Family Holiday & Fishing In Cairns

[Thunder]

Hi Everyone,

My daughter decided she wanted to go on a family holiday instead of having a 21st birthday party, which was a nice change, as most 21 year olds just want a big piss up with their friends.

The wife told me right from the start it was a "Family Holiday" not a "Fishing Trip" so I had to comply. We left on the 2nd September and returned on the 13th September.

If you haven't been to Cairns before, there is plenty to see and do apart from fishing, and you could quite easily spend a few weeks there and not see everything the area has to offer.

As soon as we got off the plane, we felt over dressed as it was around 30 degrees and it was around 12 degrees when we left Sydney. I usually live in Jeans in Sydney, so I took a couple of pairs, but after the first day, I lived in shorts and a T shirt. Even the joggers were discarded for some sandals.

As we have a 10 year old as well, we decided to stay in a Luxury Villa with 2 bathrooms (21 year old daughter) in the Cairns Coconut Caravan Park/Resort. It is set on 28 acres and has virtually everything there and is a great family location.

We were opposite the pool with hot tub, which was a great location. They had 2 bouncing pillows and one was the largest in Australia, Splash park, full size tennis court, putt putt golf, giant chess set, 2nd pool, table tennis, peddle carts, volley ball, giant outdoor screen for kids movies, etc. They have free snorkelling lessons and aqua arobics, as well as free pancakes and drinks on Thursday.

The giant pineapple fills with water and then dumps it all over them.

On the Friday, we went on a Mudcrabbing and fishing trip in the river for half a day. This was not too bad, but they only had frozen bottle squid pieces which were pink & re-frozen and all that was caught were toad fish and a stone fish. He has 50 crab pots out 24/7 so there are always crabs. I don't know whether it was the muddy water and not purging them first in fresh water, or whether he over cooked them, but I have tasted far better mud crabs. The trip was entertaining though.

The next day we went on a Reef Fishing trip out of Port Douglas. Being a "Family" holiday, and not wanting the family to get bored or sick, I chose the Norseman - a 21m boat with all the luxury extras. The air conditioned cabin seated around 30 people, there were 2 toilets on board, as well as a licenced bar. They also provided a great lunch.

Everyone used handlines, but they also had plenty of rods. They told us if we wanted to catch fish, the handlines were a better choice as you could drag them off the reef easier and get them on board before the marauding sharks got them.

They tossed out a whole pilchard on ganged hooks with a ballon attached at one of the early stops and ended up with a Spanish Mackeral of around 25kg which they cut into chunks and gave everyone a piece. Each time we caught a small fish, they tossed it out on a balloon to get a pelagic or a shark. We had a researcher from one of the Universities on board studying sharks and she was trying to get tissue samples as well as photos, etc.

There were 20 people fishing on the boat and heaps of large fish were boated, but we didn't take photos of their fish - too busy trying to catch our own.

My son caught the 2 biggest of our fish - a trevally and a Coral trout.

This is what happens if you are too slow pulling in your fish

Part 1

Cheers

Greg

[Thunder]

Anyway, the skipper kept pulling up 4 metres too soon on each stop and he wouldn't take the hint to move up a bit further, so in order of position on the boat, this was the score: My daughter caught 8 fish, my wife caught 5 but lost a nice coral trout to a shark, my 10 year old son, wearing the shirt that says "I catch more fish than my Dad" caught the 2 biggest, and I was jinxed and caught nothing !!!

Tip: Next time I go, I will take my Bait Mate. The pilchards were very good quality and fresh, but frozen and the hooks were large. Coral Trout tend to suck the bait off the hook rather than biting hard, therefore your bait was gone within 30 seconds of getting to the bottom and a lot of the time you couldn't feel it being pinched as the line was around 80kg mono. Bait Mate (floss) would have helped to keep the bait on the hook longer.

I was baiting my sons line all day, so quite often my bait was being pinched while I baited his hook. Any excuse is a good one!

While we were there we did a trip on the scenic railway to Kunundra, Amphibious duck through the rainforest, and chairlift (6.5km) back, crocodile farm, butterfly farm, and a full day reef trip with 5 hours snorkelling and helicopter back.

The reef trip was out by boat. We booked on the internet and while we were up there we saw all of the huge catermarans that go out to the reef. When it was our day to go out it, we found we were booked on a large "V" hull boat which was probably half the size of the cats. The day we went out wasn't smooth, and at least a dozen people on board were sea sick - including my 10 year old. 3 of these people just huddled in the corner of the boat and didn't get off to snorkel or even eat the beautiful lunch !!!

Once my son was in the water he was fine, and we were glad we booked the chopper for the return trip. I think there were a few people who changed their booking on the day to come back by chopper instead

This boat also did not have one of the huge pontoons on the reef, and maybe these are only around Green Island where the cats go - we were much further out and someone told us the reef and fish are a lot prettier where we went.

We stopped off on 2 reefs. The first was pretty choppy and a fair bit of current, so swimming wasn't as easy as the 2nd location. At the 2nd location they have a pet wrasse who comes to the back of the boat and gets hand fed and hangs around for everyone to look at and take pictures.

This is the Wife telling the guy how to fly the chopper

And this is the view from the chopper

The consensus of the family is that while you are in Cairns you need to snorkel on the reef once, but having done it, they probably wouldn't bother doing it a second time. Fishing on the Norseman was a pleasure and the staff did everything for us (except bait the hook) and everyone would have gone back on that a second time while we were there if we had time.

The Cairns Coconut is a definite must if you have a family. We usually stay in apartments, however, the Luxury Villa (with 3 seperate air conditioners, ceiling fans - even on the verandah!!!) 2 plasma tv's, etc was as good if not better than all of the apartments we have been in. It was a 5 star (caravan park rating not hotel rating) and you could quite easily just stay on the premises as there is plenty to do. I cooked the fish on the BBQ each night and the fillet steak we bought got binned as we didn't eat it in time - it's tough living on Coral Trout and fresh fish !!!

Cairns is definitely a winter paradise 20 - 33 degrees while we were there and Melbourne was being flooded and Sydney got plenty of rain at the same time as well. It beats being down here in winter, but I wouldn't like to be there in Summer.

There is plenty of shopping and more restaurants than you could poke a stick at.

We would definitely go there again to get out of the cold Sydney winter.

I hope you enjoyed the read.

PS The wife is into scrapbooking photos. The photos of the 9 day trip take up 18 cd's. Talk about Japanese Tourists - they have nothing on her.

Cheers

Greg

[shady]

brilliant read mate,sounds like a great trip and good onya for taking the family for a fish.

[hamerz84]

wow how exciting was your holiday im so envious right now, i run my own business and it would be hard to get a couple days off let alone a couple weeks. good on ya for taking the family away mate and resisting your primal urges to go on a "fishin trip" awesome read and great pics aswell. bad luck on the fishing front for yourself lol but always good to see others catching a few and having a great time.

cheers hamerz.

[Thunder]

wow how exciting was your holiday im so envious right now, i run my own business and it would be hard to get a couple days off let alone a couple weeks. good on ya for taking the family away mate and resisting your primal urges to go on a "fishin trip" awesome read and great pics aswell. bad luck on the fishing front for yourself lol but always good to see others catching a few and having a great time.

cheers hamerz.

I own my own business as well, so I had to trust it to the workers and fix everything up when I got back.

The main idea was to have a good fishing trip that the family enjoyed, and that's what we got.

I could have gone on plenty of other boats chasing pelagics and had a better fishing experience, however, this choice was to make sure everyone had fun, not just me.

We also decided to get the fishing over with first so we could eat the profits !!!

Just lucky I took them with me otherwise we would have been eating steak

At the moment I am boatless, so there is an ulterior motive as well !!!

Cheers

Greg