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Weipa wind stirs up inshore waters for anglers
  |  First Published: July 2017



The usual southeast winds have arrived in force pushing up a big swell along the coastline. This in turn stirs up the inshore coastal waters making sight fishing tough for flyfishing charters. However, things aren’t all that bad as the creeks and rivers are fishing well for threadies, jacks, barra and queenies.

When it’s calmer offshore, tuna and big queenfish over a metre are biting well. There has been some awesome bait ball action with tuna, cobia, Spaniards, giant trevally and queenfish in on the action, plus the ever-present bull sharks!

The tourist season is here in full swing and the PDR is reported to be open and smooth with only a few corrugated rough sections. The Weipa Caravan Park and Campground is looking quite full but there are always vacancies as travellers come and go. Many visiting tourists who want to fish can book local guide boats for a day or two but many bring small car toppers and fish Andoom Creek or the Mission River.

A word of warning though, beware of the new Evans Landing boat ramp and pontoon, it can be extremely rough if the wind picks up with waves over a metre breaking over it. There have been a few incidents loading passengers and boats with quite a bit of damage done. One travelling angler told me he thought it was the worst pontoon structure in Australia!

One species that has started to show in numbers is Spanish mackerel. I have seen quite a few Spaniards skyrocketing chasing gars and flying fish, so it could be a ripper season for them – fingers-crossed! Try trolling big Rapala deep divers and a shallow minnow in close, often it gets eaten first. Spaniards are great eating if bled and iced straight away.

Further south towards False Pera, the swell is making it tough. However, when it’s good enough to head down, tuskies, trout and pelagics have been biting well.

Another positive at the moment is the good run of mud crabs in the rivers. We have picked quite a few up just watching them walking along the shallows and they have all been good full bucks.

The wet season we had last summer saw over 2m of rain and still some smaller feeder creeks are trickling out with fresh. I went for a walk up one creek last week and saw plenty of baby barra, so it has been a great spawning season for them. Hopefully next year will be a repeat and we get another fresh recruitment of little guys.

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