Friday PM

The benefit of working from time to time is that you sometimes end up on Friday in a good fishing spot. That was the case yesterday. I was in Townsville and decided to take the ferry across to Magnetic Island in search of some good land-based fishing.

I only had my recently purchased Pflueger Travel Spin Combo – 6’6″, 5 Piece light rod, so I knew I would be in trouble if I came across anything big. I started off looking at the map of where I could fish. Many of the bays are green zones, but fortunately you can fish off almost all the rocky headlands. So after a knee trembling boulder scramble, I arrived at the tip of Bremner Point – the headland at the northern end of Geoffrey Bay. It was around 5.15 pm and I put on a GULP 4” Jigging Grub in the Pumpkinseed colour. The first cast produced a nice solid bite, but no hook up. The next cast had the rod bent over. Whatever it was – it headed straight for the rocks and that was the last I saw of it. A couple of tugs and the 20lb leader snapped. I re-rigged and tightened the drag. The same thing happened but this time I heaved the fish straight up, out of the rocks and up to my feet. I think it was a small Fingermark (see photo).

Bremner Point is reached by scrambling over the boulders beyond this archway

I scrambled over a few more boulders to another promising looking spot and cast out. I was now fishing with a 1/8th oz, 1/0 jighead and using a GULP 4” Minnow in the Pearl Watermelon colour. After a few casts I was onto another fish but again it went straight down into the rocks and unhooked itself. I could see I was going to lose plenty of fishing gear. I re-rigged and a few casts later I caught a glimpse of a large black and white reef fish heading down into the rocks with my soft plastic. Once again I could not pull it out. I moved again and found a couple of small Stripy Perch and a tiny cod with a big appetite. The sun was now dropping behind the hills and I decided to climb back over the boulders while I could still see. I walked back to my hotel thinking about what might have been if I had brought the proper rod!