PHP Warning: Use of undefined constant VBA_SCRIPT - assumed 'VBA_SCRIPT' (this will throw an Error in a future version of PHP) in ..../includes/functions_navigation.php(802) : eval()'d code on line 1 Mapoon 22-28 October (Late Report)
Recently got away up the Cape for my first proper (i.e drive in and camp, rather than fly in) hit out up there for a couple of years. To say we had an absolute ball was an understatement.
Left here late Friday afternoon after picking up my mate Adrian from the Airport and kept heading north, camping at Musgrave for the night. We arrived in Weipa before midday on the saturday and after picking up my brother and his girlfriend Tomie, another mate Gavin, and importantly Brendan's 16 foot centre console, we arrived in Mapoon an hour north of weipa by mid afternoon. We set up camp and had a quick fish off the beach that night, deciding we'd wait until the morning to put the boat in.
It's terrible fishing off the beach, the first night at camp
With the weather gods smiling, the decision was quickly made the first morning to head out to Kerr Reef some 9 nautical miles offshore in the Gulf of Carpentaria. After a fairly short trip out with 5 on board, we quickly anchored up on the outside of the reef in the hope of nailing a few nice fingermark and trout and other reefies. It was soon clear that the tide was running the wrong way, with no real ledges facing into the current to be found, and with little knowledge of the reef, the birds and mackeral and tuna working all around us became too much and we opted to have a bit of a troll to find some action.
With lures despatched, we only went about 50 metres (literally) when the first hit came and the tld's ratchet screamed out.
Adrian made short work of a nice mackeral and Gavin made no mistake with the gaff shot and our first decent fish of the trip came on board.
We continued trolling and worked our way wide of the reef in the hope of finding some deeper bommies to fish. With the sounder showing a flat bottom, we worked back towards the reef proper (and the countless birds and crashing fish) and as soon as we crossed the reef edge Adrian's Tld screamed off again. Another nice mack came on board and we were having a ball.
Further trolling produced countless other hits, and plenty of early and boatside releases. At one point Brendan's lure played up and was "poppering" along the surface. The mackeral didn't seem to mind as one monster absolutely smashed it from below spearing out of the water after the hit, the hooks soon pulled, but it was an awesome hit.
We worked our way to the north end of the Reef and found some good ledges and, as luck would have it, the current had turned and was now pushing into them.
We opted to bottom fish and had an awesome session pulling some nice Fingermark, trout and other reefies, including some monster Grassies.
Tomie also landed two monster mackeral in quick succession after extended fights.
Soon after that we gave it away for the day, and with the westerly sea breeze starting to build, we left the fish biting to have a good run home.
With Tomie and Gavin departed back to Weipa for work , the remaining three of us (myself Adrian and Brendan) opted to head back out to Kerr Reef again on the Monday.
The day could not have been more different, with no birds or mackeral working anywhere.
Still, we managed a nice assortment of reefies bottom fishing and worked out some ways to get quality fish with the current running to the north.
With some nice trout and fingermark , we opted to leave the mackeral alone this day.
With the Weather still awesome, we decided that we'd do a run up to the Skardon River on the Tuesday, about 10-12 Nautical Miles up the coast from Cullen Point.
On arrival at the mouth, the Skardon is a magical river, with a bottle neck mouth full of schools of working queenfish. We by-passed these hoping to get some quality fish. Our first scout around the river found the water to be almost crystal clear with the tide pushing in. We cruised up a few side creeks hoping to find some dirtier water only to find the clear water was everywhere. Still its awesome to run up a river when you can clearly see all manner of fish cruising about in the snags and river channels.
We eventually managed to find some cloudier water and settled in to try and get a few jacks out of the snags.
Our first drop produced some monster pikey bream, and one nice little barra for me. Being closed season in the Gulf, it was quickly released. It was soon to become clear that the river was full of these little jelly bean barra
At the next snag, i lost a solid jack soon aftyer hook-up. We persisted with bait, but could not get past the big pikey bream which were in plague proportions. Lures cast into the snags were immediately belted by barra after barra. No matter what we did to try and get a jack out of those snags on lures - all we could get were Barra
shortly after this, a huuuuge groper tried to monster a small barra I had on at the boatside. we gave the live mullet away after that.
We'd had passed a good looking rock bar on the way upstream and intended to fish it for jacks on the way back, but unfortunately couldn't recall where it was with the higher tide and not wanting to risk a bent prop so far from camp, decided to call it a day. We did score a nice Golden Trevally trolling out through the heads though.
Back at camp that afternoon, we managed to finally land a fish on the cheap gumby rods we had brought up as a competition to see who could get the biggest fish on.
I landed a small queenie and nice salmon on mine, whilst brendan only managed to get spooled three times
On the Wednesday, we opted to have a "rest" day and simply ran the short trip across the mouth of Port Musgrave to Namaleta Creek.
Doing it real tough, we found small barra laid on at just about every snag, feeding well on the run in tide.
I let Adrian have a crack at my Calcutta, to see the difference using the quality reel and graphite rod. He proceeded to get monstered by a huge barra right at our feet and nearly got dragged over the gunnel before the braid parted like a shot.
Pushing further up the creek, we found a rock bar a long way upstream and Adrian made the call that he'll pull a big cod off it. Not a minute later he had fooled a nice 5 kilo estuary cod on his live mullet. "Time to go now" he skited.
Back down river later in the day, some trolling along a bank that had produced the goods on previous trips again produced with me nailing a nice fingermarkof around 2 kilos and Adrian scoring a nice little black jew.
fishing the hole at the end of the rock bar that afternoon on the top of the tide, we hoped to nail some big black jew. They didn't play the game, but we did manage plenty of blue salmon, mostly small but with some nice ones to 3 or 4 kilos, it was a nice way to end the "rest day".
that afternoon, as every afternoon, we again got into some more blue salmon and queenfish off the beach, while the storms rolled in from the north.
With only one full day of fishing left, we decided to head out to Kerr Reef again on the Thursday.
We again had a great session, with good fingermark and huge Grassy sweetlip coming on board. We trolled a bait ball that was being crashed by all manner of species and caught grey mackeral one after the other. Brendan also scored a very solid longtail tuna which we converted into a number of fingermark.
Brendan also hooked the biggest cobia i've seen in my life. Thinking it was a shark (we'd run into a few that morning) he'd merely pulled it in on the handline (all of our hands were stuffed from the 4 previous days fishing). When it hit the surface every bit of 6 foot long and over 1 foot wide at the head, he didn't even have time to react when it hit the afterburners and straightened the hook. It was a monster.
we also had some awesome "sight fishing" for mackeral that day, with huge spanish taking live stripies in plain view, one even hitting the bait on the surface spearing straight back towards the boat. it was great stuff.
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with the gaff shot and our first decent fish of the trip came on board.
, the remaining three of us (myself Adrian and Brendan) opted to head back out to Kerr Reef again on the Monday.
we gave the live mullet away after that.
