All 4 Adventure's Jase and Mitch turned a week of downtime — Jase's 300 was sidelined for repairs in Darwin — into a full off-track Gulf country reconnaissance, picking out an unmarked splinter off a major Gulf river, dragging in a side-by-side and a tinny, and walking back out with a 70 cm barra, a brawling cod and a mangrove jack double hookup.
The whole mission was triggered by something Jase had clocked from the main road and then sold to Mitch over the radio.
"It's a split off the main river, mate. If we could launch there. Can you imagine what's in that little river system?"
What they laid out from there was the kind of layered plan that defines the show: drive in as far as the vehicles can manage, set up base camp, then push the rest of the way with the side-by-side and the tinny.
The entry track was textbook western Gulf country. Salt-bush flats opened into a salt pan. Buffalo watched the convoy roll past. A series of feeder creeks crossed the track, each running to salt on the run-out, each marked by the gouges of vehicles that had got it wrong on previous attempts.
"This here? This must look like wheel tracks, eh? See all the sticks?" Jase said at one crossing. "Yeah, that's from getting bogged."
A Top End cameo from a sizeable dingo turned up halfway through.
"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 tinny went into water at the splinter river around lunch. From the first cast onwards the bite was steady. Saltwater barra worked the mangrove edges, the cod numbers underneath were strong enough that the pair quickly moved to heavier sticks, and several cod tried to bury them into structure the moment they were hooked.
"Lock up, hook him. He was trying to run for it, too," Jase said as Mitch fought a cod off the wood. "The cod like that, as soon as he knows he's hooked, he will nail you into those mangros."
The headline barra came shortly after, hooked off the same edge that Jase had been working.
"That looks like that bigger bar got earlier. You got to get him in the boat."
The landing was a moment of relief.
"Yes. He's in the boat. Yes, I got him," Mitch said. "I couldn't say anything then. My heart was pounded. I didn't want to say anything."
Mitch and Jase measured the fish at 70 cm and earmarked it for the camp kitchen.
A double hookup followed shortly after — a small trevally for Jase and a mangrove jack for Mitch — pulled off the same edge as the barra.
"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 with the All 4 Adventure house move: a headland above camp at golden hour and a one-line pitch for remote four-wheel-drive travel.
"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."