Spanish armada awaits
On the building tides over the weekend Spanish mackerel fishing should be red hot with trolled wog rigged garfish working best.
The bigger tides will be ideal to target barramundi on the Cairns Harbour flats along with some quality grunter and threadfin salmon on baits.
Tinaroo Dam should also be firing on big barra on the building moon and hot conditions.
The early forecast for the weekend is for northerly winds around the 10-15 knots which is borderline conditions for small boat fishermen.
The Reef will again be popular chasing bottom species like trout, nannygai and emperor.
Most of the estuaries including the Cairns Inlet, Mourilyan Harbour and Hinchinbrook Channel are all crabbing well with some cracking large mud crabs being caught.
The building tides this weekend should see plenty of muddies caught in pots baited with fresh fish or chicken frames in all the FNQ estuaries and river mouths.
Fishermen were blessed with ideal conditions on the water over the Easter long weekend which ensured busy boat ramps and big numbers of boats and families fishing the reef, islands, rivers and estuaries.
Spanish mackerel were on fire on most of the inshore reefs off Cairns with trolled heavy wog rigged garfish producing best in locations like the Wide Grounds, Oyster, Pixie and Batt Reefs to the north and Sudbury Reef and Stagg Patches to the south.
I fished the Wide Grounds on Easter Friday with mate Corey Hard and we landed five Spanish mackerel from numerous bites early morning trolling gar which totally out fished the lures.
Inshore reef fishing was a little tough in the hot conditions but we still managed to put on board three large mouth nannygai and two trout to complete a very successful morning.
Deep water coral trout were in decent numbers on the bommies in 40m plus range.
Offshore in the deep channels the rocks and rubble fished well on large mouth nannygai, red emperor, job fish, trevally and various snappers.
Local anglers Leanne Hewitt and Jason Swan (pictured above) enjoyed a very successful trip on Sunday fishing the 60m plus depth and landing several quality largemouth nannygai, red emperor and coral trout.
Big schools of pilchards were in the open inshore paddocks which will attract early season small black marlin and sailfish. Tuna, queenfish and mackerel are feeding on these schools of bait. Several juvenile black marlin have already shown up which is very early in the year and a great sign for the light tackle tournaments later in the year.
The Cairns Inlet has fished reasonably well with good numbers of barramundi still being caught on live baits along with some nice fingermark in the deep holes.