Mackay report
Posted: Thu Oct 16, 2014 5:27 pm
G'day guys,
So last weekend I headed up to Mackay with my old man and a couple of mates for a weekend of solid fishing. It's a long way to go for a weekend but the flights were cheap, the accommodation was cheaper, and the allure of big barra and jacks was just too tempting to pass up. Unfortunately, we didn't catch any of these hah. But we still had a ripping weekend and caught a lot of cool fish, even if they weren't the trophy fish we were hoping for.
So Friday morning we were up before the sun for our 7am flight and boy were we excited:
I'd been to Mackay once before and even though it can be a tough place to fish given its monstrous tides, I still caught some great fish and lost some even better ones. So after telling a few stories about my last trip where I nearly landed a metre+ barra and pulled the hooks on a 50cm+ jack (I might have exaggerated a tiny bit) expectations were running at an all time high. We arrived in Mackay and were greeted with blue skys and light winds, and made our way straight to our motel. It's safe to say it was no Taj Mahal, but it was cheap and clean:
After getting the gear ready, stocking up on food, and chatting to the locals at the local tackle shop, we were finally ready to wet a line. Mackay is a strange place to fish as all the best landbased spots are only accessible at low tide (I'm sure there are some good high tide spots too, but the vast majority are low tide spots). I chose this weekend to head up as the low tides coincided with first and last light, but it made it tough to fish in the middle of the day. So we decided to head to the breakwall at east point where I'd caught a couple of nice queenies the last time I was up there:
So last weekend I headed up to Mackay with my old man and a couple of mates for a weekend of solid fishing. It's a long way to go for a weekend but the flights were cheap, the accommodation was cheaper, and the allure of big barra and jacks was just too tempting to pass up. Unfortunately, we didn't catch any of these hah. But we still had a ripping weekend and caught a lot of cool fish, even if they weren't the trophy fish we were hoping for.
So Friday morning we were up before the sun for our 7am flight and boy were we excited:
I'd been to Mackay once before and even though it can be a tough place to fish given its monstrous tides, I still caught some great fish and lost some even better ones. So after telling a few stories about my last trip where I nearly landed a metre+ barra and pulled the hooks on a 50cm+ jack (I might have exaggerated a tiny bit) expectations were running at an all time high. We arrived in Mackay and were greeted with blue skys and light winds, and made our way straight to our motel. It's safe to say it was no Taj Mahal, but it was cheap and clean:
After getting the gear ready, stocking up on food, and chatting to the locals at the local tackle shop, we were finally ready to wet a line. Mackay is a strange place to fish as all the best landbased spots are only accessible at low tide (I'm sure there are some good high tide spots too, but the vast majority are low tide spots). I chose this weekend to head up as the low tides coincided with first and last light, but it made it tough to fish in the middle of the day. So we decided to head to the breakwall at east point where I'd caught a couple of nice queenies the last time I was up there: