14 September 2008

Beautiful Day on the Water

Conditions were just begging for a decent day's fishing yesterday. So ute and boat loaded up, and off to Fishers Creek we went again.

The Fishers Creek ramp is at the top of a narrow set of tidal creeks. Combine this with a big tide, and we had to be careful about timing our on and off ramp activities. We hit the water at about 8am, and set off for the Boat Passage/Hinchinbrook Passage intersection, site of last weeks almighty bust-off. I was keen to have another crack at whatever it was.



The conditions were magnificent, not a breath of wind, nor a ripple on the surface. Unfortunately good conditions don't always translate to catching fish, and this was the case. We did however come across this happy little fellow:



He would have been a good 500 metres from anything resembling a mangrove, and in what many would consider 'open water'. Lesson: Don't swim anywhere up here! You will be chomped. (Note to self: That's the 4th croc sighting for this trip).

So we slowly worked our way back down the Boat Passage, trying various creek run offs, sand banks, and channel intersections. Finally hit a good bank at about mid-tide, and started to get into a few grunter - I think we left there with 3 good fish. But with the dropping tide, plus a dragging anchor, we had to hightail it back to the ramp and try and get the boat out, or face the prospect of being 'stuck' out for another 6 hours.

And stuck we were. Just couldn't get to the ramp, with the creek being closed off by a very shallow sandbank. So much to my secret delight, back out we went.

Fishing up here seems to get pretty slow around the slack tides, so apart from a single grunter, which I suspect was in the wrong place at the wrong time, fishing was very slow until late afternoon. But again, mid tide, the bite came back on, once we found a decent bank to fish.

This bank ended up producing 2 bream, a fat little golden trevally, and a screaming run on Marc's 10kg outfit, which gave him a fair bit of curry. My mouth was watering, I was thinking barra, or queenie, maybe a GT, or even a small shark. It however, turned out to be this:



A rather large blue-spotted stingray. Line was cut, and Mr Ray sent back to the depths.

Final take-home score for the day: 4 grunter and 1 trevally. Grunter ranged from 43 down to 30, and the trevor weighed in at 39. And a further 3 bream released. So pretty darn happy with the outcome.

And a good day out to wrap up the trip on as well. Off home to the cold on Tuesday. Brr!

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