Cairns in far north Queensland offers piscatorial delights to suit everyone. The city may be billed as the black marlin capital of the world, but there is much more on offer: Huge barramundi, razor gang speedsters like wahoo and mackerel, and a host of estuary gangsters including mangrove jack and queenfish.
LAKE TINAROO
Lake Tinaroo is a steady two-hour drive from Cairns via Gordonvale and Yungaburra. Created by damming the Barron River Gorge in the Atherton Tablelands, Lake Tinaroo was the first impoundment stocked with barramundi, and has a good population of sooty grunter.
In 1989, barramundi fingerlings bred from brood barramundi captured near Cairns and grown out at the Department of Primary Industries research station at nearby Walkamin were released. The liberated fish demonstrated a remarkably fast growth due to the amount of feed available. The growth pills were bony bream that had been seeded into these waters years before the barramundi release.
Subsequently, the lake has produced world record barramundi topping 39kg. Local fisheries officers claim to have electro fished even bigger barra, over 45kg (100 pounds), but have been unable to hang on to them.
The best fishing happens around dusk and through the night. One of the problems with fishing the lake is the contrary nature of the barra. For some reason the fish shut down and stop feeding for days on end. The mood swings have been put down to altitude resulting in cooler water temperatures.
There is no closed fishing season on the lake and, unlike some estuary waters, no restrictions on the maximum size of fish allowed to be caught. In natural waters, a 120cm maximum size limit applies to barramundi. The minimum size allowed is 58cm and there is a bag limit restriction of five fish per angler.
There is plenty of accommodation available with caravan parks at Yungaburra and at Tinaroo. Both parks are situated close to boat launching facilities, and the latter park has just been refurbished and offers more facilities. One thing you might need to take if you decide to head up this way is a coat. It can get very cold in the Tablelands; so don’t be fooled by the coastal weather forecasts.
OFFSHORE
Big black marlin is the Holy Grail of game fishing in far north Queensland. From September to December, anglers fly into Cairns from all over the world to do battle with blacks in excess of 1000 pounds.
It’s a big deal, and it can cost big bucks. The high rollers not only charter game boats, they also stay at sea on liveaboard mother ships, which can double the cost of the trip. Add in airfares and incidentals and you are talking telephone numbers – especially when you consider that some anglers will be staying around for a month.
However, the costs are not beyond the reach of the average angler. Many anglers fish Cairns on a budget by working a share charter to spread costs, and stay in budget accommodation. The cost to five or six anglers fishing for marlin for a week is about the same as staying at a lodge in the Northern Territory and fishing for barramundi. It’s not cheap, but then how often do you do that sort of thing?
Cairns’ marlin boom in Cairns began on September 25, 1966 when Richard C. Obach, fishing on a crew day with Captain George Bransford on his game fishing vessel Sea Baby, caught a world record 483.6kg (1064 pounds) marlin off Euston Reef on 37kg tackle. Since then, Cairns has dominated the international heavyweight division of black marlin fishing.
It can be a great experience. I did a stint as an observer on game boats in a major game fishing tournament. It was a serious event with big dollar prizes and dedicated competitors. There were strict rules that had to be followed, and observers were put on the game boats to ensure no one misinterpreted the rules.
At one tournament, an angler caught a good marlin but under the tournament rules, the leader used to catch the marlin had to be handed in to verify it was legal. A deckhand’s decision to toss the leader over the side on the way back to port cost the angler $32,000 in prize money. I wouldn’t have liked to be the deckie.
Cairns isn’t solely about big marlin. There are exciting sportfish options for anglers who want to chase serious fish on light tackle, including salt water fly, and in these waters the fishing is about as good as it gets. Most of the sportfish fishing action takes place between 30 and 45km offshore, inside the Great Barrier Reef and near the reef openings. The most sought after fish are juvenile black marlin and sailfish to about 50kg, Spanish mackerel and tuna.
A few years back I fished with the late Cairns-based tackle guru Jack Erskine. We were a couple of kilometres west of Pixie Reef, about 20 nautical miles northeast of Cairns. These grounds, inside the Great Barrier Reef, are famous for marlin, sailfish and other species like mackerel and tuna.
On this day, the southeasterly wind is blowing about 10-15 knots and the sea had a moderate chop when Ross Finlayson reduced speed on the Sea Baby IV to about 8 knots and signalled deckhand Glen Campbell to feed out teasers and baits. The spread consisted of two skipping garfish, spring rigged with skirts over their heads and 10/0 hooks; a swimming mullet and a daisy chain teaser consisting of five plastic squid and a small Watsons tuna rigged to skip behind.
In the rod holder was a 12kg threadline outfit, and from the end of the rod, a leader ran down to a plastic container where a small baitfish, rigged and ready, was swimming. As Sea Baby moved down sea, Jack stood by on the aft deck. On the fly bridge above, former skipper Laurie Woodridge was standing alongside Ross. Everyone was eyeing off the lures … waiting and wishing a sailfish or marlin to rise. Less than an hour into the fishing day, a small black marlin moved in on the left hand garfish. Laurie spotted it and Ross gave urgent instructions to haul in the baits.
“You ready Jack?” he said. By now we could all see the slim, streamlined shape of the marlin eyeing off the lures and baits, moving left and right across the stern. The beaky was undecided.
Jack took up the rod, dropped the live baitfish into the wake and free spooled line, relying on Ross’s keen eyes to tell him when the bait was in front of the marlin. Live bait was the trigger that pulled the marlin out of its indecision.
“He’s got it,” Ross said. “Let him take some line Jack … more line, more … now give it to him.”
Jack flipped the bail arm over, waited for the line to tighten and set the hook. It was all done to perfection. It was a small marlin, about 25 kg, but the runs and jumps were magic. Line sizzled through rod guides, and the drag system purred under each shortening run. Small marlin is a sweet option on light tackle. After 10 minutes the fish was alongside and Glen leaned over, took hold of the bill and lifted the marlin inboard where the hook was removed, the fish held up for photos, and then released. From lift to release took less than a minute.
We raised three more marlin that day; the biggest fish looked to be about 50kg. This is sight fishing at its best.
The method is called switch baiting and it is simple enough in concept. If a marlin rises, hopefully it will take the bait and become hooked. Sometimes this is difficult. If the fish is looking at the baits and not taking, a live bait is fed out and the other baits and lures retrieved. Switch baiting for marlin is great fun, then so too is cubing and jigging.
Despite the consistent availability of this sort of action, both Ross and Laurie spoke of their frustrations with visitors: “It seems almost impossible to get the message across,” said Ross. “People come up here for the big blacks (marlin) in October and November, but Cairns has a lot more to offer than 1000 pound marlin, and if it’s just the horses you want then you can still catch them in September and December.”
Ross was talking after dinner on our anchorage in the lee of Michaelmas Key, about 15km east of Cairns. This was a three-day live aboard charter during which he was determined to offer up as much diversity as he could.
Laurie retired from the sea after suffering a stroke. Laurie won the prestigious International Game Fishing Association, Game Boat Captain of the Year award and finished in the top three several times. Ross was his deckhand before taking over from Laurie.
Laurie said he even offered clients cheaper rates to fish earlier in the season, but that they didn’t want it. “They don’t know what they are missing out on,” Ross said.
He was right; the action over the three days was constant. On our first day out we did a fair bit of trolling then, about an hour before the tide change, Ross maneuvered Sea Baby onto a seamount and we started laying a cube trail. It wasn’t long before we were hooking up on scaly and Spanish mackerel, and the occasional bottom fish like red bass. Mind you, that wasn’t quite as exciting as the two sailfish that were hooked earlier that day while trolling an area known as Onyx Reef, but it showed the diversity of what is on offer.
The mackerel action seemed to go on for about as long as baits were being fed out. For the uninitiated, mackerel take off like express trains and line fairly sings as it cuts through the water. Fortunately these fish are tasty boot, which is just as well because there is no way of removing a hook from the razor-lined jaws of a frisky mackerel still full of fight. In between, there were longtail and mackerel tuna, a never-ending procession of high speed, light tackle sportfish that too many punters who come to Cairns overlook.
ESTUARY
Anglers staying in Cairns don’t need to travel far to find exciting fishing. Take Trinity Inlet for example. This mangrove-lined estuary is just a couple of minutes away from the CBD of Cairns, and in its 90km of waterways, a varied range of fish is available.
I fished the inlet with retired wool broker Robert Anderson, and Nathan Ruth, a local who worked in a tackle store.
Trinity Inlet is a huge tidal basin with several inflowing creeks. It offers almost year-round action and is a prime fish breeding and nursery area, one reason why larger predators are caught here so consistently.
We launched Robert’s 4.35m Hornet at the boat ramp, upstream of the shipyards. Within five minutes of starting the 50HP outboard, we were fishing. To put that in perspective: I have fished other, far more remote and supposedly untouched, northern estuaries and steamed for over an hour before even starting to fish.
Age and class count for zero when you are on the water. Robert and I bowed to Nathan’s experience in local waters, and he proved a capable guide. We started by casting small hard bodied and soft plastic lures around mangrove roots, into small run-offs and across snags. The results were slow although Nathan managed to hook a small barra of about 60cm, which subsequently tossed the lure.
An interesting aspect of the fishing is that Nathan says the small creeks fish better when the tide is rising. He says the fish head up the creeks and drains after the baitfish and prawns. In other areas where I have fished barramundi, anglers prefer to fish them when the tide is ebbing.
Casting lures into small drains, creek mouths and among snags isn’t difficult – provided you are accurate. The lure rarely travels more than 15m, often much less: precision is the key to avoid hooking timber.
Our best results came when trolling rock bars. The inlet has a large population of mangrove jacks, an aggressive red fish that always seems to fight well above their weight division, and we caught them to 1.4kg.
Nathan had a few spots that he liked working the lures and, on each one, mangrove jacks were just waiting for the lure to come across their line of vision – or so it seemed. The fishing was consistent, the jacks and small giant trevally were plentiful, all within coo-ee of the city centre.
Baitfish and prawns abound and locals use cast nets to catch bait. Prime species in this water include barramundi, mangrove jack, flathead, long tom and fingermark. During the cooler months, GTs, queenfish, flathead, estuary cod, bream and grunter are more prolific.
South of the city are rivers like the Russell and Mulgrave. I fished Russell Heads, the junction and estuary system of the Russell and Mulgrave Rivers, with Kieran Livingstone. It was overcast, windy and wet but the fishing was superb.
We arrived at the boat ramp at about 8 a.m. Like many boat ramps in Northern Australia, this one had the usual “Beware of Crocodiles” warning sign. Unlike most ramps I had been to though, Kieran walked down the ramp and pointed a torch beam into the undercut bank – just to make sure. He explained that the local ranger had taken his Jack Russell for a walk a couple of weeks earlier, and as usual, he tossed a stick into the river and the little yapper went in after it. On this morning, as the ranger’s dog came scooting out of the water, stick firmly in its mouth, about four metres of lizard came sliding in behind the dog on the ramp. Motoring downriver, I couldn’t help notice the rope swings hanging from trees: you have to wonder why?
Russell Heads was slow early. We worked lures around the edges, casting to banks and snags. There were no barramundi, but we caught a few bream and estuary cod. An hour or so of this and a school of queenfish arrived and the action turned on. We were casting small poppers and saltwater flies at the marauding fish that were hunting along a sandbar. Mind you, I couldn’t see the sandbar, it was hidden by the combination of overcast sky and an alluvial river, but Kieran assured me it was there.
Queenfish are a pretty fish with classic trevally lines, but are skinny and don’t weigh much for their length. While there wasn’t a fish under about a metre long, those we caught ranged in weight from 7kg to 10kg.
For more than three hours the wind blew, rain fell, and the fishing action was relentless. A school of wolf herring had entered the estuary and was hunting with, and being hunted by, the queenies. Wolf herring are a fierce looking fish and have a thick coating of slime. About 35-40cm long and shaped like a barracuda, the two front fangs on these herring come out of the top jaw parallel with the body.
When a hook-up came, the queenfish would leap out of the water several times, in between making long dashes for freedom. Sometimes the fish took a nose-down approach, and all you saw was their tails churning the surface. Kieran said the locals described this trait as “the washing machine”.