Sunday delivers a blow
Get in early to avoid winds
It looks like 15–20 knots from today and into Saturday, then intensifying to strong wind warning conditions into Sunday night.
The charter and larger private boats will definitely be reef fishing up to Saturday chasing nannygai, emperor, trout and Spanish mackerel.
As the tides start to neap after the weekend the creeks and rivers like the Russell, Johnstone and Tully will clean up, if we don’t get another major downpour, which should result in good numbers of big queenfish and giant trevally in the systems and targets on cast surface poppers, stick baits and walk the dog lures.
Fingermark will be another prime target live baiting the deep holes with freshly caught squid, prawns and herring all excellent baits.
Trolling the structure will be worth a shot chasing barramundi also on the clean neap tides around the river mouth and in the estuaries.
The weekend tides should allow barramundi and mangrove jacks to bite on both live baits and lures in the Cairns Inlet before the big blow.
The winter species are starting to increase in numbers with pikey bream moving in with whiting and flathead also increasing in numbers.
Fishermen were again faced with poor conditions on the water last weekend as strong wind, rain and big tides all combined to ensure challenging fishing along the Far North Queensland Coast.
Most anglers were restricted inshore in the creeks and estuaries, with the exception of several charter boats fishing out of Port Douglas that ventured out early this week as conditions eased slightly.
Fishing was red hot with some quality largemouth nannygai caught along with small mouth, coral trout, trevally and Spanish mackerel on floated pilchards.
The southern Islands like Dunk and the Family group along with the inshore wrecks continued to produce Spanish and school mackerel on jigged metal lures, trolled lures, garfish and floated pilchards.
Schools of mackerel will continue to thicken up as we head into winter.
High-speed metal jigging for Spanish and other species of mackerel is popular using specially designed light but powerful jigging outfits.
Most locations have struggled to produce estuary species with the exception of the Cairns Inlet that has improved dramatically as the tides rise.
Most estuary systems have seen good numbers of mud crabs caught including the Cairns Inlet, Mourilyan Harbour and Hinchinbrook Channel over the big tides.
Prawns have also been in most of the systems and the cast netters have enjoyed some nice catches of prime banana prawns.