queensland 5 weeks of Winter

[fenelious]

G'day, I've just had 5 weeks off and am now back at work, but while I was off I managed to get in a bit of fishing so thought I'd give a bit of an overview of how it all went.

The plan was to concentrate on the dams and also try the salt for the first time with the help of a mate who loves it. I'm putting it all in the freshwater section but I did a bit of both, I hope that's ok.

First up, after a couple of solo trips to NPD for a doughnut and a single bass and a bucket of redclaw, I was off to Borumba Dam for an overnighter in the canoe with my saltwater enthusiast buddy. We were hoping to land a couple of Toga, but ended up with 3 Bass in an afternoon and a morning of fishing. It was a fun trip though and a great location, it was both our first time at that dam and I'll definately be going back soon.

Next my (same bloke) mate had to take me out to the estuaries for an afternoon to show me a thing or two about the salt water, so we headed to Donnybrook in the canoe with outrigger attached. He put me to shame, landing 3 flathead and 5 bream on a combination of lures and plastics, but I got 3 bream, and the best bream of the day at 30cm, and my first ever lure caught bream. Here he is:

We kept one flathead and my larger bream.

Next was a couple more trips to NPD. One yielded a single bass on shrimp which I let go. Next trip was a bit better - 4 Bass, a catfish and a turtle! all on shrimp. We kept 2 bass and a bucket of redclaw between the two of us.

Another trip to NPD got a mate 2 Bass on shrimp, which I think from memory we kept the larger one. That was a bad day for the redclaw unfortunately, only 2 or 3 in each pot:

In there amongst all that too were a couple of land based walks at upper NPD (for nothing), and Kurwongbah Dam for the first time for me, hoping to get a nice photo of a Toga that I'd heard should be in there. Despite my best efforts using surface lures and shallow minnows in amongst the lilly pads and weeds, all I got was Bass which of course went straight back in. So I'll be leaving that one alone until at least Spring.

Next was a trip me and my salty mate had been planning for a while whilst overseas - a 2 nighter up to Tin Can Bay in my outrigger.

I gotta say the fishing was on the whole dissapointing, but the trip was still a lot of fun - the final tally for 2 days of lure and bait fishing was 1 undersized flathead on a bibbed minnow, about 20 what we think are called Pike all on bibbed minnows, and about 5 Whiting on worms. The highlight was me catching 7 Pike(?) in 7 consecutive casts with a Strike Pro Bass X lure! I caught about 10 or 12 in that spot. Does anyone know if these fish are any good to eat? My mate didn't really know but said they'd probably be full of bones so we didn't keep any, except a couple for bait (which didn't work).

We kept 3 Whiting which we fried up on the fire for dinner (delicious entre to a more substantial feed of tinned food!)

A typical sized 'Pike' - they loved a slowly retrieved bibbed minnow and would come back and hit it repeatedly if you gave it plenty of pauses, so a suspending one was best.

Stopping off at a rare non-mangrove-covered bank for a snack and a leg stretch.

So yeah we were hoping to get some flathead, bream, maybe mangrove jack, but the fish just weren't really around. My mate cast his cast net around to get some bait and find out what was in there, but usually came up completly empty, only got a handful of mullet on a couple of occasions. He was really surprised. Luckily those Pike were a bit of fun.

It's a really nice spot though, and I love camping out. I'd go back if I thought the fishing would improve maybe in the warmer months.

So that was about it. I got plenty of fishing in, caught a few, learnt a bit of new stuff, caught up with a few mates, and only lost 2 lures!

See ya next time :-)

-Steve.

[Surfingant]

Good work mate, congrats on the first

[Guest]

Enjoyed the report/pictures, good to see you smiling means your having lots of fun

Top Work

Cheers

Darren

[eg_vtec]

nice mate. must of been good being able to go for a fish

[Dinodadog]

well done mate good to see you getting a few at NPD

[jnewy]

it looked like you had a great time

[madmullet]

good report mate....

people do eat pike ( an equired taste ) but they are a gun bait. no legal limit on them

[Perky]

Great report mate, and i love the canoe setup.

[dan25]

Cool report mate, and some nice catches too

Nice one