What’s New On The Rock
One of the side issues of the massive rains locally is pollution. We can all help on the island. Our creeks and along the beaches have bottles and plastic crap in them. Don’t walk past the rubbish. On your exercise walk or dog walk take a bag and help clean it up before the next rains wash it out to the reef. Walk a creek bank or beach front. and grab as much rubbish as you can. If you need a bag or drop off spot for the rubbish come to Magnetic Adventure & Hire. One of the most polluted is Endeavour Creek at Horseshoe Bay, it’s a shocker. There’s even abandoned tents, campsites and fire pits along the floodplain, ruined by floodwaters and left to rot.
The island pilgrimage to watch the super tides will be on again this week, 4.18 and 4.15 Tuesday and Wednesday respectively, that’s huge. Picnic Bay only sees the massive influx of locals during king tides and wild weather as they love to check out and photograph the Jetty. Here is some interesting info to plan your way around the king tides. The tide variance even in small areas like Townsville region can be more than you would think. For example, most people look at the tides at Townsville, where on Tuesday it is 4.18m at 8.56. However, you can refine your tides to your area on BOM. Tide data is extremely accurate.
Horseshoe Bay is 4.18m at 8.52am (Start there)
Nelly Bay is 8.53am
Picnic Bay 8.54am
Westpoint is not till 9.02am
However only a short distance away Palm Island has only a 3.75 tide, as its biggest this week, a huge difference.
The Barra farm in Townsville is open again, someone asked about it, so I checked. Give them some support, its been a tough year for many businesses, and it’s a great family day.
Fishing Maggie
Andy caught and released his first big Barra of the year. The only problem was he didn’t plan on the release bit. Andy was out doing live bait fishing, along the mangroves and had been live mullet fishing for a while, the fish being happy and untouched, when he decided to rig a line for lures. As things happening on fishing trips, as soon as he put the rod down and diverted attention elsewhere a massive Barra smashed the livies and performed spectacular aerial action, before self-releasing, with Andy’s eyes staring daggers after it.
Dave was out at Brewer reef, and there were big Mackerel down deep, and they were fat and hungry, smashing pillies and giving the boys a top day’s action, as well as filling the esky. The whole day they were fishing there was a behemoth GT circling the boat, 30 kg plus. No matter how much action was happening the beast wouldn’t take a bait or lure, but just kept an eye on the action. Later in the day the boys caught a juvenile Coral Trout, just undersize and released it, the smart fish went full noise toward the boat and swallowed the fish in a second, thanks very much.
Grunter have been on the chew, as has big Jacks 50 plus cm along the western side. With a couple of bonus crabs, the inshore fishing has been exceptional finally. The ravenous Jacks have been taking strip bait more readily than live or whole bait, and lures have also been a tough gig. The most effective have been the ZMan Soft 4-5inch plastics. The new range of chaserbait prawns has also been working well, getting the Jacks in the rocks on the dropping tides.
Ray got out to Broadhurst for 5 days, leaving us to run the shop. He reported fresh water and flotsam all the way out to the reef. All reports in had many shark stories, they don’t seem to have settled down and were even challenging anglers with electric reels. Electric reels can often get the fish up before the sharks eat them but not last week where the ravenous hunters were faster than most anglers. Ray and the team got plenty of Coral Trout, Nannygai and Emperors in a great few days. The massive tides made getting baits down extremely difficult, but all the fish were very active.
Until next time gone Fishin’…. be back at dark-thirty
Cheers Dale
Fish’n N Fuel’n Sports and Tackle
36 Mandalay Ave, Nelly Bay 4778-5126 For all of your fishing and sports hire gear. We hire and sell fishing rods, snorkel equipment, bait, tackle, ice, spear fishing equipment, sports, party, pool toys, bike and E-bike hire, car hire and convenience supplies. Check out Kooler 24-hour Ice 7kg $5.
