A GUIDES LIFE - LUKE SPEAR

LUKE SPEAR

A Guides Life

Words Luke Spear Photos Luke Spear / Dave Bradley

IT WAS THE 2017 TARPON SEASON WHEN A GOOD FRIEND FROM DOWN UNDER, DAVE BRADLEY (DINGO AS WE KNOW HIM), CAME TO VISIT FOR HIS ANNUAL TARPON FIX.

That season, he dragged along a couple of friends, one of them was Alan Philishkirk, who also guides in Queensland. We all stayed in the same condo for a week or so, where fishing banter and daily stories flowed as much as the beer. During this time Alan and Dave hashed out a plan for me to visit them on a tour of Queensland’s finest fishing destinations during the summer of 2018.

A short intro; my name is Luke Spear and I grew up in the Florida Keys with my family and fishing guide dad, Harry Spear. Dad guided in the Keys for 30 plus years before moving to the panhandle of Florida to retire from guiding and start a skiff company. I now guide for Tarpon during the summer out of the same area. I met Dave through my dad and Gjuro Bruer some years ago, and since then a lot of Dave’s Aussie clients have been over to fish with Gjuro and myself through the Tarpon seasons.

With a huge amount of anticipation, the long haul Down Under finally ended after landing in Brisbane. A good friend and client, Marty Sprott, picked me up and we started the drive north to Central Queensland where Dingo was fishing for a short summer season. It sure felt like summer after coming from a Northern winter and zero-degree Celsius mornings back home. We stopped at a little town for lunch as I got out of the aircon for the first time jet-lagged and all, the temperature change was a real shock.

The following day, equipped with Dingo’s Maverick HPX skiff and his beloved pair of Scotts in #9WT and #10WT, we fished Central Queensland for a couple of days with Marty and although windy, I caught my first Golden Trevally and my first GT.

Tailing Goldens really are something, like any tailing fish I guess, but these boys can really dig in when they are serious about feeding. Afternoons were filled with beer and kangaroos which were everywhere in the spare blocks near our rental house, pretty cool for a Floridian to see up close.

The second day in Central Queensland was even windier but we landed a couple more Goldens in tough conditions then packed up, said our goodbyes to Marty, and headed north.

Mountains were the next thing along the drive, Dingo laughed at me snapping pics early in the drive saying, “wait till we hit Hinchinbrook.” We stopped to fish a couple places Dave had in mind and caught the life out of more tailing Golden Trevally. Insane numbers of these things showed up, just as Dingo had described, they were more frequent in summer time!! We got shots

at Permit and Queenfish as well, though we caught one smaller Permit, the Queenfish just shied away from our flies. Seems they are cagey characters in shallow water situations.

The weather then pushed us further north back to Dave’s home base at Hinchinbrook. What an amazing place. No doubt about it, he was right about the spectacular scenery, and the fishing was super cool. We fished for Barramundi in the early mornings, which is somewhat similar to our Snook in Florida, only these local boys were lazy in the heat of the Aussie summer. Once we had good sun for visibility, we hit the flats and found the bigger Permit. They generally gave us the slip but the Goldens and Diamond Trevally were back on track. Diamonds were very interesting, I was feeding them with a crab or shrimp fly and fishing them just like the guys fish Permit back home in Florida

The big Queenfish in the skinny water still proved a serious challenge, continuing to elude me on another couple of excellent opportunities. Dave suggested we head around the nearshore islands and we soon found ourselves in schools of Longtail Tuna. We then targeted a couple of favourite pressure points where we scored two good sized GT’s and finally - my first Queenfish!

We took some days off from fishing to see the sites around northern Oz then jumped aboard one more plane ride to catch up with Alan Philishkirk in Weipa for a couple of days.

We fished pretty serious on day one in Weipa, sight fishing a few Barramundi (love those fish!), then moving onto the sand flats to get shots at Permit, Queenfish, and Trevally.

After landing a few nice Queenfish the tides were less than ideal so we headed back to the mangroves and I landed a really nice Barramundi about 80cm. Day two we toured around the area by boat and I couldn’t help but wonder at the different country I had encountered from one end to the other in Queensland.

I was fortunate to whack a few nicer Queenfish - I love fighting those things - they jump and pull and some of them eat flies!! We spent our final day in Cairns before I headed home to Florida.

I’ll always recall the time I spent Down Under and the hospitality of these amazing folks. So many species to target and some super beautiful water. It won’t be the last time I visit from across the pond.