Cruising The Sunset Coast

By Warren Steptoe - Club Marine Magazine

If there’s anything more spectacular than the fishing along Cape York’s northwestern coastline, it’s the sunsets. Add a little smoke haze from bushfires, which characteristically burn throughout the tropical dry season, and a flaming sky invariably backdrops the end of each day on the water.

Fishing is what generally brings keen sport fishers to this remote section of coastline nonetheless. Access is difficult at best, there being only a very few places along the coast reachable by a long and difficult 4WD journey over atrocious ribbons of corrugated dirt marked on maps as roads.

Western Cape York’s coastline is a sheltered shore. Those blustery prevailing trade winds omnipotent in North Queensland are offshore here and in a direct contrast to overland travel, the resulting lee close to the coast makes for comfortable travel in a boat. The waters are shallow, but a shallow draft boat is able to enter any one of several river systems to secure anchorages.

It’s a perfect scenario for mothership-based sport fishing, and given the quality of the fishing, it is perhaps to be expected that someone would put a charter boat in place to capitalise on it. Seeing the writing on the wall in looming fishing closures to sections of the Great Barrier Reef critical to a viable charter boat operation on the east coast, Club Marine member Kim Andersen decided to shift camp westward and start again on the west coast of Cape York.

Kim is well known in the game fishing charter industry and widely regarded by his peers as one of the top skippers in the country, indeed in the world. His switch to mothership sport fishing is more a return to his roots than a step away from a hard won reputation for producing results in the fickle world of big bucks and monster billfish. Prior to stepping up to the flybridge, Kim was well established as an inshore and river fishing guide, and was in fact one of the very first guides to fish the Cape’s west coast years before Weipa became the centre of the sport fishing universe it is today.

Kim actually never lost touch with snag piles and barramundi at all, each year guiding a limited clientele into the wilds of the Cape, and by regularly pursuing Lates calcarifer himself during time away from his business. Yes; if you ever wondered what charter skippers do on holidays, now you know.

My reply to an e-mail from Kim inviting this fishing scribe along for the ride while he delivered his new mothership Mantaray to its new home base in Weipa wouldn’t, I expect, need elaborating here.

Our story begins at Cairns airport where I met marine artist, Craig Smith en route for Thursday Island. Craig’s beautiful, original, artwork is a feature of the décor inside Mantaray. He also uses both still and video cameras with similar aplomb, which meant both the cabin we shared aboard, and the spare fishing dinghy immediately became a clutter of pelican cases and fishing gear.

Smithy and I hadn’t met before, but soon established a banter, which only degenerated as the cruise from Thursday Island to Weipa went on. He took to working over snag piles with a baitcaster faster than any of the literally hundreds of people I’ve coached over the years. And, much to our mutual delight, found that tossing poppers at working tuna was right up his alley too.

But that as they say, is getting ahead of the story.

I hadn’t been to Thursday Island, ‘TI’ to anyone who’s ever been there, since the early 1970s, and I found change there profound. So much so I struggled to get my bearings and relate to the places I stayed and the things I saw then to what I found in 2003.

Kim had Mantaray anchored near Horn Island, which incidentally is where Thursday Island airport is situated. To get to TI proper involves a ferry ride. Instead of that we used one of Mantaray’s fishing dinghies to visit a bottle shop and a supermarket while waiting for Kim’s clients to come in on a later flight.

ATMs and a bottle shop, which just happened to be well stocked with a favourite Margaret River dry white; bitumen roads, shiny cars, glass and aluminium shop fronts and busloads of tourists; my culture shock was worse than in 1972. About the only thing unchanged was the smiles of the locals. Although there was some doubt about the lady behind the till at the bottle shop. She seemed none too happy about a bunch of people off a boat denuding what I suspect may have been a private supply of Leeuwin’s siblings.

On our way back, we passed an Indonesian fishing boat under detention for fishing illegally in Australian Territorial waters. That too was an eye opener. What an unseaworthy tub!

How this tribute to the sailor’s art of improvisation made an open water voyage never to be taken lightly is an obvious question. You and I would hesitate to take it down the Broadwater at Southport and that has no thought of the social connotations.

We spoke briefly to the crew and their Aussie custodians as we passed to find the Indonesians a happy bunch in a mood I can only describe as holidayish.

They apparently were very much enjoying Australia’s hospitality and were eagerly anticipating a free flight home.

Just on dark, with Kim’s clients aboard and settled, the anchor chain rattled in and Mantaray’s bows pointed southwest. They were four; retired surgeon Alastair Robson, his son Nicholas, also a doctor; and two ladies Shonie Glasgow and Pat McCracken.

The latter pair surprised and delighted by proving as keen as the proverbial mustard about their fishing - and not without some skill either. Somewhat to the chagrin of Alastair and Nick who both now know that you can never outfish a lady. If they weren’t already aware of one of fishing’s unavoidable facts of life.

We were enjoying ‘a patch of weather’ at the time. It made passage to Mantaray’s first anchorage behind Vrilya Point a bumpy one while she butted strong southeasters until we rounded Crab Island south of the mouth of the famous Jardine River. After turning due south we were at last sheltered somewhat by the landmass of Cape York and the ride improved until the anchor was finally set in the small hours.

Kim and his deckie, Ross Martin, weren’t the only ones with bleary eyes that morning, no-one had had a good night’s sleep. Still, fishing was atop the agenda.

Craig and I were dispatched onto the rocky shoreline to see if it might deliver the barra it promised for dinner, while Kim and Ross took their other guests fishing in the dinghies. It looked even more promising as Smithy and I waded ashore and sure enough my first cast into a gutter beside the rocks produced a hook up.

The water was murky and it wasn’t until I’d played the fish out that we found it to be a queenfish - a disappointment after the excitement of the first cast of a new trip in a place I’d never been before came up tight. The one member of the crew I haven’t mentioned yet was Elicia de la Paix, (Kim’s partner) who was manning the galley for this inaugural voyage of the charter boat Mantaray.

Elicia’s culinary skills leave nothing to be desired, but even they couldn’t make a queenfish eat as well as the barra we tried so hard for, and failed to return with. Eventually, as the tide flooded all the likely looking barra haunts, Craig and I turned photographer and headed north towards the rusting hulk of an old lightship stranded on the beach.

CLS II marked Merkara , 70nm southwest of Thursday Island, from the 1920s until the 1980s when a cyclone broke it loose and deposited it on the beach here. Since then it has been a popular destination for the 4WD set who like to run the beach north from Vrilya Point to photograph their vehicles beside it.

We had at least as exciting a visit to the CLS II as they, having to surf a shore break across a sandbar into a deeper gutter against the old lightship’s bows. Mantaray’s fishing dinghies are adaptations of commercial line fishing dories specially built under Kim’s watchful eye by Goodwin boats in North Queensland. Ours had no problems with the small surf either going in or getting back out again, although I must say I hardly noticed that Craig went quiet while we negotiated the breakers. I guess I was concentrating - and he apparently saw some wisdom in leaving off the banter we had going strong by then to let me do so.

That the entire crew failed their mission to produce a prime saltwater barramundi was the main topic of conversation as a late breakfast was served. The why was a fact of life for any northern sojourn during the cooler months of the dry season we were fishing.

Low water temperatures during June, July and August make it difficult to persuade barra to eat a lure, which was clearly the case for the duration of this trip. We caught barra in fair numbers, but never without hard work and while the barra fishing was reasonable, it was… well hard work; compared to what the barra fishing in this part of the world is like when it’s on.

Without doubt, one of the most exciting things about western Cape York fishing is that if one kind isn’t at its best, as was the case with the barra fishing at this time, there’s always another every bit as exciting a kind which is. This time it was inshore pelagics, and longtail tuna in particular, we found working in incredible numbers a few miles off the beach virtually all the way from TI to our destination in Weipa.

In southern Queensland where I live, longtails are a challenging species, scattered, difficult to approach and always amongst the toughest of all to get to a boat after finally persuading one to bite. Along Cape York’s west coast they’re completely the opposite - except that they fight as hard as ever!

Longtails are pound for proverbial pound one of the great sport fish. Fished with two-handed spin gear they are suckers for a baitfish profile lure, but why anyone uses them is beyond me. Skipping surface poppers cast to longtails tearing into an unfortunate bait ball is simply some of the most spectacular sport fishing on the planet. Strikes, ‘bites’ is a stupid description, are awesome explosions of flying spray, often punctuated by the tuna clearing the water behind the skipping lure to pound it into the water for all the world like a pouncing cat on their way back in.

As Mantaray travelled south, Alastair, Nick, Shonie, Pat, Craig and myself actually reached a point of enjoying adrenaline charged popper fishing for longtails at selected times each day. Not that it became boring or anything like that, but sometimes focusing fishing efforts on other things, even though they were much more difficult situations in which to produce results, was just what everyone wanted to do.

Our time wore on, anchorages in each river passing, often the distances between them being covered in the Goodwins while Kim moved Mantaray to the next system. We caught barra and threadfin inside the rivers and as the dinghies travelled south along the sheltered coastline, tuna after tuna, plus several trevally species, queenfish, cobia and a couple of species of mackerel.

Days passed and social nights on Mantaray’s spacious upper deck, highlighted by events making tales worth telling. There was Kerr Reef.

Kerr Reef is an isolated reef system out off the coast. Kim took Mantaray out there, anchored, and loaded everyone into the dinghies to fish. If pelagic predators feeding on bait schools were amazing inshore, on Kerr Reef the scene was insane.

Craig and I counted 12 predatory species feeding on one bait ball amongst the many signs posted by wheeling seabirds all over the reef system. It was primal carnage on a grand scale and truly awe inspiring to behold.

Another tale worthy of retelling concerns your scribe who for a few moments was possessed by some fishing demon. Yeah, I know, regular readers will only smirk at that comment, nonetheless, some time later I’m still at a loss to explain exactly what inspired me to land a lure squarely on the head of a lurking crocodile.

A saltie of three metres or so was hanging around a few metres from our boats in hope of an easy meal while we fished a tidal gutter in Port Musgrave near the mouth of the mighty Wenlock River. This particular saurian wouldn’t take a hint and cruised around us watching proceedings with the top of its head just above the surface.

It was getting in the way and becoming something of a pest until I landed a lure fair and square with a distinct clunk of plastic hitting solid bone. Whereupon the croc indignantly, finally, swam off. If you can imagine a reptile looking back over its shoulder mumbling to itself about “bloody tourists showing no respect”…..

Fittingly, our arrival in the port of Weipa found the inshore action there, if anything hotter that we’d enjoyed for the past week cruising south along the western coast of Cape York. Unusually big broad barred mackerel (up to probably 10kg, almost as large as the species grows) joined the longtails, queenies and trevallies feeding on masses of bait scattered amongst the harbour leads.