2 Whiting for a whole weekend of fishing....

[TROLL]

Well the weekend weather here in Mackay was not great, so i decided to spend Saturday and Sunday Avro exploring the river.

Saturday Avro had us under the Ron Cam Bridge. I have never fished in this part of the river before. Went to throw some lures for Whiting, Bream and Flathead.

This part of the river is amazing, it has just about everything you want… Yabbie beds, rock structure, sand bars, man made structure eg.. pipe line and bridge pylons. On top of this the water flow around this structure is just awesome. With many pressure points and varying depths of water.






Anyway I started just down stream from the bridge with my precision 7’ 1-3kg rod and a akuma it30 spooled with 10lb braid. Casting a Banjo 006 minnow 2inch, second cast saw a strike but no fish landed… After a couple of more cast I changed setup’s to my St Croix 6’6” 6-12lb and a little Diawa CY2500 also spooled with 10lb braid, flicking a river to sea 45mm black and gold popper. This also got a follow up, nice little bow wave behind the lure had the heart rate increasing fast… I made the mistake of stopping the popper instead of speeding it up and the fish turned and swam back to its cover.

I worked my way around the closer rock bars that I could reach with casting light lure’s. Peter and his Daughter showed up, (Peter had fished here on Friday and done very well). I joined them a little closer to under the bridge where we threw poppers around for a while. Peter changed to a little hard body and worked the edge of the current line and landed a nice flathead. (sorry no picks)

We then worked our way up the river over the pipeline and onto the sand flats. It turned out to be a lot of walking for no return as we did not hook up on another fish all arvo. So as the tide changed we packed up and headed for home.

Sunday arrived and to be honest I did not feel like getting out of bed. But kids need to be gotten ready for Church and Sunday school, so up and under way for the day… we had awoken to a wet Sunday.

With the low tide being about 4.30pm in the river opposite the river boat ramp. I had planned to drive down to where we usually get a good feed of big whiting on the full moon after dark. But the driving part got cancelled as the council had started work for the new bridge to go over the river. Hence this had closed of 4wd access to the side of the river. So on with the walking wet boots and of I went.

As I walked the banks I came across some very interesting fishing spots. It is amazing what you find if you take the time to walk and look. I had come across a large area of flathead lies. These went for probably 100m and where in varying sizes and density of population.




Anyway got to my yabbie banks pumped yabbies and started fishing. I had also bought some strips of Squid which I have caught big whiting on before. After a couple of cast I landed my first 30+ cm whiting and not long after that the tide turned.

Once the tide turned I caught one more whiting just on 30cm. It then turned into a baby bream feeding frenzy, with schools and schools of bream coming up onto the flats… all about 22cm or less in size.

I never got another whiting once the tide started to really move and with it leading up to the New Moon the tides where quiet large 5.32m of water movement in 6 hours, so there was a lot of water flow that I had not experienced across the flats in the previous weeks on the full moon.

Anyway once dark set in and the tide had pushed me up of the flats towards the mangroves I had had enough of baby bream and packed up and headed for home with 2 whiting for the entire weekends fishing efforts… well it beats sitting in front of the TV all weekend.

My 2 whiting:

[wrasseman]

great report, pity you didn't have a bit more luck but thems the breaks. Awesome looking spot though.
Col.