You head north to the mighty Daintree that's what. And so it was that Kevin and I decided that we would try our luck in the tidal reaches of this wonderful tropical waterway.
Leaving home at around 6.30am we headed north along the Captain Cook Highway....it was still dark, so had no idea what the sky was like or whether the rainy conditions of the past two days would continue. It was destined to be a slow, frustrating trip however, as the numerous road works slowed our progress.
It was high tide at 6.45am......now that's OK.
But with a low of only .27m at approx. 1.30pm, we would have our work cut out for us to find some productive water to fish.....well, maybe. What with over 2m of run off, and some reasonable rainfall over a couple of days, the river looked quite stirred up and muddy.
We tried our luck on the mangrove prickles first....these areas can work a treat when they just start to poke out of the receeding tide. The swaying fingers hold plenty of baitfish and that's why the predators can be nearby, searching for easy pickings.
It was not to be today however and our casting efforts were in vain.......time to head further downstream, into the cleaner salt water and hopefully better results down there. We made a few stops at the customary drain / gutter / snag and fallen tree.....and Kev landed a little juvenile. Next stop was a deep snag at a creek junction.
My very first cast was caught up in the overhanging mangroves...."tea bagging"....and I missed the strike from a good fish. Kev was in there in a flash but he pulled the hooks on a legal barra that was hell bent on taking him for a swim. For the next 20 minutes or so we were stuck to this spot. We landed 4 barras, Kev lost another good one when it took his deep diving Leads shad back to its cave and busted him off on a barnacle.
Lets continue downstream I advised and we were soon powering down in readiness for a slow drift along the mangrove edges.
Now to this time we had found some nice fish and had remarked that conditions weren't half bad...especially for "winter" fishing. In fact the sun had burnt off all that threatening cloud making for a very pleasant day on the water and to our surprise, the water temp was approx. 24.5 - 25.5C. Certainly well within old bucket mouths comfort zone.
Kev & I continued our drift, casting to overhanging mangroves and paying special attention to any zone that had some structure in the water, as well as being in the shady side. And we found some willing little juvenile barras too, they were feisty little fish and hungry enough to tackle our Flat Jak lures.
We worked this little backwater from top to bottom a couple of times. Landed half a dozen little barra and a couple of jacks to boot and then decided it was time to move back into the river proper. Drifting back upstream on the incoming tide; this was to be a real doozy at just on a 3m push in, we knew that time was of the essence and that soon this huge run in would stir the water too much for productive lure fishing. We did however manage to land a few more barra and a jack and called it quits as we approached the ferry crossing.
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| Biggest barra - 55cm |
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| Nice one Kev |
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| Yours truly with best jack |
In total Kev and I had landed 13 barra, the biggest going on 55cm and those jacks. Oh, we also saw 6 crocs sunning themselves on the exposed banks and this is the time of year to see them in you are interested. They will be camped up on the sand / mud flats in any sunny area out of the wind. Makes you realize just how many are actually in the system when they are so easy to spot.
Catch you on the water, regards Les
www.fishingcairns.com.au
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