Exploring The Sweetwater - North Qld Style

[Lizardboy]

The plan was to escape the onset of winter and head North to explore the freshwater reaches of some of North Queensland's rivers and streams. Our main quarry were Jungle Perch, Northern cousin's of our Aussie bass. JP's make their home in the very sweetest of sweetwater...the shallow, flowing, crystal clear, rainforest streams of tropical North Queensland!

We started our trip in Townsville where we met up with Matt AKA Junglejunky and we were lucky enough to be taken on a tour of some of the local JP streams. Things were looking very good after my first cast resulted in a small JP that sucked in the little popper at the base of some rapids. The rest of the day however was a bit on the slow side,with Matt resorting to soft plastics and eventually scoring a nice JP.

Pete and I continued North to Cardwell, a small town on the edge of the Hinchinbrook channel Where we took out a half day charter, in search of a few barra, but we lucked out and the onshore wind had set in preventing further exploration. So we resorting to fishing a tiny lagoon behind the marina with our ultra light gear which is where Pete scored a couple of Tarpon and the biggest Barra for the trip!

From then it was on to the mighty Tully, an awesome river with the gorge itself providing an impressive backdrop of volcanic rock, rapids and waterfalls. Although with the late wet and record rainfall of the last few months the river level was still a bit too high and prevented us from accessing the best looking water above the powerstation. The water temperature was also a bit cooler than we had hoped and the fish did seem a little lethargic although we did manage a handful of JP's and small Sooties.

We also spent a day fishing the freshwater reaches of the Russell just North of Innisfail an equally impressive river. It was a half hour trek up a narrow jungle track, with a couple of creek crossings along the way before we made it to the first pool. we also encountered a larger and potentially more aggressive species of grunter along the track!

Again as with the Tully the river was again cool and high and it was tough work as we made our way upstream wading and scrambling over large slimy boulders and casting along the way. Again the fishing was slow, but after switching to a hawg/revhead combination i was soon connected to a solid fish that tested my 6lb leader to its limits, it threatening to bury me under a submerged boulder and I had to pass the rod to Pete briefly whilst i scrambled onto another boulder to continue the fight, luckily for me Pete was happy to hand my rod back and i was able to finally subdued a solid sooty []

We continued upstream past several more sets of rapids before eventually coming to a large pool at the base of a small waterfall where the fishing improved dramatically with us hooking up to half a dozen JP's in a short period of time.

Whilst it was very tempting to continue on it was mid afternoon and it was going to take a while to get back, we encountered a few more sooties along the way back downstream before Pete and his outfit parted company[]. this made for a very quiet trip back along the jungle trail. We had been wading and swiming downstream at the time and Pete had lost his grip of the rod and it was swept under a massive boulder in strong current and could not be retreived, despite returning two days later equipped with 80lb leader a XOS trebbles.

On the last day of the trip we finally struck gold, with two great JP sessions! After enjoying a sumptuous feast of sashimi, prawns, mud crab and XXXX in our cabin the night before, we set off at dawn to fish a Shallow mountain stream. The stream consisting of a series of small pools connected by rapids and the ocasional waterfall cascading in. The first pool we fished resulted in a double hookup on 2 to 30cm+ JP's, with both fish nailing surface lures it was the type of action we'd been waiting for. We crept from pool to pool with great anticipation, knowing that our poppers would almost certainly be whallloped as soon as they touched down.

Continued....

The afternoon session saw us venture further north past Port Douglas to the pristine looking stream in the first pic. I'd stumbled accross it when i was in the areas a couple of years earlier and had good success there using yo zuri pins minnows, which the JP's just seemed climbed all over on an jerky retreive. After our success on the surface in the morning session, Pete persuaded me to stick with a popper, which as turned out was a good call. It didn't take long for us to get into the action with Pete landing a couple of JP's first up. the surface actioned continued, as we made our way upstream with a several more small to medium JP's landed and plenty of missed hits.

I also managed a more solid JP of 32cm's that made a good account of itself after snatching a sugoi blooped hard up against the opposite bank.

Time had gotten away from us and with our return flight departing from Cairns in just over 2 and a 1/2 hours we had we had to rush back to the car through some adjoining canefields. Pete could resist having one for cast from the weir next to the car and managed to land one last JP to cap off the trip [8D]

Gus

[Guest]

Top post lads and wonderful pictures and scenery ,you all should be congratulated on that fine adventure

Cheers Swordfisherman

[Guest madsmc]

Another first class trip report there Gus.

Those JP's are a top looking fish. Some great images mate!

Shane

[Flattieman]

Great report! - That's the stuff I read about in magazines!!! Well done.

Flattieman.

[Penguin]

Top report and pics guys,sounds like you had a ball,

Wish I could of been there when you encountered that

grunter,I just love the way they get your blood pumpin.

penguin

[abiasin]

great post guys love the pics looks like plenty of fun was had and also plenty of fish. gee i wish the streams and rivers looked like that in the penrith area thats for sure.

cheers.

[Mondo Rock]

Awesome story Lizardboy - thoroughly enjoyed it.

You should submit it to a fishing mag and see if they'll publish it.

Oh yeah - good work on the fishing too!!

[Guest BBM Rick]

Fantastic work there fella's, first rate! I thoroughly enjoyed that little read. Thanks for sharing it with us.

Rick.

[Lizardboy]

Cheers Guy's,

Glad you liked it, i enjoyed writing it once i got around to it.

The best thing about a trip like the one we did is that it's pretty much accessable to anyone willing to do a bit of research and a bit of walking and by staying in cabins at caravan parks it didn't end up costing us that much.

Lizard

Edited July 24, 2006 by Lizardboy