First up I would like to apologise for not posting in over a week! I have had my Dad up from Batemans Bay and have been rather busy. Yes, we went fishing, but I didn’t have time to write about it until now. Easiest to put all our trips into one report.
Dad arrived in Townsville on Thursday 8th January at about lunch time. I picked him up from the airport and discussions immediately turned to fishing. Seabreeze had the weather at 20/30knots for pretty much the entire time he would be here. So we decided to head out that night while the winds were still ok.
After sunset the put the boat in and headed to West Point for the night. Fortunately the wind did drop off considerably after dark and we had a good run across. We anchored up on a good mark and put over the squid light. It was a full moon, but the there was plenty of cloud cover. So I had high hopes of getting some squid. But it didn’t happen. Never saw a squid all night. But we managed a couple of good fish on dead baits anyway. I got a good Grunter, and Dad one of the biggest Grassy Sweetlip I have seen. There were some other smaller Nannygai and a few sharks around too. But we didn’t tangle with the many BIG fish that were showing on the sounder all night. Possibly Fingers that didn’t want a dead bait.
Next morning we collected some live bait and attempted to head wide. The forecast had the winds building during the morning. But as we headed wide the winds built with us. Buy the time we reached our mark we were tossing around in a full 20knots. Impossible to fish properly we turned around and headed back. Wow, what a trip that was.
Back at West Point and fished a few marks with the live bait. Dad managed a nice GT and a small Queenfish. But not much else for the day. We headed back about lunch time.
Winds where then in, so our next trip was south to fish some freshwater. Saturday morning we headed off in search or Tarpon. I was keen to get Dad onto some of these 2-3kg fish from my favorite Tarpon spot. But it just didn’t fire. We gave it about an hour and when we hadn’t had so much as a hit it was time to move on. With the big morning tide I though we might give Alva Beach a try. It was still pretty early, and the winds were not too bad. We hit the beach to find the tide racing in. Dad managed one keeper fish, and I tagged and released a smaller one. The tide soon flooded the area and we had to head off.
Next we hit some freshwater areas of the Haughton river. Dad caught a lovely Sooty Grunter under a tree hanging over the water. But it was quiet. A change of location on the river had us hooking up to smaller Sooties and small Barramundi one after the other. I tagged and released about 8 small Barra, and we caught about the same number of Sooty Grunter. A great session.
Then the rains came….Our next trip was again south to fish the Fresh. But everything except my Tarpon spot was flooded out. Luckily the Tarpon played the game and Dad caught his first fish. I missed about 6 fish in a row. All dropping the plastic on the first jump. But I finally managed one. We had a drive around the flooded areas for a look. But soon headed for home.
Our final chance to get out on the boat came Thursday. Winds were dropping with just a few showers coming through. So off we headed. I didn’t leave too early. No point running around in the dark after floods, too many logs!! It was a nice morning and we got a clean run across the bay to West Point. There was a fair swell out there, but fishable. But none of the marks had anything on them. Not even bait. A complete waste of time. Only change for a fish was to head to cleaner waters. So I ran around the back of the island in the hope to reach the North Cardinal. It was pretty wild back there. Only light winds, but a very sloppy sea. And it wasn’t worth it anyway. Nothing on any of the channel markers. So we headed home early.
That afternoon we had one last trip south. Again the Tarpon had shut down. And everything else was still running hard. We just were not meant to fish that Thursday! Dad then left for home first thing Friday morning. I hope we put on some better weather next time he is up.