The Plan was simple enough - with the new moon coming on in a couple of days, a week of northerlies and the last 9 day closure for the season ruling out all coral reef fin fish, everything was screaming fingermark. So after leaving work early friday afternoon and doing a quick drive up to Daintreeboy's brothers place at wonga to pick up the boat, Daintreeboy and I hit the water at the Daintree ramp just before dark intent on heading out to fish our favourite fingermark spot off a headland north of the Daintree river mouth.
Unfortunately the boat had other plans and an electrical problem saw us rowing 50 feet back to the ramp and putting the boat back on the trailer - very annoying to find that once on the trailer everything was working again.
But given that the problem could return we decided we could do nothing but head back to Wonga and have a few beers at a party over the road.
To cut a long story short, on the drive back to wonga we decided that given the weather we couldn't miss the trip so passed on the party, loaded up the tinny instead and headed back to Daintree to launch for the second time.
We got out to our spot at about 9:00pm and had squid under the light within 5 minutes - a great signA smallish large mouth nannygai in the first 10 minutes showed us we were in the right spot, pity it had to go back due to the closed season.
it wasn't long before i was into a nice fish and a nice little fingermark came on board - at about 1.5 kilos it wasn't a monster but a nice fish all the same.
despite numbers of squid in the light, we couldn't get many of any size - first big one down was smashed in no time and Daintreeboy wasinto a good fish - at any other time we would have loved to see the 4 kilo gold spot coming on board, but again given the closure it had to go back.
Wasn't long before i got smashed by a serious fish and the "freight train" call rang out. It proved to be a good fish and later weighed in at 5.5 kilos cleaned.
The fishing was constant. and if not for the lack of squid we could get in the boat (there was plenty there but they just wouldn't play the game and take our jigs or come close enough for the net) we would have caught more big fish, but our final tally of 6 fingermark, with 3 at 5.5 kilos cleaned and 2 at about 2 kilos and the smaller 1.5 kilos fish, we had had a good night.
The fact that i had 5 fingermark to Daintreeboy's one made it all the sweeter. He had not had a bad night, just that his nannygai, two gold spot cod and large Grassy sweetlip all had to go back due to the closures. Daintreeboy also got a hairtail, not all that commonly seen up this way, and the mother of all stingrays on a handline.
Coming home at 3:00 in the morning, our last challenge was to navigate into the Daintree and up to the ramp on a .11 metre low tide with no moon to help - made for a slow trip up river that's for sure.
Anyway, here's some piccies of a great night's fishing
