The barra season has been closed for nearly a month now for spawning and hopefully these amazing predators are breeding like crazy to allow for plenty of action for future years.

Although it’s illegal to intentionally target barras during the closure, if you do manage to hook one please let it go as soon as you can to prevent undue stress that can harm the spawning process.

The upside to the barra closures is that it gives anglers a chance to chase threadfin salmon, which will be well and truly on the bite. I reckon that big salmon fight harder than any other Cape York estuary species and they are one of the trickiest species to consistently catch.

Over the last month the threadies have seemed to appeared out of nowhere. Over winter I might have seen one or two a trip if I was lucky but now since the water temp has risen over 28c, these highly desirable sports fish and table fish are on offer across all estuaries. The fight that they offer is insane and they are a great candidate for lure anglers. I reckon big threadies have accounted for more snapped lure fisho rods than any other northern species.

I had a few mates here recently, and we had a session where they were sight casting small hard bodies to meter plus salmon in 60cm of water. On a double hook up one of these big threadies smashed the lure boat side and wrapped his brand new expensive graphite rod around the outboard, which shattered into a million pieces.

My wife Holly and I were also fishing in a similar location in less than a meter of water when she hooked a salmon that would have to have been over 1.3m land as fat as a rugby ball. I have seen a few genuine 1.2m fish come out of the deep holes in the Brisbane River but to see this fish smash her Leads Hi-Jacker on the surface as soon as it hit the water is one of the best memories I’ve encountered whilst fishing. This giant proceeded to attempt to get its entire body out of the water and it honestly looked like a 4ft bull shark jumping in the Noosa River! To cut a long story short, the fish went back under the boat and cut through the 30lb Bionic braid on the keel of the boat. Holly still has the meter thready hoodoo and is yet to land a decent fish, however this will change over the next few months as the action heats up!

There have been some good Spanish mackerel hanging around with plenty of big GT and queenfish smashing poppers and plastics.

Fishing 5” Gulp Jerk Shads in pearl white or mango ripple have been accounting for plenty of good eating sized fingermark up to 60cm.

The inshore reefs around Westminster have been producing some great tuskfish and staying true to form, big fresh crab baits are a sure-fire way to get a feed of these tasty reefies.

Until next month, stay safe on the water and be aware of crocs as they may be more agitated than usual due to their breeding season underway. Weipa had two crocodile attacks last year both of which were preventable so use your head and stay out of the water.