Daintree Dreaming!

The Daintree / Cape Tribulation region had copped a heap of rain last week. One local tour operator at the boat ramp mentioned that over 380mm had fallen in 24 hours.

Now that's a lot of water!

Heading north to fish the Daintree is always a bit of a gamble at this time of the year. A heavy overnight downpour can drop inches of rain and the resultant run off turns the river to tomato soup like colour - not good for lure fishing I can assure you.

But in spite of the aforementioned heavy falls, the river looked a treat as we rounded Humbug Bend on our way to the township. This is the first spot to get a glimpse of the river through the trees and its always a bit of a lottery - will it look clear / clean or dirty? We were in luck.

We launched without incident, had a quick chat to the local tour guide - he told us that the river has had five recent "Flood Events" this season and showed us how high it had reached earlier in the week. Thankfully the river drops quite quickly without monsoon rain or cyclonic conditions off the coast so we were soon on our way, whisking upstream as fast as my little punt would carry us.

Up past the little island, up past the rocky outcrop, up past the main island divide, up past the CREB track......way, way upstream we travelled and all in relatively ease. The river was still quite high and the further up the narrowing valley we travelled, the more "compressed" the river width so hence, a easy trip over the many rapids until we dared not go any further.

We settled up under a shady rainforest tree and had a welcome cup of coffee.

 

Brett at the "top" of the Daintree

 

My new Quantum spin reel - a beauty!

My god mate, Brett Parks, was with me this trip...he had never traversed this far upstream before so was quite impressed with our location, the surrounding beauty of this unspoilt stretch of tropical rain forest and of course, my boating skills!!!

Clipping on my favourite flat jack lure we got down to business. Now the river up here was flowing quite quickly, we had to have our wits about us. Cast too far upstream (behind structure) and you will hook up and have to start the main motor to power back to extract it. Such a pain!

Cast to fast flowing water and you're likely to suffer the same fate, you had to be quite particular, look for and cast to likely fish holding "locations". Remember....its not where you fish, BUT how you fish!

Too many anglers ask me "where to go" as if there is a magic location / a snag / a junction - like this "SPOT" will guarantee them a prime barra. Sure there are a few such locations that can regularly produce a fish under certain condition / tide cycles / river heights / water temps etc. etc.....get it. But it is far more critical to "THINK LIKE A FISH" and work out consistently where barra & other targets might be feeding!

After years of fishing, I recon I have a pretty good handle on this vital bit of info...but I am still not perfect (I can't walk on water). Colour changes / back eddies / weed beds / under trees / some snags etc. do hold fish. You have to keep travelling, keep trying, keep casting and eventually you will find feeding fish - and learn from the experience, put the "scenario" not the specific "location" in your memory bank and eventually you will build a data base of info that will guide you to more catches and a better angling experience. That's why it is called Fishing and not Catching!

A little juvenile from the backwater

No 2 for Brett

Brett was first to hook up to a lovely little juvenile, it came from a backwater that was overflowing through some paperbarks. A quick pick and back into it. Darn, he was hooked up again....and then for the third time. Hell this was not fair...I was guiding him but hey Brett, give me a go too Ha Ha !

Now that's enough mate!

I was stoked for Brett, to take a keen angler to relatively new waters for him and have him land some lovely barra was so rewarding in itself. But hey mate, it was my turn to shine. Drifting round a gentle bend we found a perfect scenario. A calm backwater with discoloured tea coloured water soaking into the main river. There was plenty of weed here as well to provide cover. Brett was first to hook up to a legal sized barra, it struck his lure with gusto....tore off towards the centre of the river and jumped....free!



My best for the day - check out that lure

Sorry Brett (man that would have been four nil).....I cast to a little gap between the drowned grass, right where the tea coloured water joined the main river....boof....I was on. This barra too did a similar dance, leapt and was gone. I cast back to the same spot and to my surprise, I was on to a quality barra that jumped several times before settling down to a strong steady fight.

She was not a huge fish but certainly a keeper....and it had been ages since I'd landed a legal barra (well, a few weeks anyway) so after a dogged fight, and a quick pick, she was into the live bait tank.

Nice JP Les!

We continued our journey back down the rive; we found schools of plucky little jungle perch up under the shade and actually had one strike right at the boat. We found barra on the grass edges and landed a dozen or so. It was a good day.

By five o'clock we made the decision to pack it in and headed back to the boat ramp, it was two very happy fisherman that made the journey back to Cairns.....where will we go next weekend?

Catch you on the water,
Regards, Les
www.fishingcairns.com.au

Jack Attack!.....a lure test.

Last Saturday was another of those rare days when Debbie had a day off from selling real estate. There was no question as to what we were going to do...it was just a matter of deciding on which river to fish.

During the week I had ventured north to Bransfords Tackle Shop. It was a recon trip to check if my little spinning reel was back from the service guy, to pick up a new tide chart and to catch up with young Matty......all right, all right, I really wanted to check some new lures that had just arrived. There were a few Rapala xxx rap divers in ghost (my new favourite colour) mini Halco poppers and heaps of soft plastics etc. But then Matty showed me this brand new little 2" gold Bomber.

I had to have one!

Readers will all be very familiar with the famous gold bomber Long A...arguably one of the best barra lures ever invented, and its small brother the 3" shallow minnow. But this little beauty was different. It was a bit fatter in shape, had quality VMC hooks and would cast wonderfully well on my sooty outfit.



High Tide at the boat ramp

Loading the tinny

Saturday morning could not come around quick enough, but soon, here was Debbie & I cruising down the Bruce Highway heading for Liverpool Creek. Just out of Cairns the heavens opened up and persistent rain follows us all the way south. When we arrived at our launch spot, the river was high with a 3.4m tide peaking at approx. 9.00am. This, together with the fresh coming down, should give us an easy passage right up the river. I juts love fishing way upstream in our tropical rain forest rivers....the fishing is usually very rewarding and the scenery, well...just stunning!

Now we had not been down there for many months, but I did remember that one of the local bridges connecting farms etc had been damaged by last years flood. As we rounded the bend, what greeted us presented a bit of a challenge. You see, the powers that be had built this brand new concrete bridge. But in their wisdom, they had bolted concrete "buffers" all the way along the sides thus making progress upstream impossible in my boats current configuration.

Approaching the bridge

Under the bridge

Popping out the upside

Made it...lets put the boat back together

Being a resourceful soul, we removed the rocket launcher, took out the bum & middle seat, unbolted the electric and lay down flat on the floor. We inched our way up and under an popped out the other side. Thankfully the tide would drop by almost 3 m throughout the day so unless we had absolutely torrential rain, we would be able to traverse back down quite easily.

Zoom on......way upstream....under the main highway bridge.....past shallow rapids, logs and sand bars etc. and came to rest under the shade of a huge rain forest tree. Time for morning cuppa and breakfast.

Cruising upstream

Main highway bridge 

How's the coffee and muffin Deb?

Readers may remember that Debbie penned a lovely article on the Liverpool Creek several years ago.
It was a reflective piece on how cyclone Larry had ravaged the region. Stripped all the bankside vegetation, smashed most of the trees and absolutely devastated the place. Move on a few years and here we have this gem of a stream recovering very, very well....she is a beautiful little river.

I'm going to try that new Bomber lure baby!

Drifting downstream on the current was a little challenging this day. The river was not in flood, but certainly had enough water to push us along quite swiftly. In fact it did make casting to structure a bit difficult at times. To slow our drift we plonked our "lead blob" over the side and used this a slow our descent. In the faster runs it made for easy fishing...in the slower stretched it was a breeze and with gentle encouragement from the electric we had ideal fishing conditions.

First fish...juvenile barra

I forgot to mention that we did have one brief stop in a quiet backwater on the way up stream. The river height was a worry however, as the high tide had backed up the waters way into the fringing mangroves. In scenarios like this, its darn hard to get old bucket mouth to bite but I did manage one little barra.

The hit came fast and furious! At first I thought that I had hooked up to a little barra, but upon settling into the fight, I realised that I had a feisty jack attached to my shiny new offering. All I could think of at this stage was to land it, take a nice pic for Mathew (Bransfords) and show him that this new lure did work...well on jacks anyway.

Nice jack Les....new gold Bomber 2" lure

This new Bomber lure is quite heavy for its size and casts like a rocket. One small "irritation" however, was that the front treble got caught on the snap quite a few times. I could have played around with different tow point connections etc. or even changed to a smaller hook up front, but I wanted to test this lure "straight out of the box" so to speak and give it a thorough work out.

And a workout I did. Man it was "flavour of the month" (day at least). I caught jacks (they just smashed it), tarpon, JP's and more jacks. How do I rate it - 9.5 out of 10. The front hook configuration the only minor draw back.

Check it out...looking good!

Close up of the pointy end of a jack & lure

Jacks...they just smashed it!

I have used various bomber lures for well over 30 years and this little gem is certainly going to be a regular in my stable of preferred lures.

Now back to the fishing / drifting.

JP's loved it too

A quality jack from the fresh

And another...this was fun

The fish count was mounting, the species caught growing and the fun...well, I just love this kind of fishing. We even played the good Samaritan role at one stage - rounding a bend we found a damsel in distress. She and a few mates were fishing from the bank and she had cast right across the river and hooked her lure onto a snag. "Would you like us to help?" And being the nice guy that I am, I let Debbi retrieve the line while I positioned the boat in the current, putted upstream and jerked the lure from the log. Saved!

You never know what you might see

Young group having fun...we saved the day Ha Ha!

By the time we had made our way downstream to the tidal zone, the river had dropped significantly enough to slow the rushing water. It was a more sedate, gentle trip for the last couple of k's. But the jacks kept coming. And as for the barra. They were very conspicuous by their absence. We only landed the two, but what the heck, the jacks had certainly made up for it.

In all we landed

• 20 jacks (check out more pics below)
• 8 JP's
• 2 barra
• 1 tapon
• 1 sooty

Silver bullet...tarpon

Deb and the only sooty

Now this is a quality JP

Juvenile barra

It was a late trip home made even more so by the many road works on the old Bruce. She is suffering again from the effects of a decent "wet". When will the authorities give us the road network that we deserve?

Catch you on the water.
Regards, Les
www.fishingcairns.com.au

NOTE - Bransfords now have in stock the new tide chart

Jack....shallow shad this time!

Is deb happy?

You bet!

And to top off the day....Jack Attack!