Fishermen welcome barra load of rainfall
HEAVY January rain has buoyed Far North anglers as the closed barramundi fishing season enters its final weeks.
Recent downpours are expected to reinvigorate many of the region’s creeks and rivers, in turn breathing life into fish stocks.
Erskine’s Tackle World store manager Rob Erskine said the rain had been “very much welcomed” among local fishing circles.
“Hopefully we’ve had enough rain to get the barra breeding, but we definitely need some more over coming weeks to really flush out the systems,” he said.
It comes after a lacklustre 2015/16 wet season in which a shortage of substantial rain hampered fish breeding.
The veteran barra fisherman said the benefits of the past week’s downpours would be felt in Cairns “down the track”.
“In terms of numbers, we probably won’t notice anything until next year,” he said.
“But the rain does get the barra active and feeding again, while it is also good for prawns and bait fish like mullet and sardines.”
According to the Bureau of Meteorology, Cairns has recorded 180mm of rain since last Saturday.
The East Coast’s closed barra season ends after midday on Wednesday, February 1.
“It’d be great if we could have rain right up until then,” Mr Erskine said.
The Tableland Fish Stocking Society (TFSS) is also optimistic about 2017 on the back of torrential rain.
While still well below typical January levels, Lake Tinaroo has risen by about 2.5 per cent since Monday.
TFSS president Laurie Wright said the longstanding group would next week undertake its first stocking effort since last May.
“We’ve got a couple of hundred fingerlings at our Tablelands hatchery that need to go out,” he said.
“We’ll be putting them into parts of the lake that are nice and protected.
“We’ve seen Tinaroo much lower in the past – and if it dropped another 10 per cent we’d be concerned – but it’s on the rise now.”