G'day guys,
I'm new to the site so thought I'd make my first post a useful one to introduce myself.
I'm from Brisbane, having fished the northen end of Moreton bay all my life for pelagic and bread ‘n butter species. I was part of Brisbane Sports fishing club (through ANSA) a long time ago but lost touch with everyone not having a boat of recent years. Through my youth I worked at Archies Bait and Tackle and for the Urangan Anglers Den which was a great thing for an angling youngster! I’m still without a boat but enjoy wetting a line when I can, and for this purpose letting you all know how my trip over the weekend was to Townsville and Lucinda.
I flew up to Townsville (with Virgin Airlines) last Thursday morning and fished the Aplins Weir, for an hour or so as my best-mate and fishing partner Steve could not get the day off. I hadn’t fished this spot before so didn’t really know the best way to fish the location. I blindly fished two rods; one fixed live bait and one with lure, gradually walking along the bank casting. In the hour of fishing I landed one Barra (to 45cm) on a ~8cm gold bomber knock off (the knock off part being a plus as it never swims straight, adding to the wounded fish appeal.) I also lost something unsighted, that scoffed a live ~15cm poddy; fishing this rocky and log laden area with 15lb gear, this was expected however. The weir looks like it had been heavily fished by the amount of rubbish and disused bait packets on the ground. I removed as much as I could from my general area but something to keep in mind if you if you are planning to fish there; it smells pretty awful.
We headed up to Lucinda around 4pm with the leisurely drive taking roughly 90 mins. Checking into the Lucinda Point Motel, we had a couple of quiet “cordials” before heading off to test the waters at the local jetty. We fished the small jetty in front of the sugar stores from around 730 (8pm high tide) with some live prawns caught in a cast net near the jetty's edge. Within 15mins of a bait hitting the water Steve hooked a nice barra (~60cm), which decided to let himself go in the confusion of how we were actually going to unhook him from the height of the jetty. (I should also state that being from Brisbane with no means of keeping anything cold, everything was catch and release.) We lost a lot of live prawns with no result for the next hour until the run was too much for the limited "whiting" size sinkers I only carry in my box. Unfortunately for us this meant we had to retire back to the bar for another quiet drink.
We booked a 4.1m Polycraft boat to fish the surrounding area for Friday and Saturday so were up early and on the water by 6:15am. Being a pelagic fisherman at heart we headed out to the end of the sugar jetty for the morning session. We were greeted with 5kt winds and a sea, as my dad used to tell me, you could paddle your bathtub on. We jigged the end of the jetty with chrome lures for a variety of mackerel and trevally with good success. Unfortunately, the size of the fish didn't venture much over 1 - 3kg, but were good fun on 10lb spinning gear. Taking a break from light-speed winding, we anchored up current from the jetty and settled for a sandwich and cup of tea. While we relaxed we put a couple of adventurous yellowtail that had climbed over the chrome lures to use and drifted back a couple of live baits. They hadn't hit the water for very long when they started screaming off into the distance. Did I mention screaming off into the distance, they're probably still going! We lamented that our light spinning gear probably weren't the best choice to use.
We decided to re-rig and look for some more yellow tail which didn't take long on chrome 25g Raiders. This time we used the "heavy gear", 15lb line with 40lb mono leaders. I write this with a big smile on my face because in hindsight it was about as useful as the 10lb gear. We came to a vast realisation that you can't apply enough drag to a fish, who has only 2 ways to run which don't see him hitting pilons on this gear. We did however persevere after boating a couple of 5kg+ golden trevally which wrongly picked the open water as their target direction. The action was pretty thick in the mid morning session with live baits being taken within 20mins of them hitting the water and fastly wound chrome lures being hit by smaller mackerel, trevally and queenfish every 3-10 casts.
This action would soon die off however, when at 11am precisely the sugar workers started the jetties conveyor belt and alarm system. I would suggest the vibrations put off by this engineering behemoth was enough to make the fish think twice about coming up from the depths. On that note we retired back to the Dugeness jetty for a well deserved bacon and egg burger and 1/2 a kilo of hot chips. The mornings session had seen 12 "Doggie" Mackerel, 2 Spanish Mackerel, 4 Golden Trevally, 2 Queenfish, 2 adventurous cod and about 6 unsighted, unstoppable locomotive trains.
The afternoon session was spent exploring a some of small creeks on Hinchinbrook Island with live baits and lures. We picked the first two creeks we came to (which probably wasn’t the best idea, but perhaps people over look them because they’re so close!?) and trolled some 2m+ RJ’s hard bodies in a couple of colours. These lures seemed to do the trick on Estuary Cod to 1kg and a smattering of high-jumping Salmon, but everyone that goes to Hinchinbrook wants to catch Barra and we were no different. We nosed into a bank across from the entrance to a smaller creek and set about living baiting and casting the entrance until a fish got irritated enough to bite. It took around 40mins until a lonely Barra decided my wobbly swimming “gold bomber” looked edible. Unhappily, it mustn’t have tasted too good, as after 3 spectacular jumps, one which could have been caught by a ready landing net, the lure was spat and the waters fell quiet. He may have gone 50cm but certainly wasn’t too happy about seeing our excited faces. The next hour saw my arms get sore casting to no avail, until the monotony of lure casting was broken by Steve’s large live mullet deciding it was no longer safe to be in the water. The mullet was right! The baitrunner started screaming until the reel was clicked into action, ceasing what was clearly not a fully swallowed mullet. The mullet returned with a meat cleaver like cut through its midsection some millimeters away from the waiting chemically sharpened hook. Steve’s disappointment quickly turned into excitement again however, as he returned the decapitated mullet to the water as a dead bait. The waiting predator didn’t waste his time in taking the remaining mullet upstream quickly and behind something the 15lb line couldn’t handle. Disappointment returned.
With the tide fast running out and arms sore for casting we headed back to the Lucinda Point Motel for a swim in the pool and to contest the Friday night pool competition. The local hotel is a comfortable place to stay with reasonably priced accommodation and for the single of us, surprisingly has quite a few attractive girls frequenting the bar.
Saturday was another brilliant day to hit the water, but as fishing goes paled in comparison to the previous day. A call from Steve’s work had shortened our fishing plans to lunchtime, so we tried to cram as much in as possible. The tidal run was much milder (which was surprising as it was supposed to be a bigger tide), and the fish seemed to be few and far between. We fished the jetty again and while live bait was easy to come by, they happily swam around in the warm blue water untouched by predators. We changed tactics and cast some hard bodied rattling lures around the pilons further under the jetty. With a few follows it would seem the predators were having a quiet Saturday morning hiding in the cool shaded water of the sugar jetty. With this in mind we berlied up a couple of excess baits and set about drawing them out from their cover. This worked quickly and soon we had Shetland pony size trevally ducking out of the jetty to suck up fish pieces with their huge rubbery lips. We lost 2 good sized fish until one headed the wrong way and was boated to go 7kg.
We’d seen a enough of these fish and headed into the channel to try to actually boat a Barra before it was time to go home. We tried casting hard bodies, we tried casting Gulps, we tried trolling, we even tried singing (Jimmy Barnes) them into submission but not a Barra scale hit the boat. We headed back to the boat ramp without damaging the Barra population but with hope that next, just next time, that elusive Barra with come a calling!
I hope you enjoyed the story of our trip as much as we did experiencing it.
Brad Polkinghorne
I note in this report that the word “however” is used often. I might say that this is the reason I have enjoyed fishing for most of my life, you never know what is going to happen and when it’s going to happen, and that keeps me coming back everytime.
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I hope I'm half has lucky as you guys as it will be my first trip to the Lucinda end of Hinchinbrook
NAGG
Originally Posted by indy
Welcome to Aushfish Great story me mate will go on 23 may fly to cairns and a week to drive down to Townsville 30th then fly back Bris 
youngmind
How was it navigating the Lucinda end ..... From the maps it looks tricky at the bottom end of the tides
NAGG
