CLEAR SKIES WILL MEAN TIGHT LINES
FINALLY Far North Queensland has had a week to dry out and see the estuaries, rivers and creeks start to clear and produce some red hot fishing.
This week the Cairns Inlet has been on fire with a great run of fingermark taking live sardines and mud herring.
All Tackle Sport Fishing clients have enjoyed some hot action on these great table fish with specimens up to 70cm.
Blue salmon and trevally have also been taking live baits along with a few barramundi.
Prawns have been scarce but there have been plenty of sardines and mud herring.
Barramundi over the metre mark have been caught casting the structure around Cairns Harbour on soft plastics.
To the north the Daintree River has started to fire up on barramundi in the brackish to fresh sections on lures around the snags and feeder drains.
Mangrove jacks and trevally are also taking lures.
To the south the Mulgrave, Johnstone, Tully, Maria and Murray rivers have fished well as they clean with barramundi, mangrove jacks, sooty grunter and jungle perch all taking soft plastics and diving lures.
Hinchinbrook Channel has been quiet on barra but grunter have been caught on the flats on strip baits of mullet and garfish. Mud crabs have been in good supply in the Channel and around the river mouths and along beach foreshores.
Reef fishing has been excellent off Cairns & to the south with plenty of large & smallmouth nannygai caught in the deep rubble patches and rocks along with coral trout, spangled emperor, trevally and a few green job fish.
Off Cairns good numbers of fish have been caught in the Grafton Passage region.
It looks like a rough weekend on the water but the weather will again be influenced by the movement of extropical cyclone Iris.
With neap tides and clean water, fingermark will be an obvious target in the Cairns Inlet and other estuary systems like Mourilyan Harbour and Hinchinbrook Channel.
The upper sections of the major rivers should see barramundi continue to be caught around the feeder creeks and gutters.
Try casting soft plastic prawns and shads along with diving minnows around the snags.
The river mouths will also be worth a troll in the deep holes targeting a big barra.
As the tides build during next week mud crabs should be running and worth targeting.