Count on break in weather
ANGLERS will be relieved the rain has moved offshore and winds are moderating.
The forecast for Saturday has winds around 10 knots which will finally allow some fishermen to head to their favoured reef marks.
Coral trout will be the main target again on the bigger tides with areas like Batt, Pixie, Oyster, Arlington and Sudbury Reefs all popular for chasing mixed reef fish.
Don’t forget to put out a floated pilchard, garfish or live bait while bottom fishing with good numbers of spanish mackerel feeding on the reef edges holding bait schools.
The rivers will be in flood and again fish best in the upper freshwater sections casting the back eddies and feeder creeks and drains chasing barramundi.
Estuary fishing has been good, despite the rain, with the Cairns Inlet and Hinchinbrook Channel prime locations to target barramundi, mangrove jacks, fingermark and mud crabs that should be running on the flats.
Late last week the weather dropped enough for a few boats to fish the islands and inshore reefs with coral trout and gold spot cod in decent numbers.
Another burst of late wet season rain has dampened the enthusiasm of many anglers to be on the water and destroyed planned trips to remote locations.
My plans to fish the Gulf of Carpentaria, chasing barramundi, was thrown into disarray with heavy rain over the much of the north and west of Queensland.
While Gulf locations didn’t receive huge rainfall the catchment areas of the gulf rivers did and will have the dirty flood water heading to the Gulf. While coastal heavy rain in May is not rare, heavy falls inland generally are.
Despite terrible conditions again over the weekend and early this week the Cairns Inlet has again produced some nice fish.
The southern rivers have all been in flood again this week and were very difficult to fish.
The flooded rivers have flushed the schools of bait out on to the headlands and has seen pelagic species like queenfish and trevally feeding on them.
Hinchinbrook Channel which handles high rainfall fished best of the FNQ estuaries with good numbers of barramundi caught casting the structure.
The larger charter boats have still managed to fish the sheltered reefs off Cairns and Port Douglas with areas like inside Arlington Reef producing excellent numbers of coral trout and mixed reef fish. Spanish mackerel have consistently been caught on floated pilchards and live baits while bottom fishing.
Southern anglers trolling wolf herring around the Islands like the Family Group and Dunk Island have hooked good size mackerel but have been hassled by fish-stealing sharks.