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Fly Fishing

Chasing Golden Trevalley on the Magnetic Island flats.

Relaxing!

Enjoying one of the many beautiful beaches of Magnetic Island.

Sunday 29 June 2008

Lagoon Barramundi

Took a drive with the family South late today. Fished a small lagoon with soft plastics. Its a favorite lagoon of ours, and back at the end of the wet we were getting small 30cm Barra one after the other. Obviously in the cool water things have quietened down considerably. But I did manage to raise one small fish. At about 40cm they are growing nicely. Look forward to fishing here again next wet. Camera was in the car, so I didn't get a pic. I did, however, get a photo of a cow we chased along the road for about 10mins on the way home. Kids were cracking themselves laughing at this big ears jumping up and down. He just didn't seem to get the idea of stepping aside!


Saturday 28 June 2008

Barramundi on Soft Plastics

I have just spent the morning fishing one of the northern creeks with the NQ Fly Fishers. It was their Monthly fishing trip. It was actually only Bob, Harvey and myself that could go. I don't fish fly, so I took my little spin rod and some soft plastics.

We left Harveys place at about 8.30am and headed north in Bobs car. When we arrived there looked to still be a little too much water in the creek to walk the bank, so we drove down the front for a look along the beach. But there was too little water there, so back we went!

Second cast and Bob managed to raise the interest of a rather hefty Barramundi. (Estimated at 70cm) Next cast it took a better look, and when Bob dropped the fly back it hit! Unfortunatley the light tippet didn't hold and the fish was gone in a matter of seconds.

My first cast resulted in a snag. So busting off I was quickly trying to retie while listening to Bob trying to hook his Barra. My next cast with a new plastic on resulted in a small GT. Good fun and about all I was expecting to catch.

But a couple cast later and I was hooked onto something a lot better. It never came clear of the water, but close enough to soon learn it was a nice Barra. Fishing only a 1000 size real and 8lb braid was interesting to say the least. But the little fella was soon on the mud bank. 53cm. A tag in the back and a few pics and he was on his way again.

Things went pretty quiet from there. But I did manage another GT and 2 more small Barra (both less than 30cm). Oh, and a small cod for good measure. Bob got a glimses of some more barra, and hooked a little guy than took him straight under the tree. So it wasn't to be for either Fly fisherman.

Thursday 26 June 2008

A Break in the Weather?

Finally a break in the weather is on the horizon. At this stage both Buoyweather and Seabreeze have the wind dropping Tuesday afternoon and looking great for Wednesday. This coincides beautifully with the big Mackerel tides of the new moon. Also works in well for me with it being mid-week of the school holiday. I will probably try to get out to the wider shoals and chase some big Spanish Mackerel. Fingers crossed it holds!



Saturday 21 June 2008

West Point Mackerel

Fished today with Ward in his boat. It was my first run in the new boat, and I was very impressed. We launched from Pallerenda at about 6.30am and ran to a mark part way between the cape and West Point. Not much showing on the mark, we gave it a couple of drifts before heading to West Point.

On arrival we had trouble finding our mark. Wards GPS coordinate was a little off, and after doing circles for about 10mins we were almost ready to give up when we got a show. As has been for the last couple of trips there was heaps of bait. We drifted a couple of time and I quickly had a 60cm doggie on board. This was followed pretty quickly by a throw back. As the wind built the drift quicked so we decided to anchor. Second go and we were right over the clouds of bait. But no more mackerel to be seen. We played there until about 9.30am and headed back to the beach.

Its a shame the ramp at Pallerenda isn't more suitable. Its a quick trip to run to West Point for a mornings fish!

Friday 20 June 2008

The Kids had a ball

On Thursday Chris and Liam went out to our spot off Rattle Snake Island to find big swells and no bait fish.

However they persisted and started using bumper bars and slices targeting pelagic fish. It was looking pretty bad until they put a bit of pilchard down hooking up to a 52cm trevally and got onto a school landing between 20-30.

With the tide changed the Nannygai came on and they landed about 30 from 30cm-50cm, then a school of long spined snapper came on on and around 20 of them were landed around 40cm. So in all a cloudy dark morning turned into a very successful trip.


This shows that when your fishing methods appear not to be working, sometimes experimenting can make all the difference!

GPS Location - Liver Point

Ok, here is my first GPS mark that I am going to give away. I don't think this is a huge secret, but it does produce some nice fish. It holds Nannygai and small reef fish all the time, mackerel in winter and I have caught some nice Grunter in the area around the structure too.

I'm not sure what the structure itself is? On the old 2d sounder it looked just like a large rock, but the 3d side image is interesting. Looks maybe like the ribs from an old wooden boat?

Position is as follows (WGS84)
S 19 06.869 E 146 47.382

If you do fish this location, please let us know how you go by posting on our Facebook page or adding #fishingtownsville to your instragram photos.

Thursday 19 June 2008

Poll

I have decided to run a monthly Poll on the site. This weeks Question is about what size boat you own. Look for it down the right hand side. At the end of each Poll I will publish the final results.

Sunday 15 June 2008

Morisseys Creek

Wow, sounds like Ward had a better weekend than I!! Good job, you deserve a trip like that.

I fished Morisseys Creek with the Baptist Church for their monthly competition (Dion will post results shortly). It was a closed comp, so out of my comfort zone a little. I wasn't confident in putting my boat in, so I asked Dion to drop me on the beach at the mouth. The plan being to chase Flathead on soft plastics.

We arrived at the ramp a little after 6am, and Dion had me at the beach and fishing by 7. I fished the first 2 and bit hours of the run out tide and managed 4 small Flatties.


But as luck would have it, all under size (most by quite a bit). I got picked up again at about 10am and had a fish with Dion and his family from the boat. We hit a few prawn gutters and bagged some nice live prawn in no time. I took Dion to a good snag I use to fish years ago with the old boat. Sure enough it looked good, bait hanging around, but we only managed a few small fish. The best of which was an under size Mangrove Jack (they sure are a pretty fish).


With the tide dropping and crab pots to clear we headed off. Dion did well with crabs. Heaps in the pots, and mostly males too. But as with the rest of the day, EVERYTHING was under size. We were back at the ramp and out of the water before the tide got too low. But had a final fish off the bank. While fishing off the bank we were reminded of why we got the boat out early! A guy backing his boat down the ramp backed his trailer right off the edge! I'm not sure he even looked or checked in any way before reversing! No problem though, only a small trailer and it was easily lifted over. But I sure felt sorry for his young son who was in the boat at the time!! Must have been a shock.

Final score for me was 4 flatties, 1 jack, 1 cod, 1 Moses Pearch, and 2 bream. ALL too small :(

Queenfish? Yeah plenty!

A great day! Decided to do a pre run with the Cairns Flyfishing club for the Loomis Challenge on Saturday. We went to Hinchinbrook Channel and had a scout around. As usual for me the flats yielded nothing, but the blue water, thats different! Had a great morning chasing Queenfish, I had my wife and a Liam with me. We all had multiple hooks ups and in one instant we had a triple hook up! Of these three, we landed 2 and I had my fly line cut by my wifes braid! All good she still talks to me! But this was one of those days when it all went well. I also saw a couple of Wyoung fellas from Townsville fly fishing and they got into some as well. We all had a great day!.






Tuesday 10 June 2008

Tag Data

Just received some tag data back from Bill. This is probably my most interesting re-capture to date, so I though I'd share. (Click to enlarge the image)


Saturday 7 June 2008

Quiet day on the water

Well a slow start to the week! Had a little fish after work on Thursday chasing mackeral around the pylons in the main shipping channel. No fish and no touches but plenty of bait fish? Thought that I would go with Malcolm on Saturday morning 4 hours later no fish? Again plenty of bait, in fact so much that I jagged one! We tried all techniques I stuck to fly but Mal tried all other forms, from bumper bars, to live, to burley, but still no fish? Hopefully just a blimp on the horizon but I guess we will see!

Wednesday 4 June 2008

Quality fish wide of Magnetic Island

Headed north of Magnetic Island yesterday to have a fish with an old mate of mine who was in town for a couple of days. The forecast was for a 6-8 knot south westerly swinging to a south easterly later in the afternoon - pleased to report that the forecast was spot on and we could not have asked for better conditions.

Our first stop was some small shoals and isolate patches just wide of Magnetic Island. Expecting to find good schools of bait fish and plenty of spanish mackerel, we dropped our 45g Bumpa Bar lures to the bottom. Surprisingly there was hardly any bait schools showing, but there were a few large fish showing in the bottom soft corals. We worked the lures using a jig/twitch technique over a number of these micro shoals all within a few miles of each other and were well rewarded with a mixed bag of quality red emperor and nannygai. We also landed a few triggerfish, trevally and got smoked by a huge cobia around 30kg - better take some heavy gear next time!


Wanting to find some larger bait schools that were more likely to hold better numbers of pelagics we headed wider to Shark Shoal. We found the bait and the spaniards ..... and the sharks! We landed only one 10kg spaniard out of about 15 hook-ups. They were sitting right on the bottom under the bait school and whenever we hooked up, they would scream there way up through the bait school and get smashed by a shark. There were some big spaniards among them and the blistering runs were awesome. I also spent an hour fighting some moster of the deep that was so big that the sharks didn't even bother it. I was well and truly undergunned and unable to get this beast anymore than 40ft off the bottom - think it was a very big cod or groper, but will never know because I busted him off when I realised that this was a battle I was not going to win anytime soon (OK - I am getting old and my back was aching and my arms were about to fall off!)


Anyway, a great day fishing with an old mate - doesn't get much better. I will try again next week and hopefully the spaniards will be feeding on top!


Tuesday 3 June 2008

Where are all the Mackerel?

I went for a fish with the family Sunday afternoon. I didn't want to go too far, so just a run to West Point. Tide was almost dead low on launching at 2pm. Had to use the ramp on the ocean side as the lit ramp was almost out of the water. Weather was fantastic. Bit of a chop on the water from a NW breeze throught the channel, but dead flat by the time we got to WP. Surely the New Moon approaching, a good run of tide and cold weather would have the Doggies backing up of the point just begging to be caught! WRONG again. Mobs of bait hanging over my usual set of marks, as the pic below shows. But hours of ripping metal slices through the bait didn't attract as much as a SINGLE hit! Even a troll around the bait schools didn't entice a fish. I did, however, manage to loose 2 big fish off live bait on the bottom. Both bricked me on 50lb braid locked up hard! I am guessing big Fingermark. Bit of a shame, would have made the $48 in fuel a bit more worth while.

Townsville fishing and Outdoor Show

A busy week! Well thanks heaps to all who helped the NQ Flyfishers at the show on the weekend. Thanks to Harvey, Laurrie, Richard, Terri and Helen. We had a great show with a lot of folk interested in the club and in fly fishing. Thanks also to Caradoc and the organisers of the show, well done.