May 1999 - Volume 3 Issue 4

Weird Weather (Still)

We have sure seen some crazy weather lately. About the beginning of the month the south easterly winds arrived, blew quite strongly for several days bringing cold southern air, and you guessed it more rain. The water temperatures dropped from an acceptable 27-28 degrees to a chilly 21. The prime summer fish went into shock and became very hard to catch.

We were still having fun though and by changing down to smaller lures sizes caught plenty of small mangrove jacks, jungle perch and sooty grunter in the fresh water and tidal reaches of our local rivers.

The cold water though holds another blessing. With the plunging water temps came the early arrival of the trevally's and queenfish. G.T.'s to three kilos have been very active in the tidal estuaries and these great sport fish have been providing anglers with exceptional light tackle sportsfishing. Both deep diving lures and surface poppers have been accounting for good numbers with one outing recently accounting for fifteen legal size fish being landed.

Just when we thought "winter" had arrived in the Tropics, the weather Gods turned it all around again and for the last week temps. have risen again. The days have been perfect for all water activities, calm sunny days and mildly cooler nights. The water has warmed that few degrees and the barras have been on the chew again. Most catches have come from the popular structured areas in the Trinity Inlet (Cairns Harbour) using bait fishing techniques but lure fishing in the local rivers has also produced the goods on medium sized fish.

Some excellent fish around the 60 - 80 cm mark have been quite common and many anglers have returned for another go at these prime tropical sport fish.

There has been plenty of good sized prawns available by net casters along the mud flats during the low tide. Prawns are probably the best all round bait and not bad eating by humans also.

The next few months will see our target shift away from the summer fish to the cool water species, trevally, queenfish, flathead and grunter with some barras still coming from the shallows. See you on the water.

GOOD FISHING,
Les Marsh