgotten.
