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| Keith Graham with a good late season Spaniard around the 10 kilo size...caught on a
floating pillie mid January! |
Late Mackeral Run A Bonus!!
I know the seasons are all arse about, it seems that everything reef wise is running a couple of months late...even
the Northerly winds have made a much later appearance but to see so many schooling Spaniards around the inner reefs
has been a revelation, and a real bonus to reef revellers.
It’s mid January and the wife decides that she wants to go fishing, not that I’d argue cos if you win you loose in
the end! So I settled on plying a couple of wrecks north of Cairns then try some bommies in 20 metres or so to chase
coral trout. A reasonable game plan I thought!
Setting off from Yorkeys Marina we made for a relatively unknown wreck near Port Douglas. Glassy calm conditions made
it a quick trip and we made a good anchorage just up current, (such as the current was), of the wreck and baited up
with a cocktail of squid and pillie. It was dead! Not even the odd stripie or small nanny to keep us enthused. There
was some activity on the sounder in around 18 metres but we couldn’t win a trick. We gave it an hour or so then decided
on plan B; out to that twenty metre bommie country to chase trout.
The same scenario soon unfolded so I checked the tide chart and saw that a change was due soon. We waited the change
without a bite, then Bingo a trout came aboard...undersize! Then another undersize again, then a stripie and a fusilier.
What a bugger, here I was trying to impress the wife with some fishing prowess and couldn’t find a keeper. Time to put
the floater out.
As luck would have it the run was so small that the floater ended up going against the slight breeze and ended up
sitting near the anchor rope. Not really worrying about it as there was little chance of a pelagic I let it sit there
and carried on trying to find a decent fish, any fish!
ZZzzzzzzzzzzzzz the ratchet screamed as the floating pillie was snaffled. I took the rod as I knew it was going to
be a bit tricky avoiding the anchor rope as the fish made a run forward of the boat. Not a bad fish I thought as it
gave me plenty on the TLD outfit. Ten minutes later we gaffed a nice Spaniard around the ten kilo mark. My thoughts
at the time were that it was probably a loner left behind as the bulk of the Spaniards moved south, usually in
September or October. I put the floater out again in anticipation but after an hour or so gave up and thoughts of
heading for home were subdued by a bunch of tuna feeding out near us along a 20 metre contour line. Birds were going
ape and fish were crashing the surface.
Deciding to troll I put out three eight inch skirted Fish Eagle pushers rigged on wire. No sooner had they been set
than one went off, the wifes turn this time. She played it like a real pro (and I mean that in the nicest context),
and soon had yet another Spaniard alongside, perhaps 8 kilos. This was baffling and led me to believe that these
speedsters were still around these parts in numbers.
The last hour produced another Spaniard run, but we pulled the hooks (well I did), and a couple of brief encounters
with tuna that ended up with ‘early releases’. Still, we had a couple of good sized fish on board to take home so
‘her indoors’ was happy.
Back at the boatyard I had a chat with another fisho who had just returned from a trip down south around Elford reef,
and guess what??? He caught a couple of similar sized Spaniards too! Just goes to show that the seasons are all to
pot this year and anyone fishing the reef in the coming weeks should put out a floater. You may catch a cobia, which
should be around just now, but you are also likely to get into a few Spaniards!
Jumbo J.P.'s in the Russell/Mulgrave River!
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| Matthew Graham with his prized Jungle perch capture. At 1.5 kilos it is the biggest one ever seen
caught by the author and one that all three guys on the trip will long remember. |
Hot, steamy summer days with little wind trigger my need for a freshwater fix. True, I enjoy fishing the reef, and
soaking a bait in our rivers and estuaries but if there’s one favourite kind of fishing I had to name as my Number
One it would have to be lurefishing freshwater rivers. From secluded lagoons cut off during the dry season, crystal
clear rainforest rivers, outback river beds and headwaters of our mightiest outpours they all hold a fascination, and
often offer some of the most spectacular sportfishing options available in our tropical wonderland.
Early January turned on some perfect freshwater fishing weather and a quick prompt from my brother in law, Pete,
visiting from NSW was all I needed to arrange atrip up the Russell/ Mulgrave River. As always my ‘keen as mustard’
son Matthew joined us insisting he knew a launching place away from the crowded week-end ramps, and for once he was
right!
Weaving our way through cane paddocks we found the rocky outcrop which was barely an excuse for a ramp and tentatively
launched our 5.5 metre Custom Craft ‘River Deceiver’. It’s the ultimate inshore fishing platform with a rear console,
heaps of centre placed seating and an electric outboard mounted up the front which gives much better manoeuvrability
than a rear mount. With a width of almost 2 metres it has incredible stability so anyone can move around the boat
without ‘tilting’. If it has a downside it is that due to it’s size access to the tinyest of backwaters is sometimes
denied, but having said that it is amazing where we do get (Just ask Norweld who must repair my props more than a dozen
times each year...)
The river was running crystal clear with hardly a breath of wind. I had two outfits to use; a whippy fast action Loomis
CR722 8-14 lbs 6 foot rod matched with a Daiwa Alphas 103 low profile baitcaster which is ideal for casting small lures
long distances and a 5’6” custom built Ultragraph spin stick teamed up with a Daiwa R Fuego 2500 which can cast a ¼ oz.
lure into the next post code. Both reels are spooled up with 10 lbs Power Braid with about a metre of 20 lbs clear mono
leader. The emphasis on this sweetwater fishing is to keep the tackle light so as to match the average size of the fish
being targeted. Both outfits achieve this extremely well and give the angler a real challenge when a decent sized barra,
Jungle Perch or sooty is hooked.
Both Pete and Matthew had similar outfits and as we tied on the smallest Rebel Pop R poppers and Squidgy Stealth Prawns
we were anticipating something special, but just how good a session was about to unfold we’d never have dreamed off.
We began our upstream sortie flicking poppers and prawns at any likely looking structure, all of which is so easily
seen. Underwater snag piles, weedbeds, rock bars, we could even see fish flitting every which way as we accidentally
spooked them. Mainly sooties in the half kilo size bracket intersperced with tilapia and the odd J.P. The first hundred
metres yielded a couple of mini sized sooties and a couple of follows from J’P’s, nothing too exciting but one of those
‘Life’s Good’ moments as spectacular scenery and perfect fishing conditions beckoned our anticipation.
The next stretch of river had a deeper left bank and as we began our steady push further upstream fish just kept coming.
A nice half kilo jack for Matthew, then another similar sized sootie for Pete then I managed to snare a slightly bigger
J.P. by jigging it to within a metre of the boat before it gulped it down. Around the next bend we saw an awesome sight
as a hatch of flying ants swarmed the left hand bank and the river just came alive with rising fish readily grabbing a
feed. It made us wonder just how many fish were in this river as literally hundreds were gulping these small insect
from the surface. We made our well aimed casts into the fray, and, although we had quite a few follows couldn’t manage
a bite. We concluded that the fish were happily snaffling small insects and were not interested in our larger lures.
Tying on some super small Rapala’s and whilte buck tailed jigs had no effect either. If only we’d packed a light fly
rod we could have had a ball using small, floating trout flies.
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| Pete with a typical sooty grunter caught on a Rebel Pop R popper. |
Moving to the opposite bank where there were no flying ants to distract hungry fish we continued our good run of hits.
To me using a popper has to be one of the most exciting ways of fishing! To actually see the fish follow then attack
the popper on the surface is a thrill in itself, hooking and catching the fish is somewhat secondary! Our tally was
climbing at a dramatic rate and we almost tempted a small barra who firstly followed Pete’s Prawnstar to within a
whisker of the boat before turning away, then I put the Stealth Prawn in front of him, jigged it and he lit up with
that big white stripe down the front of his head, but all he would do was follow it, nudge it and move back to his log.
Both Pete and I tried this routine several times but the lad was just sniffing and not chewing! Pity...it would have
been nice to add another species to our growing list.
Nearing the end of our run we noticed that the water on a very deep right hand bend shadowed by overhanging trees had
a milky coloured water tinge. We knew there was a creek not too far upstream that flowed in from the same side of the
river and decided that there must have been some rain the previous night and this was the run off. The water temperature
of this fresh rain would be a few degrees cooler than the main body and perhaps the fish would be more active???
I made the first cast with the Rebel Pop R, and as soon as it touched the surface CRASH! It was nailed big time. We
were still moving upstream as I tried to manoeuvre what looked like a big J.P. around an overhanging branch. Pete
shouted “slow down it’s huge”, but as he said this the fish surfaced and it would have easily topped the kilo mark
and wrapped me around the snag and the popper pulled out. I was a bit cranky about that as it would have been my best
J.P. ever, my biggest up to this point in over 20 years fishing for them being just on one kilo.
As I began to recall
the event Matthew hooked into another huge J.P. which zipped straight towards the middle of the river giving him heaps.
I saw him up his drag in an effort to control this surging run downstream as his rod tip bent over, dipping each time
the fish made a run. Thrusting the electric into reverse we followed the fish for about twenty metres and it was going
like a Trojan every bit of the way, only giving up as Matthew put the hurts on him to avoid a looming snag pile. I
gently cradled the fish on board and just marvelled at it’s size...at around 50cm it was the biggest we had ever seen
caught and it weighed in at an imopressive 1.5 kilos. Now that’s a huge Jungle Perch and we all just stared at it in
amazement.
This was a fitting end to a near perfect day in the fresh and as we saw the big flash of his flag tail swim away we
tallied up our captures, arriving at over 65 fish caught and released for the day. How good is that??
My advice to any red blooded lure fisho who hasn’t yet tried freshwater luring is to get out there and do it! You will
be amazed at the variety and sometimes the size of fish to be caught.
Read all Keith's Old Fishin' Yarns HERE!
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Fishing News
