Mongrel Mulgrave

The traditional “wet” season here in far North Queensland usually runs from December to late March. We can still get quite heavy rainfall in April though as this past year has shown – we had two major dumps during the month with some severe flooding occurring as the trough drifted south along the coast – and then, miraculously, drifted back along the same areas and gave us another drenching.

In fact our region had one of the wettest April’s on record with over 800mm recorded in the nearby ranges.

But then the “dry” season arrives. The day time temperatures start to moderate to a more comfortable 28C, but the big factor is, that the humidity levels (the stuff that can make the tropics seem almost unbearable some days) dramatically decreases too. You can even go outside and exercise (casting lures) and not sweat!
And so it is that us locals really look forward to a more comfortable, dry day on the water.

One of my good mates, Greg Parkes from Sydney, is a real keen fisherman. He has a job that necessitates a trip up north quite regularly and on most occasions he pesters me to take him fishing – only kidding. Greg is a great bloke, loves tossing lures in our tropical rivers, and is good company to boot. It is always nice to talk to a southern businessman occasionally and get his perspective on all manner of things like the economy, tourism, the Aussie dollar…….or how Queensland whopped their arse again!

But Greg has a real problem. Every time that he decides that its time for a trip up north, it bloody rains.

Hell last week, no sooner had Greg advised me that he was coming up on the next weekend, that the heavens opened up and we had an absolute pissing. The region around Tully / Babinda and the Daintree/ Mossman had over 300mm of rain in 2 days – IN MAY! Unheard of, not right!
Greg was determined to come anyway, he had work commitments, so being the eternal optimist, proceeded to send me the latest weather report for last Sunday – FINE!

Yeah, but what about all that rain that we had had the days prior I asked – fish don’t like hitting lures when swimming around in mud / the waters were like tomato soup.
And so it was arranged that I would take him boating to one of our local rivers, and decide whether to “go fishing” if we found some water clear enough to toss lures into. I picked Greg up from his usual hotel at approx. 6:45am and headed south along the Bruce Highway.

The first river you come across if heading south is the Mulgarve River at Gordonvale. Driving slowly across the new multi mullion dollar bridge, we noted that the water was quite clean and certainly fishable at this level. Maybe we might be in luck after all, the proof of the pudding however would be the prevailing conditions at the Deeral boat ramp – I reserved my judgment.

Hmm……..this was quite good also. Where had all that dirty water gone?

NOTE – the Mulgrave River is always the very first waterway in our region (Daintree – Tully) to clear up after flooding rain and is one of the main reasons that I will ALWAYS head south after a major rain event like we had just witnessed.

Launching my 4m tinny in the drizzle and 25knot SE winds blowing up the valley……Brrrrrrr!..........I immediately put my Gore-Tex wet weather gear on and readied the tackle. My little sounder has an inbuilt temperature gauge………it was 19.5C. What the! Too bloody cold for barra!

Anyway, we launched, started the outboard, readied the rods, clipped on a couple of those new Flat Jak lures and headed upstream. To make matters even more “discouraging”, there was virtually no tidal movement all day – any movement, I predicted, would be from the river itself, flowing out to sea all day long.

We tried a couple of my favorite drains for zilch! We cast along some of my best weed beds…for zilch! I checked the temperature gauge and it had warmed to a freezing 20.3C. Things were looking up….NOT!

As far as timing the “water levels” to access the river go, we were spot on. If its too low you get stranded in the inter tidal zone. Too high and you can’t access the upstream areas due to restrictive road & railway bridges which act as barriers to upstream travel. I did have to remove my “rocket launcher” rod holder from the back of my punt to putt under the railway bridge at Aloomba, but from there on up it was just plain sailing. And the water was getting warmer too to just on 20.5C
We were crazy……no self-respecting barra would every think of chasing food in these conditions….would they?

We travelled as far as we dared, or time would allow, as we planned to drift fish downstream as much as possible, pausing at likely looking back eddy’s, weed beds, gutters and creeks.

It wasn’t long before we came across one of the fishiest looking places I had ever seen on this little stream. There was a deep river bend, a substantial grassy bank just upstream that actually bent into a slow moving back eddy & broke behind a small 5m long grass covered island. The water was actually flowing backwards behind this little island before rejoining the river upstream of it – there were several ambush points!

Beautiful river barra

I cast my fluro Flat Jak into the backwater, hoping to twitch it enticingly towards the junction where the back eddy and main current met under the swaying grass. Like a silver flash……..crunch, boof and my barra cleared the water. She was a beautifully conditioned fresh water specimen and proceeded to jump all over the place before settling down to a very dogged fight. Using the current to her best advantage, it was a surprisingly long battle.  Several times I thought that I had had her beat only for her to surge away again – I could see that only the last treble had a purchase under her chin. After what seemed like ages, I slipped the bogas into her mouth, released the slide and gently cradled her into the boat. Man I was stoked.

But wait there’s more!

I reckoned there would be more fish feeding in the “perfect” spot. After several casts I saw a flash down deep but did not connect. On Greg’s very next cast I saw it again. Did you see that flash mate……..Greg was on even before he knew it. This fish fought a very similar battle. These barra used the fast flowing current to their absolute advantage, powering away several times when seemed beaten and ready for the taking. But after a spirited fight it came quietly to the boat.
The fish was subdued; BUT certainly Greg was not.

Greg's PB on barra to date!

This is my PB he excitedly exclaimed. Greg was absolutely stoked and had a grin from ear to ear and no matter what happened for the rest of the day he would cherish this moment forever. The day when everything seemed against us! The river had been in flood only days before. The river was as cold as I could remember but we found a couple of feeding barra and that was all that mattered.

(Note – the river was fairly high as it was, but way above us in the trees we could see the debris line of swaying grass / leaves / broken branches etc. and they were at least 10 metres above us)

All else would seem secondary as we drifted downstream for the rest of the day. We switched to small gold colored SR5’s on the spin gear and landed a few sooties and JP’s. I landed another small barra from a weed bank. We had lunch in a magic rainforest setting with cool swirling waters cruising past. We even tried our luck way downstream past the boat ramp just in case the warmer water downstream might hold more fish – it was a warm 21C. Not likely!

Typical JP

Hows this for a lunch spot?

Looking Upstream

Winching the boat onto the trailer at about 4PM we looked up at the mountainous backdrop – there was a steam of super cool white cloud draping the Bellenden Ker range as a reminder of how

weather conditions had not favored us today.

Check out that cloud - click to enlarge

Do you know something? It didn’t matter………Greg had landed his PB and he will never forget it (Well, not until next trip and we beat it by cm’s). I had landed a beaut river barra on my brand new G-Loomis GL3 (man I just love this new rod) and a couple of mates had shared all the day had offered.

Beats watching the Lions get smashed again eh!

Catch you on the water, regards
Les Marsh
www.fishingcairns.com.au

Daintree Dreaming!

I have just returned home from a fabulous weeks guiding up the Cape at remote Aurukun. This region really is a barra fisherman’s paradise and we had an absolute blast. The quality of the fishing this trip was astounding and I have never seen so many BIG fish as part of our catch. Quality fish of well over 85cm were common and we even managed quite a few in the 90’s and a dozen or so above the magic 1m mark.

96cm Archer River

Magnificent Sunset

One of 64 barra in 2.5 hours

 Our best session was however, on the very last day, when following a very early start, favorable tides made a trip to the mangrove lined Archer Bay the location of choice. Two very excited anglers landed 64 barra in only 2 ½ hours solid fishing; quality fish all from 63 -85cm. The bigger ones could not be controlled and we lost them under the mangroves.

But that’s another story for another time. 

Last Sunday, Keith Graham and I, decided to give the Daintree River a go. You see, this past “wet” season we have concentrated on the southern rivers, the likes of the Tully, North & South Johnstone, Liverpool and even the old Mulgrave had copped a flogging from us so to speak. And it had been well worth it with some very memorable days. But the “wet” is (well until Monday morning anyway) well and truly over and the river levels had dropped so much that it was actually dangerous to travel to our favorite upstream haunts.

So after careful consideration of the tides, it was a high at 8:30am and a low at 2:30pm, it was decided that the downstream tidal areas of the Daintree might be the place to be. It was going to be a bit windy however, as the predicted 25-30 knot SE winds blow straight up the river making some of our favorite locations unfishable. I too was a little apprehensive, as having had such amazing fishing the week before, felt that the Daintree could be a huge let down.

We launched at the ferry crossing and cruised to a nearby mangrove lined bank. We both clipped on our new best lure (yes those Flat Jak’s – they finally have a name), Keith a pink one, I, a sparkling gold one.

The tide had just peaked and was about to turn……perfect we thought!

First fish - a flathead

A flathead, a bloody flathead off a mangrove snag – man we had a good laugh.

We drifted slowly downstream on the ebbing tide, hugging the mangrove banks out of the persistent wind. A nice little barra was hooked from a backwater so we decided to hang around for a while and see if it had some mates. We landed 5 barra from this spot and missed a couple more – things were looking good.

Nice juvenile barra

Heading further down towards the mouth we fished the lee side of the islands – juvenile barra, a nice jack, a small GT. It wasn’t too bad. And as for the crocs! Well this weather was perfect for the big lizards to seek the suns warming rays on the slowly exposing mud and sand banks. We found little 1 metre models scampering comically to the waters edge and safety. We found huge 4 metre models slowly slithering down the sand to slip quietly into the drink – in fact at one time, the only sign that alerted us to the crocs presence was the hissing sound of its slide. Scary stuff!

Biggest croc

By lunch time the tide has almost dropped right out so a trip to the mouth and a fish in a nearby backwater was the go. It was here that we saw the biggest croc of the day. As we entered the estuary I noticed the unmistakable shape of something quite large sunning itself on the exposed mud bank – it was probably over 500m away at this stage and even at this distance looked to be a big one. As we slowly fished our way upstream to its location, we had cameras ready for the best shot; just in case it was a wary critter and slipped away before we could get within range. You guessed it, they don’t grow this big by being stupid and we were still over 150m away when it started to slowly move in preparation for a slide into the water. A quick zoom, snap and I had a nice photo.

The fishing went a bit quiet at this stage – no run, no fun we say up here and so it was decided that if we wanted some action, we either had to stay put and be patient and wait for the tide to run in, or head upstream and fish above this tidal influence. We beat a hasty path back above the ferry and decided to fish the shallow banks near Laffertys.

It wasn’t long before we landed a couple of barra and small jacks – but the best surprise of all was when I landed a little flathead. Way up in the fresh…..it was as clear as a swimming pool, dead set.

We pulled the pin at approx.  4.30 and headed home.

We had landed 15 barra / 5 jacks / 2 flathead and a GT – now that’s not bad for a good days fishing, especially in light of the prevailing conditions. We were quite stoked.

Note – I hooked on that gold flecked Flat Jak and did not change it all day. Keith changed a couple of times just to test a few lures for his shop. Verdict – those Flat Jaks are amazing!

Catch you on the water!

Les Marsh
www.fishingcairns.com.au