Cooktown

COOKTOWN Justin Coventry

The weather has been great with some amazingly calm days and lots of opportunity to head out further to discover new nannygai there waiting for an easy feed. That first drop and the sudden take as the reel goes ballistic and reel screams its head off as the fish does its initial run. The way they fight you think you have hooked a shark until the fight starts ends up attacking your bait at some stage that produces a fight to remember. Once landed it has not much strength left in it and will take some time to revive before letting go. Also, the swim bladder will need deflating – it can be done easily enough through the side of the fish with either a thin knife and a twist to let air out or a large needle if you have one. Pushing down on the stomach as you do so helps push air out of the hole as well. Cod are hardy creatures and will swim away and hopefully survive the experience. The position of entry on the side is crossover from 4 spine on top fin and in line with the dorsal fin. You will know when you reach it as you will hear the release of air. There is a theory that the big cod help to keep the wonky hole open and clean so releasing it is a good idea and, although small gold spot are nice eating, large ones are best released.

Finding new spots is such a fast rate that it’s going to make any structure out on the reef hard to escape anglers.

The fishing regulations are also increasing, along with the pressure increasing on our fish stocks. Hopefully they manage it well as the fish are running out of places to hide apart from protected areas. Anyway, great to see more options available but we still need to always be aware of our actions so we don’t over fish a resource. I often wonder at the size of the large mouth nannies on some wonkies and think it might be that they breed there, or is it just the fact they have been hidden for such a long time? Fish travel and sometimes fish school at a spot, so I’m unsure. More research is needed. So not over fishing a spot allows it to produce for further trips and replenishment.

The local wharf has seen some big days with large schools of herrings shadowing the waters. Lots of predators coming in and out with the tide. There have been some nice mackerel and trevally around with some decent mangrove jack caught recently.

Large schools of barramundi are still present and often caught on people using vibes around the wharf. Releasing them careful back into the water is a must. I’m looking forward to next month when the season opens. The wet season should see some more flow and dirty water around the wharf but conditions will see lots of calm weather for reef fishing and some great opportunities to search around for some new spots.

Sam Ryder’s mangrove jack he caught from the wharf.

ground. There’s nothing better than to find a new spot and pull some large fish up from the bottom. My favourite would be finding a new wonky hole with bait all over it. You know there is going to be a hungry largemouth to wain and then you see the 10kg shiny red coming up to the surface. Such a nice fish and so nice to eat. Most of these areas have a resident bar check trout, which does nicely for the esky, but it’s the big gold spot cod that often Jen with a decent sized coral trout.

Dan is certainly pleased with this largemouth nannygai.

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getting easier with the electronics available these days and the mapping. The ocean’s secrets areas are getting smaller and with side imaging covering a large scan area and searching for new spots has become so much easier. I still remember using a paper sounder to find the edge of a reef, mind you we did catch plenty of fish then too. Then came the GPS and once you found a good spot you had it for life, so no problems revisiting it to catch more.

Now with electric motors with spot lock GPS the little bumps in deep water are easy to check and doesn’t have the same issues skippers had when they had to try to anchor on these spots. The technology in fishing is advancing at Morgan with a nice trevally from Cooktown Wharf.