Weipa/Cullen Pt May 09

[Creek Vermin]

Finally got to see weipa in may this year. My buddy daryl and I towed my tinny with his hilux from brissie over a few days with no troubles and plenty of beers along the way. We fished weipa for the first week with varied results and tried to fish as many systems as we could. We fished the andoom on the first day for a stack of undersize barras, nice fingers to 50cm, pikeys, cod and a nice little queenie. Prawnstars fished deep in the snags worked well on barra and fingers and gold bombers, B52's and x raps did the damage in the shallow colour changes on barra and the queenie. Saw 4 crocs that day with the biggest about 3 metres.
Went north a bit for the 2nd day to clough landing which runs into the mighty wenlock. It is a massive system and was running hard and brown from the big tides when we fished it. We put 4 pots in and cast our butts off for a coupla rat barra. We did manage 8 good bucks in 2 pots and a shark in each of the other pots. We ate well that night!
We hit the mission river on day 3 and caught a heap more little barra and not a lot else. Got smoked under the mission river bridge by an unstoppable and caught one just undersize barra and a little queenie off the bank under the bridge. Went back to the mission bridge for a rematch with the unstoppable and got put to shame. 6 plastics and 6 dustings later and I needed a break. We found a school of blue salmon and small queenies on the chew and caught a stack of fish with a coupla blues finding their way into the esky for tea that night. Did a pub crawl that arvo from the bowlsy to the golf club to the alby. Things got very messy!!! Went south to evans landing the next day slightly dusty and fished the mouth area for a few little trevs and a queen before pushing sth along the beach. We found a stack of rocks down there and pulled a truckload of fish on softies including trout, cod, tuskies, stripies, fingers and a few unknowns? Went back there again the next day for the same result. We were hoping to find som big Gt's or queenies down there but things were very quiet. We took off north from weipa to cullen pt the next morning and set up camp on the beach. Awesome place to camp with beach launch only. They were in the process of building a new ramp while we there which is a shame as even people with 2wd will now be able to launch there. We fished namaletta creek which is a 5km ride in the tinny across a pretty rough bit of water. The place is like a bloody washing machine! Once inside the creek we caught over 150 barra, stacks of small jacks, nice fingermark, too many bloody cod to count and a variety of other things including a nice thready. The 3-4 kilo trevs that we hooked in the snags were also a tonne of fun on a locked up drag! Saw plenty of crocs in the nammy and also a big black jew that was happily cruising just under the surface. The highlight of the trip was casting to a cruising barra over the rock bar in the pic. It ate a B52 in full view of both of us and took off over the rock bar. Great stuff! It was tough packing up the gear and the drive home took forever. At least we had plenty to talk about though. It's a top place and hopefully I'll get back there one day soon. Cheers. Keith