Weipa Fishing Report
http://www.strikezonesportsfish.com.au
January, 2006
Weather: Typical wet season weather, sunny one minute then pouring with rain the next.
Wind has been switching around from Southeast to Northwest 5 - 25 knots.
January is a quite time here in Weipa most days are spent in doors out of the rain and the wind. A good opportunity to catch up on all that paperwork that comes with running a small business. Setting up and planning for the year ahead, organizing the trips for the year, etc…
An exciting thing that I have been working on this month is planning our new web site to which this report will be attached. My new web designer Stuart Tremain from idfk web developments, came highly recommended and I can see why. Stuart brings new and exciting ideas and improvements to the site. The new site will include fly recipes, guest book; new fishing reports, photo gallery and much more, the site will be constantly upgraded and improved. We would like to receive input, ideas that will make the site more interesting, if you have a fly recipe, a story or information that you would like to see on the site e-mail me the details and if its relative, it will be added to the site.
I have managed to sneak out a couple of times during the month, fishing with my family mostly, we have been heading out on early mornings. Fishing a place called Westminster, about 20 minute trip south of Weipa. I have a few rocks marked in 8 metres of water a good place for reef spieces like Finger Mark, these fish are closely related to the Mangrove Jacks in shape and pulling power. We have caught Finger Mark up to 15kgs, can you imagine how hard a 15 kg Jack would pull? They swim in large schools going from reef to reef looking for bait fish, this is the reason why they hard to find sometimes.
When a school is found its normally actions stations as long as the fish think there is food in the area they will hang around. A good trick is to keep a hooked fish in the water, while that fish is thrashing around, the other fish will stay close; berley can have the same affect. The best way I have found to locate these fish is by trolling extra deep diving lures, I always have other rods rigged with lead head jigs. Once a hooked fish gets close to the boat drop down the jigs normally the other fish will be all over them and then a great fishing session begins. There are only a few lures that I have found that get down to 8 metres although there are quite a lot that claim too. Halco Crazy Deeps are one of my favorite for this. Although trolling is my least favorite way to catch fish it is an affective way to cover a lot of water in a short time, which can be the difference between lots of fish and no fish. We slowed down as we approached the spot with all the rods rigged and ready to go, we dropped over the lures. It wasn’t long before we come up to the rocks my wife Nicole and son Johnny where holding a rod each. The lures tapped the rocks as they were towed across them. Nicole’s reel started screaming, these aren’t small out fits Penn 15 kg power sticks & spin fishers 850’s with 30 lb fire line. A few seconds later Johnny’s rod was bent over backwards two good fish definitely Finger Mark, excellent we where on to them, I thought to my self. This end-up as a very brief encounter with both fish making it back to the rocks, the 70 lb leaders cut like cotton. Thirty dollars in lures, gone in a few minutes, “great”. I quickly grabbed the other rods, we dropped the jig’s to the bottom lifted them off the bottom half a metre and then began jigging. The boat slowly drifted away from the rocks without a bite, we had blowen our chance. We drifted over the spot a few more times with no luck at all; it was plain to see these fish had hightailed it. I had a few more rocks marked on the GPS a few hundred metres away so we headed off to try them. We motored off to the next set of rocks; we decided to try the jigs again. Dropping them down to the bottom then up a few turns of the reels handle and then bounce the rod tip. My daughter Jaymie was the first to hook up, a good solid fish, heading to the surface and fast. The fish broke the surface a big Queenfish jumped into the air trying desperately to dislodge the jig. The Queenfish kept Jaymie on her toes for the next 15 minutes, we landed the fish for a couple of quick photo’s then released.
Johnny was next to hook-up the fish was fighting hard to make it back to the bottom which it did, bricked him. I got Johnny to release the pressure, sometime the fish just swim free of the structure which it did,” sometime you win”. Johnny quickly loaded the rod again and got the fish off the bottom, before long he had a nice Coral Trout on the surface. “Yum baked Trout”, we landed the fish and were going to get a few photos of the Trout before dispatching it. Johnny held the fish up for a shot, I got one photo then ask him to move for another, then the fish seemed to get a look at freedom and with a flick of it’s tail the fish come free of Johnathan’s grip bounced on the gunal, then into the water “and some times you lose”.
I am not sure if the Trout tipped off the other fish but it was the last one we had caught there. We decided to give trolling another chance so I tied on two more lures and we trolled off heading towards home. About fifteen minutes later Johnny hooked up again to another solid fish, I kept the boat going forward slowly to see if we could get another bite on the other lure. This didn’t work; I knocked the motor out of gear and instructed Nicole wind-in quickly. Her lure was just about in when she had a strike, the reel drag was singing again. Johnny’s fish had worked its way free and Nicole had just turned her fish for the first time. Nicole was locked in a to a tug of war for twenty-five minutes until we got the first glimpse of colour, a big Giant Trevally. It was about another ten minutes until the fish was up on the surface. I was keen for some more photos, but Nicole’s arms had turned to jelly after the fight so we decided to release the fish in the water.
By this time a strom in the distance was brewing up a few lighting bolts. Although the storm was along way away I was feeling a bit like a floating conductor and decided to head for home early, plenty on time to defrost some steak.
Tight Lines
Craig Jenkins
