WHERE TO LAND THE BIG ONES
WHILE the winter rain has finally stopped, the strong SE trade winds continue to blow ensuring small boats are restricted to fishing inshore.
A few of the bigger boats have managed to get out and have reported good catches of coral trout and nannygai while bottom fishing, along with several spanish mackerel on floated pilchards and live baits.
Despite a cold snap, estuary and river fishing has been steady with some nice catches.
The Cairns Inlet has seen a variety of species caught on both flies and lures including mangrove jacks, fingermark, grunter, flathead, queenfish, trevally and cod. Live baiters are also landing nice fingermark on the deep water structure.
The Barron River has produced some quality barramundi on live prawns at night with local angler Jason Master being rewarded for the time put in recently despite the drop in water temperatures.
The southern coastal creeks are still producing enough bites on lures and soft plastic prawns to keep fishers interested with the Murray River probably fishing best.
Reports from Hinchinbrook on the weekend included good numbers of barra in the southern Channel on lures.
Fingermark have been in excellent numbers also fishing the deep holes along with nice grunter on the edges of the flats gutter channels.
The winter species, especially whiting, have been caught on fresh local prawns and yabbies in good numbers in the southern river mouths, with fish 30-40cm common. These are great eating fish and along with flathead and silver bream are great targets for the young kids to chase.
Surprisingly, Tinaroo Dam has seen a few big barra caught by those braving the cold.
Young Joseph Gannon (pictured above) landed this impressive 109cm barramundi this week in Tinaroo on a Big B52 hard body lure after his dad Nev tried to tell him it was too cold to chase barra. Nev was happy to be proven wrong.
This weekend will again see winds at 15-20 knots, keeping small boats inshore. Blue water fishers are frustrated they can’t get out and chase the schooled up spanish mackerel and small black marlin off Cairns.
The neap tides will be ideal to target fingermark in the deep estuary holes on live baits and soft plastics in the Cairns Inlet and Hinchinbrook Channel. The bigger river systems should clean up on the small tides and no rain, and produce a few barra and jacks on lures.