Having just returned from 9 days at Fraser, I thought I'd give a reasonably thorough report on what is happening there at the moment.
Leaving Teewah at 5am Sunday the 13th and driving on a dead low was able to get through Rainbow Rocks comfortably and be fuelled up at the servo as the sun was coming up. Driving onto the the beach to head to Inskip I could see the water shimmering in close with fish. With a spinning rod ready to go and the school looking like tailor I decided to stop for a flick. 3 casts and 3 choppers and likely more if I'd stayed but I did want to get on the island while conditions were so good.
Once on the island, I drove as far as Poyungan Rocks however before finding any water worth fishing - it is one long low tide channel all the way along the beach. At Poyungan there are several patches of rocks in this channel with whitewater out the back within range for good casters. The first patch of rocks I found had a large school of choppers over it and I beached 15 -20 before going on to the next patch with the tide getting fairly high. There were some better quality fish here but still choppers and with the tide near full I made camp nearby.
First light monday and with my second cast found a good tailor of about 3.5kg and another 4 fish of about the same size followed before the school left the gutter leaving only choppers. The choppers didn't leave the gutter all day and in my pursuits for quality fish probably caught and released 100 of them. Tuesday morning again had some nice tailor of between 2 and 3.5kg early before they went but the gts took over where the greenbacks had left from and 5 nice gts around 2.5kg gave me a lot of fun. The choppers were still there but only hooked up if I accidentally slowed the lure down - they were becoming painful. So having kept one fish it was time to head to Orchid and catch up with Dagwood.
I passed a number of groups fishing on the way north around Cathedral Beach and Dundabarra and just south of Indian. There were some choppers being caught early morning with only dart available by around 8am. Guys using spinners around Happy Valley had had a good morning with a lot of choppers being cleaned as I went through.
Met up with Darryl at Orchid and renewed aquaintances with Ken and Kay who had lived in Teewah some time ago. Darryl more or less covers the next 3 days in his post including mention of fuel incidents that just aren't important in the scheme of things, but I guess if you can't report on the fish you're catching ......
Friday I parted company with Darryl and the boys at Poyungan with the tailor still chewing in front of us. So I spent the afternoon playing with them but finding nothing better than about 2kg. Next morning at first light had some quality tailor between 3 and 4 kg ready to take the lure as soon as it landed. I'd beached 6 really fat and obviously carrying roe tailor before they were replaced by a large school of 2kg fish which kept me entertained for a couple of hours before I started to really knock up. From then it was a case of catch tailor for an hour and rest for an hour. With the smaller high tides the gutter was fishable all day and it held fish all day. On dusk some nice healthy tailor around 3kg invaded the gutter and created havoc amongst all the other fish which started fleeing in all directions. After beaching the 2nd one and cramping badly between the shoulder blades it was game over for the day.
Next morning was the same in that there were good tailor early and then choppers if you couldn't avoid them after that. A few gts around 2kg didn't have a problem with the fast lures though. At that stage a few guys from the Pine Rivers Soccer Club turned up for a weeks camping at Browns Rocks. I'd already warned them that the fishing at the top had been very bad but they either didn't believe me or just wanted that Cape experience. So off to Browns we went.
Ngkala Rocks is a bit tricky at the moment with a large hole formed at the base of the run up to the South Ngkala crossing. Many vehicles (including 3 attempts by me earlier in the week) had been having trouble here and it had dug out further. Some just weren't getting through it and there were many damaged vehicles from their attempts. And not that it was really worth getting through from a fishing point of view as hardly anything other than a few small dart, the very odd chopper and 1 or 2 trevally were caught north of here in my time on the island. Stayed at Browns for 2 nights and despite working fairly hard with spinners and poppers here and at the cape wasn't able to raise a scale. The boys with baits were only finding the odd dart but things were starting to look a little better than earlier in the week when no fish were visible at all. Whiting were very sparse with one local getting only 2 fish from a day at the cape.
Tuesday morning I left the boys at Browns to head back down to Poyungan. On the way down there were lots at Cathedrals cleaning tailor but nothing being caught other than dart. Poyungan was again loaded with choppers but after beaching 7 or 8 I'd had enough and decided the comforts of home were next on the agenda.
Techniques used - Nearly all the choppers were caught on slow lures or lures retrived quickly early and then slowed. Most of the greenbacks were caught on flat out retrieves and the rest on 'drop backs'. The gts all on fast lures.
Slider size - I used 65 gram Sliders early and late for larger fish or on fuller tides when extra distance was required to reach the whitewater. 45 gram Sliders did the job the rest of the time other than around dead low when I used the 40 gram to reduce body stress further.
Conditions the whole time I was there were near perfect with 2 separate small groundswells adding the vital whitewater component. Winds were mostly westerlies with a sea breeze in the afternoon.
I kept 3 fish in all, one of which Darryl mentioned was consumed with reefies and was just as good or better than the reefies and the others I gave to a friend that was struggling to find fish on Orchid.
A very enjoyable week and one helped by the company of Darryl, Craig, Steve and Harry - almost had a tear in my eye when you drove off (I'd have to cook my own meals from now on).
While the gutter formations with rock in them last around Poyungan and Yidney then the tailor will keep going into them. They chewed right through the moon phase although the quality dropped a bit with the slack tides. North of Indian will remain inconsistent and depends greatly on what the netters do.
Sorry for the lack of photos of fish but fish won't survive out of water long enough for a photo and still be released. With the majority of fish being in roe, I don't like to keep them.
Lindsay
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Originally Posted by chicken
