Townsville

TOWNSVILLE Dave Hodge

Leading up to the end of barra season, it’s amazing to think about how different this season has been to the previous half a dozen.

Two of our favourite creeks have been absolutely environment, and it’s hard to predict what’s going to hit your lure next.

What has been a surprise is how many small GTs and queenfish have been smashing lures, and they’re right up in the snags where you’re expecting to jacks. We’ve been hit by GTs up to 10kg and a few decent queenfish, bit of extra insurance gives you confidence when the unexpected happens.

INSHORE WATERS Fingermark

Once considered a warm weather species, fingermark have featured heavily in catches this last month or two, and even though live squid are widely regarded as the number one bait for chasing them at any time of year, there has been a lot of fish taken while trolling larger 125mm Halco RMG Scorpions.

And they’re bloody good fish!

Britney has been cleaning up recently trolling lures in 10-15m of water, with her biggest going 88cm and numerous 70cm plus models. Trolled at around the 3-knot mark, plenty of mackerel are smashing her offerings as well.

Since her telling customers about this technique and how to do it, need for total transparency to legitimise any potential true concerns that may arise concerning any part of the fishery will be scrutinised by recreational and commercial sectors as well. angler yet who disagrees with a closed season on the Spanish mackerel during the actual spawn time, and a short closure can only be a good thing.

Mackerel catches around Townsville have been fantastic this season, with fish of all sizes being taken on lures and trolled bait such as wolf herring and gar. It’s a confidence thing, and if you have confidence in what you’re using you’ll usually succeed with it.

Plenty of Billfish have been getting involved in recent weeks for those trolling for Spanish, so be prepared for your fish to take to the air on hook-up! Some people believe the hook-up ratio to be much better if the trebles are swapped out for big singles when chasing billies, but I’ll leave that one up to you to decide!

Anyway, let’s see what eventuates over the next couple of weeks, and if the weather gods are kind, we may all get some extra time on the water.

Britney Leroy with a typical golden snapper (fingermark) taken trolling a 125mm Halco RMG Scorpion.

hammered by the commercial sector, and the fishing results have reflected this. The majority of the captured fish have been undersized, and actually finding legal fish has been difficult.

More frequent rain and crappy weather during winter did make it difficult to get consistent water temperatures, as they dropped and rose according to the wind. Now with spring upon us there should be less cool weather and more of those stinking hot days that knock you around by lunchtime. The prediction of another La Niña event has everyone including anglers, farmers and residents of NQ on edge.

This last couple of months the jacks were a lot less active than you’d expect, and it’s only after we had several days in a row of warmer weather that we had a few good session on them. We chased them down deeper this season most of the time, and I think that’s because of the surface wind chill factor, which is a fairly typical scenario when the waters are cooler.

The plus has been the amount of golden snapper (fingermark) that we have intercepted accidentally while doing this. Small vibes, weedless plastics and the Halco Whiptails Jigs are working well in this sort of and that’s pretty unusual, but it generally doesn’t last long when this happens. Poppers like the 80mm Halco Rooster Popper will definitely get you a bent rod.

If you’re teaching someone to use lures you can expect some action packed sessions at the moment, especially with smaller plastics. While they’re no good on the plate, they do fight really hard and pass a bit of time between more desirable species.

Grunter have also been quite active in the creeks and on the flats, and plenty of people are getting them dialled in on lures. Maybe it’s their timing, and it may also be the lures that people are experimenting with, but there has been an increase in people catching grunter on lures.

Smaller vibes and plastics have always been well accepted by grunter, and one of our favourites is the Atomic Semi HardZ Vib 50. These are usually thrown on our lightest outfits around drain mouths and drop-off areas. Other lures that get their share of action are the Halco 4” Paddle Prawns and the Atomic 3” Prongs rigged on the 1/6-1/4oz jigheads with a no. 1 hook in the heavy wire. The reason for the heavier hook is the regular accidental hook-ups on decent barra, and that she’s helped many anglers catch their PBs. Running 30lb braid and 40lb leader helps them to get down that extra bit in the deeper water. The liquid lime green and Purple Stripes has been her ‘go-to’ colours. Mackerel

It’s no wonder there was a backflip on the controversial mackerel proposals on bag limits recently, as the ‘supposed’ results from claimed research was proven to be far from accurate. First there was the claims on shark numbers being decimated, which proved to be totally false, and now the mackerel debacle.

Isn’t it becoming more and more obvious that those ‘scientists’ are totally discrediting any future claims that they may decide to propose? Anglers have had enough of being used as scapegoats for those with personal agendas, and the

Fishers are now realising just how powerful a united voice can be, and they deserve to have a voice given that they are considerable contributors to the economy. I have not met one recreational

The author and talented angler Mick Rennie with a double header from a deeper school.

Natural colours like this pumpkin with red fleck Atomic Prong are hard to beat when the waters clear up. Fished on a 1/3oz jighead they’re hard for most fish to refuse.