Last February I booked a camp spot at Topsy Creek through Kowanyama Council. Story is that bookings open 1 February for the period starting 1 June and most people have their booking email ready to send midnight 1 Feb.
I had not been there before but my best info was pick a full moon and this month had the high tide latest in the day for the few months that we had an option to go. The tide was still early in the day and sunrise is late by AEST. There was another group there who had fished Topsy for 17 years so I can only assume my selection of time was OK.
We had 2 boats and travelled up together as the road is gravel past Almaden - 430km out of 600km total to Kowanyama. The road conditions were fair with a choice of 4 lanes in places where there were patches bulldust.
I took the Stacer as I expected there would be a chance to fish outside and I feel much safer in it than in the punt with about 250 freeboard.
The fish expected were grunter, threadies, fingermark as well as black jew and blue parrot if we got onto shallow reef.
Dinner for me the first night was a 320 whiting, biggest that I had seen for years.
We fished the next day early for some queenies and small fingermark. I think we kept 4 fingermark from a total of about 12 for the week. We caught 1 small black jew, some small blue salmon and some small grunter during the week.
The creek has changed dramatically from that shown on Google earth (2012) due to the heavy rains etc in early 2014. The mouth is sanded up such that getting out at less than half tide was dicy in the bigger boat. With semidiurnal tides that meant that we had limited daylight hours to investigate outside waters.
Even the blokes that knew the system were working all day to get some fish and the barra that they caught were small and they suggested that the pros had been there before us. I expect the lack of a wet season would have drastically affected the barra numbers
The other bloke in our camp pulled out a day early but had trouble on the way home blowing 2 trailer tyres due to the axle moving on one side. He left his boat 260km out of Cairns and went back 2 days later with new wheels and tyres. I found out that gravel roads make a mess of sidelights bur it forces me to fit LED side lights that I have had for 4 years. And it pays to check your ropes on your trailer spare.