There aren’t too many places in the state where you can reliably expect to boat more than twenty species in a couple of days of estuary lure and fly fishing. Weipa, however, boasts an incredible diversity of fishing options. And you can do it all in total comfort.

I still don’t know if it’s a good or a bad fact to lament. Within half a day’s travel from my office I can be walking a deserted tropical beach - spin or fly rod in hand.

Worse (?) still, I don’t know what species of fish I could be targeting. The next creature cruising up the shallow gutter could be a school of salmon, a troup of tarpon or a pod of permit. They could be a queue of queenfish or a brace of barramundi.

Weipa is one part of the state that, until recently, I hadn’t made it to, but after spending a recent holiday in Weipa, I know it won’t belong until I return. Maybe outlining three days of fishing in Weipa will help you understand the reasons why I left with that impression.

DAY 1: PUMPKIN-HEADED BEACH TUNA

Gary Prerost picked us up at the Heritage with the resort’s Grady White in tow. The plan for the top of the tide was to target shallow reef species - real shallow reef species in less than six feet of water along the beaches north of Pera Head - an hour’s run to the south. In particular, mangrove jack and coral trout were near the top of the target list.

Drifting with the south-easter, we cast lures to the biggest of the bommies and reefs that protruded from the bottom and were rewarded virtually instantly with a string of stripeys. A smaller cousin of the mangrove jack, these Lutjanids swarm over a lure that invades their territory. The fact that we didn’t see too many over the old fashioned pound mark meant that lure losses were low.

Diann managed to extract her first mangrove jack - an extremely unlucky 48cm specimen that chose to swim the wrong direction for the first few seconds of the battle. It was a suicide cast that had a happy ending.

Meanwhile, I was patting myself on the back for managing to extract a stripey a third of the size from similarly scary country, only to have it inhaled by near ten pounds of trout next to the boat. That fish made it to the wrong side of the bommie in record time and departed with my Yo-zuri rattler and the stripey. I think that losing two fish at once takes a certain amount of skill.

Rounding the corner of the reef, a sandy point held a large school of small golden trevally that were feasting on water thick with ‘jelly prawns’. These juvenile penaeids are an artefact of the ‘wet’ and their presence concentrates a variety of predators - from manta rays to swallowtail dart - along the beaches to take part in what the Weipa guides describe as a month-long feast.

It was along the next beach that we saw several pods of feeding fish slashing the shallow water to a foam and obviously gorging themselves on the jellyprawns. This was my first encounter with the Australian versions of the American ‘permit’. We call them snub nosed dart and they were definitely not replicating the finnicky feeding patterns I’d read about recently.

In fact, after tying on the closest replica to a jelly-prawn in Gary’s fly box - tied on a number 8 hook - I hooked one from the first school I cast to. And the second. Sadly, the 14lb leader parted 150 metres into the first fish’s first run. The second fish stopped 200 metres away and shook the fly free. These fish looked around fifteen pounds and none of the six we hooked in the next couple of days even looked close to throwing in the towel.

It was an impressive sight, though, seeing literally hundreds of these fish, shoulder to shoulder, scoffing jelly prawns like a mass of pumpkin-headed beach tuna.

We rounded the day out by taking longtail tuna on poppers, golden trevally off the backs of feeding manta rays and giant queenfish on fizzers within sight of the Evans Landing boat ramp.

DAY 2: BARRA ON PLASTICS

We returned to ‘permit beach’ early in the morning to line up for another shot at these brawlers. After all - it would be nice to get a photo of one, but we did have a few hours to kill before the tide would mirror yesterday’s conditions. We parked the boat and walked to the nearest oyster-encrusted rocks. Fully exposed at low tide, this structure proved to be a haven for barra at the top of the tide. Standing on the top of the larger table-top sized structures, you could literally see them swimming around your feet. Some were small - half-a-metre jobs, but others boofing stray mullet looked every bit of a metre.

Although conventional barra lures would have proved effective, there was no way I was going to chuck the equivalent of ten dollar bills into that tiger country. Even a fly line was too much to risk - a legal barra could easily render a new line useless after dragging it across ten metres of oysters.

So, it was back to the boat to drag out a special stick that Gary Howard had put together especially for situations like this. I also grabbed a handful of 3” paddle tailed plastics and a couple of packets of Gamakatsu ultra-strone EWG Worm hooks.

The rod was built on a heavy 7 1/2’ American flipping blank - originally designed for poling largemouth bass out of the heaviest cover imaginable. Well, I don’t know if the Sabre factory had this use in mind, but it was going to be put to the test in the Aussie version of the same country - with bigger fish and added oysters.

I tied the hook directly to the 20lb Harro Lure Line that my overhead was spooled with - braid had no place here - and rigged the paddle tail striaght on the hook with no added weight so that it would swim across the top of the structure with little chance of snagging.

The first few flips were rewarded with boils and rolls from the barra, but no solid takes, so it was back to the pages of the bass book to try some of the proven dam tactics.

Often, bass respond best to a straight, slow retrieve. ‘Slow Rolling’ is the term commonly describing this technique and when using a paddle tail, a slow rolling retrieve means that the tail flickers seductively while the body of the lure tracks a relatively straight path.

Slow rolling these plastics saw them swimming a hand-span under the surface and looking just like a lost little poddy mullet. Another boil on the first cast was followed by a hookup on the second and so started an hour of absolute mayhem.

Usually the barra would hit the plastic as it cleared the edge of a bommie and traversed a small gutter in the rocks. A quick hook set wiuld see the fish panic in the meanest of country. The 7 1/2 foot rod helped keep the line clear and I managed to land eight of the barra that ranged from two to four kilograms. Not surprisingly, the bigger fish simply shredded the tackle and I ended up losing all 20 of the hooks and tails. Twenty-eight hookups for eight barra landed isn’t too bad ... I think!

Like clockwork, the permit started feeding at the same stage of the tide and I managed to hook and lose another two. At one stage, Gary and I had a double hookup and both fish manged to pop the tippets in the very country the barra were killing us in.

Permit five - anglers nil. We drowned our sorrows with more longtails, queenfish, giant herring and mackerel of verious species around balls of sardines that the predators had herded up near the mouth of the river on the way home.

DAY 3: A DAY AT THE BEACH

Not all of Weipa’s fishing options are boat-based. In fact the Evans Landing wharf, right next to the boat ramp, yielded golden trevally, queenfish, pikey bream, tarpon and fingermark when we poked our noses over there. Masses of baitfish took shelter under the structure and these baitfish are under near constant assault from the hordes of predators.

FACTBOX

While visiting Weipa, we stayed at the Heritage Resort and fished with guides Gary Prerost and Dave Donald. Flight West services Weipa daily ex Cairns and the season ranges from March through November.

But on our days off from guided fishing, we were keen to check out alternative shore-based options. A couple of hours drive north of Weipa is the Pennefather River and its adjoining beaches. Accessible by 4WD and sheltered from the south-easterly trade winds, it’s a popular weekend camping spot for Weipa locals and visitors alike and is well signposted when headed towards Mapoon to the north of town.

Pulling up under a casuarina tree, right where the road meets the beach, you’d be mistaken for thinking that you’d been dropped in flyfishinbg heaven! As I pulled the rod out of the back of the Hilux, a school of around 200 blue salmon swam past in ankle deep water. As I hastily rigged a fly and prepared to chasethe school down the beach, another hundred swam past.

We walked down to the water’s edge - Diann with a spin-rod rigged Slider grub and myself with a fly - and managed a double hookup from the next school to swim past. A blue salmon and a tarpon, thank you very much.

As the tide dropped, the fish became less mobile and sat in the shallow beach gutters that were, in turn, full of more jelly shrimp that a dozen manta rays could vacuum out in ten tides!

We caught and released blue salmon and tarpon than we managed to count and left for home mid-afternoon when the fly count dropped to zero. You just don’t realise how quickly a salmon’s sandpaper-like mouth can wear through ten kilo tippett until you have to re-tie after every fish. Well, the one’s that don’t take off with your fly, that is.

I’LL BE BACK

As I wrote earlier, it definitely won’t take me as long to return to Weipa as it did to make it there for the first time. The options are incredible - we didn’t do any of the river or reef fishing for which the area ia famous. Maybe a mothershipping operation like the Eclipse would provide enough time to check out a few more .... hmmm .... I’d better start planning now for next season!

CAPTIONS

1. How are these cherabin? Look more like lobsters, I reckon. They came from the creek at Pera Head.
2. Manta rays rolling through jelly shrimps are one of Weipa’s wonders.
3. Ever seen permit feeding this crazily? Tiny shrimp patterns guaranteed hookups, but landing them proved much more difficult.
4. Gary Prerost releases a barra from the rocks ... not a place for expensive flylines!
5. Five pounds of blue salmon. Diann Suranyi landed it on a 3” Slider grub.