Kuma Eging & Fishing: Day 4 Cape York Far North Queensland

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Thursday Island Ferry

Day 4 saw us heading all over the place looking for GT's on the poppers and stick baits with not much brewing so we found some nice fish punching bait through the surface and could not resist the chance to chuck some stuff at them.

Loaded up on the light jigging gear

We left Seisia wharf on board Cape Runner at about 0730 and headed North to some of the small isolated islands looking for tidal pressure points on shallow reef where the water dramatically drops away from the edge of the reef. The first reef we arrived at had some great looking reef with water about 1.5 meters deep over it and then a fast drop to about 20 meters. We got set with stick baits and poppers and started casting. Things were pretty quiet until we noticed some birds working the tip of the tidal pressure point that seemed to be working bait fish, we asked our guide to put us just beyond the bait so we could pass some lures through. Steve was on a stick bait, Kosta was on a popper and I was still jigging with a 60g Blue Blue Sea Ride.

In seconds Kosta was hooked up to a good sized Rainbow Runner with some bigger fish chasing not to far behind, I lifted my jig up so I could work the top 5 meters when a small GT nailed my jig. Kosta got his Rainbow Runner up the side of the boat only to have it throw the hook as he was about to grab a hold of it. My little GT made it to the boat just as a shark came through freaking out every thing that we were working on. So we decided to try and take on another headland where the tide was forcing the water to one side of the reef.

Yet another hook in a hand

Upon arrival again things were quite, I managed to hook up another small trevally on the small jigs. While I was talking into the camera about the jigs I made a grab for the jig. In 30 years I have never put a hook into myself, however for the second day in a row I managed to get the jig hook to go through my thumb, in trying to get the fish and the jig into a safer position to work on after watching the video I noticed that I had actually lifted the whole fish by the hook in my thumb . Yesterdays hook was not in a position where we could push the barb through and remove so the pliers and yank method was employed. This time the point of the hook was already through so I decided we would push the barb through, cut the barb off and then pull the hook back through. I first and foremost too the fish off the other hook and Kosta was able to cut the leader off for me, he then cut the Dacron attached to the jig assist hook so it was just the hook in my thumb, I then took my pliers out and pushed the barb through and then cut it off, once clear I pulled it back though. All dehooked I took the rod and started another drift trying to jig up a bigger model.

Steve's Queen Fish on the Ocean Potion 140mm

Things had gone very quiet and I wanted to re rig my jig with a better hook so a short move was made, on our way to another spot we came across some bait being smashed to the surface. Every one packed up the gear they were using and got the stick baits out again, within minutes we had queen fish smashing the stick baits, both Steve and Kosta were using Gladiator Ocean Potions in 140mm they worked a treat, every cast worked up at least 3 boof behind the lures with a hook up on almost every cast. I kept jigging. After Steve and Kosta had landed a few I was about to pack up the jigging gear when I dropped it back down again. Half way down I got a big whack from a queen fish and was on for a good fight. My jigging rod is rated to PE1.5 and I was using PE1 line - around 10 lb ish for those not sure of the conversion. After a good and very fair tussle the fish was in the boat. We destroyed the queens for a little while before making the move south.

Coronation Tout

Moving south was a big risk, the last 2 times we had fish south within 10 seconds of hooking up we were devastated by sharks. Now I have fished a lot of places that have lots of sharks but this place was crazy, it was almost as if the sharks were following the trolled lures waiting for a fish to grab the lure for an easy feed. I lost a lot of gear this week all to sharks meaning my next trip to Japan is going to be a very expensive one replacing all my lures. Plenty of bait around the guys decoded to do some more casting, I kept jigging. Every drop I was landing Bludger, Gold Spot and Tealeaf Trevaly. We were only working in 3 meters of water at this stag so I thought I was safe from sharks. I dropped a medium 80g inchiku jig to the bottom and lifted twice when bang, something serious grabbed the inchiku and it was not a shark, it was stripping line from me at alarming rates. I looked down at my spool to see that there was about 200 meters of line out meaning I only had

Jigged Queenfish

about 50 meters remaining. I asked the skipper to power up the boat and start the chase down. I managed to get a heap of line back and at one stage I saw something dark and long about 20 feet away, I called it for a big Spanish mack but there was talk of it being a Long Tail Tuna. The fight went for about 15 minutes and just when I thought I was getting somewhere the fish became very erratic and then line started to come off the reel as a long slow dead pull, yep I was the victim again of another shark, even in 3 meters of water these things were in numbers. We chased the lure down at speed to get as much line back as we could then cut the line and right the fish off as a joke. We pumped the smalled trevally up for a while and then we decided that we needed to get back to the villa to get sorted for the next day. The cape Runner was fired up and we bolted back to Seisia. A quick stop was made to the supermarket so I could get some ice cream and baked beans fro breakky