A few weeks of downtime while Jase's 300 was being repaired in Darwin turned into a full off-track Gulf country mission for All 4 Adventure's Jase and Mitch — pushing vehicles down an unmarked split off a major Gulf river, dragging in a side-by-side and a tinny, and walking out with a 70 cm barra, a brawling cod and a back-to-back jack hookup that Mitch is unlikely to forget.
The trip started as a scouting run rather than a destination shoot, with Jase floating the idea over the radio after spotting a feeder off the main river.
"It's a split off the main river, mate. If we could launch there. Can you imagine what's in that little river system?"
The plan that emerged was layered: drive in as far as the vehicles would go, set up base camp, then push the rest of the way with the side-by-side and the tinny.
Getting in was its own job. The track climbed straight off the river and into the salt-pan country that fringes much of the western Gulf, then narrowed into a series of feeder creek crossings that drain to salt on the run-out tide. One of those crossings — its banks marked by the unmistakable sticks and gouges of previously bogged vehicles — produced what is now a fixture of every All 4 Adventure episode: a careful walk before any wheels hit the mud.
"This here? This must look like wheel tracks, eh? See all the sticks? Yeah, I know what that's from. That's from getting bogged."
"Look at this, Mitch. Dog. Yeah, dingo. I'd say it's a decent-sized dingo. Clear as day there. He just popped across here."
The creek crossing went the right way. Vehicles and trailer came through clean. "Yeah, you made that look easy, mate," Jase said. "Unscathed."
The payoff came when the tinny finally hit water in the splinter system off the main river. Once the fish committed, they kept coming. Saltwater barramundi started feeding off mangrove edges, with a notable lift in cod numbers under overhanging snags. Several cod immediately tried to bury their captors into the mangrove roots.
"Lock up, hook him. He was trying to run for it, too," Jase said as Mitch fought a cod he had just hooked off the wood. "The cod like that, as soon as he knows he's hooked, he will nail you into those mangros."
The headline fish came after Mitch hooked into something noticeably heavier on the same edge.
"That looks like that bigger bar got earlier. You got to get him in the boat. Get him in the boat."
Mitch landed his fish — a barramundi he and Jase measured roughly at 70 cm and earmarked for the camp kitchen.
"Yes. He's in the boat. Yes, I got him. I couldn't say anything then. My heart was pounded. I didn't want to say anything."
"Fishing's really good when you can just double hook up fish like that, don't you think? Oh, 100 percent, mate."
The trip closed at the headland above camp, where Jase used the sunset to sell the country one more time to viewers thinking about their own remote adventures.
"This place is magical. Remote, middle of nowhere. If you own a four-wheel drive, mate, get yourself out there. Enjoy the things that we enjoy."