Seeing Red over Bait to Plate 3

A red inspired bait to Plate 3 is now my thought pattern after learning this morning that one of our local commercial fisherman is heading to sea tonight chasing deep water “red fish”. Red Claw Crayfish were already on the hit list but I can now expect largemouth and small mouth nannygai, red emperor and hopefully some reef jacks, also called red bream. A will add in some whole steamed coral tout (red ones of course, locally called strawberry trout or just strawbs and I might even knock out a tomato based seafood and saffron risotto or a bisque. Plenty of thinking time and working with the kitchen team over the next few days while I wait to the boat to come back in on Thursday. Looking good, colourful and above all delicious. I will make sure I have a whole fish or 2 of each variety we use and can talk about how and where to catch them as well as the best way to handle, prepare and cook.

Reef Festival Bait to Plate Lunch

It’s on again. Reef festival rolls around and with it the dining event we created with Reef Festival in mind, our Bait to Plate lunch. A great chance to be inventive, educational and entertaining for both true foodies and those interested in our regions seafood and how to catch, prepare and cook. The weather gods are critical to the success of this day and the few days of calm weather early next week should allow our local commercial fishers to go to sea and hopefully even get to the reef itself. Having done a Bait to Plate lunch featuring fish from around the Islands and another featuring fish for the estuaries and Repulse Bay I am hoping to mix it up a bit this time and have even sourced some live local Red Claw Crayfish for something completely different. The full menu will not come together till next Thursday/Friday when the fisherman start to return to Port but I’m hoping for some unusual varieties that I can work with our chefs on. Maybe even some of our beautiful local garfish , delicious and so much better than using them for bait. Maybe some flathead which are thick in the bay this time of year and certainly some Coral trout. So many options.  As soon as the catch is in I will set the menu and post it on line.

Hunter gathering in style

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I often refer to our cruiser as our "floating caravan"; a sort of glamping (glamorous camping) where every campsite is absolute waterfront and you can cook at the BBQ on the back deck and have a rod in the water at the same time. We have just spent another weekend "glamping", up “inside the postcard” at my favourite anchorage in Hill Inlet, on the northern end of Whitehaven beach. With so many wonderful spots to anchor, fish and explore it is always tempting to try different spots and yet this part of Hill Inlet is just about everything I enjoy, all in one spot. Calm in all but the roughest of conditions, great fishing for Mangrove Jacks and Grunter. A few tasty mud crabs, and this trip I didn’t even take crabs pots and just scooped one up with a landing net in a clear shallow section of the inlet while out for a bit of an explore. I caught some beautiful big garfish, which are usually just used for bait, but are wonderful to eat once you learn the knack of how to debone them. Straight on the BBQ or panko crumb and pan fry, these are beautiful sweet fish and always worth the effort to clean. Catching the gar, just with a little bit of bread for bait was a ton of fun and gave me prime grunter and jack bait as well as a lovely garfish dinner.

Our dog came out for the weekend and we finished the trip with a night in majestic Nara Inlet on the western face of Hook Island, surrounded by charter yachts and the towering mountains.

The Whitsundays is clearly Australia’s boating paradise and with a little local knowledge the fishing is also first class. One of the phots I have posted is answering the obvious question in any mangrove system, what about the mosquitos and another is a great shot of being interrupted, in the nicest possible way, while trying to cook lunch.

Our amazing "Winter" weather

The “east coast low” which bashed up the Gold Coast, Sydney and Tasmania had the exact opposite effect on the Whitsundays and typically this kind of weather system acts as a blocker for the SE trade winds which impact on the north for much of the winter. While the consistent winds might help our reputation for an amazing place to sail, for fisherman the east coast lows mean just one thing. Calm. In fact, flat calm. 7 days straight of virtually no wind with pleasant warm days and slightly cooler nights, just enough to bring out the blankets. Fishing wise this transition into winter, means the barramundi start to slow down (still a few around), the flathead come into the bays to breed and can be caught in the same places we usually get a Barra, just right up in the shallow water and the Spanish mackerel, arguably the prize target during winter, move in around the islands. It is just a great time of the year when the main choice is what to target. Go to the reef for reds, around the islands for a mackerel or stick to the shallow bays and flick lures for some flathead and still be a chance at a Barra. I managed 2 from 3 last week. Too much work on to get a full day away for a reef trip I managed a nice little bay session and then a 3 hour mackerel trip. The Barra are around but hesitant and I managed 2 landed from 4 half-hearted strikes and just the one flathead as I think the water needs to be just a degree or 2 cooler. Mackerel are likewise a little slow waiting for that slight water temp drop but I managed a couple. It looks like being another great year. The winds have returned this morning and will now blow at 20 knots or more for at least the next week so it is sailing weather again. Fisherman learn to be patient, we will watch and wait for the next weather window. When the next East Coast Low starts to makes its way South, battern down the hatches at home and jump on a plane to Airlie Beach. This is as good as it get during a North Queensland winter.

Wild Wonderful Weipa

Just home late last night from my annual 7 day mates trips to the wilds of Cape York. My annual pilgrimage to the mining frontier town of Weipa started back in 1986 and some of us, now on 14 years unbroken, are original. Mates are mates, fishing is fishing, we have all grown older and wiser and the trip has become as much about the company and the food as the fishing itself. That said, the fishing is pretty mind-blowing. A mix of creeks and blue water, possible in very few other places. A truly wild untamed and land, rugged beauty and iconic places like the (as you will see in the photos) Red Cliffs. We fish for barramundi and King Salmon in the creeks, have a few surprise visitors like giant Qld Grouper and queenfish, drive into literally seas of Tuna and monster bull sharks and above all eat like kings, swap stories, business philosophy, rail against the system and as a group of likeminded, self-employed “grumpy old men” have a ball. Cocktail hours (Mojitos of course) made and served in the ships stainless steel fire bucket, mountains of fresh prawns, chilli crab, fresh tuna sashimi and just soak up the atmosphere in one of my favourite spots in Australia. Once again, this is let the pictures tell the story of my annual mates trip to Weipa on the good ship Tillitoo. The ugly duckling of the entire Australian charter boat fleet.

This is NOT your typical glamour charter boat. Weipa is the kind of environment which would have your average Whitsunday charter boat too scared to leave the marina. Tough, rough, wild, untamed. Tillitoo suits as a floating, virtually indestructible fishing shack which just happens to move. The lower deck is accommodation in 10 single bunk beds. No air con, 1 “dunny” and absolutely no wood, polish of fine detail. Everything is just tough. Upstairs is a beer garden and BBQ area. 3 Large eskies, a large deep freezer and a helm, plus enough rod racks to keep 40 rods and reels out of harm’s way.

As ugly as she is, Tillitoo has one certain magical property. The moment you step on board and take off your shoes and bare feet connect with the raw aluminium, the stress leaks out through your soles. Phones, usually permanently connected to our heads, suddenly don’t matter. Vital business deals, can suddenly wait till next week. Bank managers don’t matter, being out of phone range doesn’t matter, no internet….who cares. Leave me alone, I’m fishin’; and when I’m not fishin’ I’m cookin’ drinkin’ chillin’ or just relaxin’.

So it is over for another year. Next year and the year after are already booked and we have learnt you now have tobook at least 2 years in advance to get the best tides. Anyone with fishing, boating and adventure  in their veins should do this trip as a bucket lister. It remains one of the best experiences in a lifetime on the water. This year's highlites. Catching barramundi in the cast net trying to get bait, sunset at red cliffs, tuna as far as the eye could see, fly fishing the beaches for Tarpon, golden trevally, giant herring and queenfish. The grouper I caught (and released) in Young Creek. Mates, crabs, prawns and mojitos and panko crumbed barramundi for dinner. The black Angus steaks my butcher brother brought up from Brisbane...and the rum! Till next year.

Christmas in May

The childhood memories of the night before Christmas are long long ago. The feeling of trying to go to sleep so that you would in due course wake up to Christmas morning. As we get older and jaded this is not such a big deal and days all roll on. I however, still experience the night before Christmas feeling  every year in May, and as I write this I am just 3 more sleeps. Every year in May I go away with a group of my best mates on a fishing trip to Weipa on the north western point of Cape York. We hire a houseboat, stock it with good food, fine rums and a small fortune in fishing gear and set sail into the wild wonderful expanses of the gulf.

We have been doing these trips together on and off for almost 30 years. It has been an almost religious pilgrimage on the houseboat for 12 years in a row and on Sunday night I will try to get a few hours’ sleep before getting in the Ute and driving to Cairns at 3 in the morning to catch a flight to Weipa.

The boys come from all over and rendezvous in the bar at Cairns airport and it is often the only time of the year we will meet, but best mates are always best mates.

We will fly to Weipa, do our shopping, load the boat, ice down some beers and be fishing by lunch time Tuesday.

I will try to take some photos of both the fishing, the scenery and the food and do a blog post either up there, or, more likely when I get home but I will pop up a few pics of previous trips.

It is wild, barren country, but in some areas it is spectacular. Places like Red Cliffs and Pera heads as a contrast to the mangrove swamps of Pine Bay and the Nominade River. It is mud banks and barramundi, sandy beaches and fly fishing and blue water with Tuna and monster bull sharks and all from the rustic comfort of the floating fishing shack called Tillytoo.

The Whitsunday Weather Gods

All fishos talk about the weather gods and when they smile. We learn how to read a synoptic chart and use official forecast from BOM as a guide, not an iron clad promise.

BOM usually have a built in margin of error on how hard the wind will blow, always on the high side, I think in fear of getting sued if something goes wrong. The official synoptic charts however are spot on and a true reflection of what the wind will do.

We follow seabreeze, willy weather and watch the live feeds from local airports, everything we can to get a true opportunity for one of those glamour days on the water, and yesterday (and today) is 2 of those days.

A mate and I ran almost 100 miles offshore yesterday and could have water-skied the whole way home. We caught a few fish, fed a few too many sharks and generally had a very pleasant day and night, even catching a few fish 2 at a time.

What’s not to love about the Whitsundays? Let the pictures tell the story

The boat's in!

The boats it and the menu is set for our second Bait to Plate seafood lunch. I am really excited this time to be featuring Repulse Bay and our inshore fishery as this is a fishery I most associate with personally. Growing up fishing out of wooden dinghy’s in the Pumicestone Passage and very long way from the blue water and the reefs. I love fishing Proserpine River and the bay and it is great to be able to showcase these fish at a Bait to Plate event and help encourage people to try them from local fish shops.

I have started to form a great relationship with 2 young blokes commercially fishing Repulse Bay and they will be at the restaurant on Sunday to talk about the how, when and where of the fish we are having for lunch and also share some of their experiences and tall tales.

Mark AKA Dr Rum is working on some nice matching wines and I only have a few spots left so book quick or miss out (again).

BBQ’d Giant Brown Tiger Prawns w/ Green Pawpaw Salad : These are caught just outside the bay and I am also hoping to have some local bay banana prawns delivered tomorrow morning as well so I can serve both hot and cold.

Trio of Salmon w/ homemade Hollandaise Sauce. A mixed plate of local King salmon and Blue salmon and a “ring in” from Tasmania (the true salmon) and I will have whole fish of each variety to show guests, fillet and talk about.

Chili Mud Crab. A tasting dish of our house speciality with all the hard work done and the crab meat all pulled out and ready to eat. I am hoping to have a live crab as well, just to add a bit of theatre.

Poached Wild Barramundi in Ginger Broth. A recipe I have learned from working with a Chinese Chef last year and now a staple during Chinese New Year.

Mint Crusted local Grunter. An inspiration just to mind and in deference to our famous Mojitos. I am going to coat this wonderful fish fillet with panko crumbs and chopped mint. Pan fry, and serve with lime cheeks and a rum scented aioli and crunchy chips.

Painted Crayfish Pasta with Garlic & Chilli. These amazing looking local crayfish have a reputation for being both tough and strongly flavoured but in a “less is more” dish the diced cray meats, pan-fried with garlic, chilli, parley and diced tomatoes creates an amazing olive oil based dressing for hot pasta with the pasta the hero and the lobster the flavour base. I big cray will make enough pasta for the entire lunch.

Tempura Bug Tails w/ Thai dressing. A nice little finisher of local bay bugs. The wind has been a little unkind this week and varieties of fish have been a bit hard to get but local bugs are a star on any plate.

Bait to Plate number 2

As the 2nd Bait to Plate long lunch approaches I am starting to form a menu theme and this time have been approached by some of the commercial fishers who work the inshore fishery in Repulse Bay. I think this will make a nice change from the last event which focused on reef fish and opens up all sorts of options for fish very rarely seen on restaurant menus.

A couple of the fisherman and going to attend the lunch and talk about the varieties available, the fishing methods used and maybe even share a few stories about sharks, crocodiles and sea snakes. Just the everyday hazards which make a commercial fishers life such an adventure.

I am hoping to showcase some very lesser known inshore varieties, will have to do a mud crab dish, maybe even something with a local painted crayfish and see what gets caught on a great set of tides in the couple of days before the lunch.

While I already have a few ideas in mind I will be very much guided by what gets caught and love the last minute inspiration some of the fish will give me.

I’m am sure to have some fresh barramundi, must do a mud crab and maybe some Grunter, but everything else is in the lap of the fishing gods.

Hope to see you on the 24th for a delicious lunch, some nice wines and an afternoon of both entertainment and information.

Come inside the postcard

If there is one single image that is the Whitsundays it is a photograph of Whitehaven beach. More specifically it is a place called “Hill Inlet” on the northern end of Whitehaven and a photo which has no doubt sold thousands of postcards. Some years ago I took my business partner well up into the inlet at high tide and she coined the phrase, "like being inside the postcard", and yes it is. Something magical a little bit secret and getting to experience a place so wonderful it doesn’t seem like it can quite be real.

While tour boats and bare boats are not allowed and the shallow sand flats and shifting sand banks make it almost impregnable, for those locals who can work the tides and read the visual clues it is actually possible to travel several kilometres up into the inlet and after selecting one of the many deep pools to anchor it is possible to let the tide go out and remain in the inlet through the tide, or even for a night or 2 and it is the most serene, peaceful anchorage to be had anywhere in the Whitsundays. A few sand-flies at dawn and dusk are a small price to pay to be able to anchor overnight, pop a couple of crab pots in and then sit enjoying a beer with a couple of rods out.

The Inlet is great fishing on smaller tides. Grunter, Mangrove Jacks, Pikey Bream and estuary cod are regulars with even the odd coral trout turning up at times.

During the day the sand flats are a fly fisherman’s dream come true with plenty of golden trevally, queenfish and even a few bonefish to be targeted. Cruising over the flats on a rising tide, sight casting with a fly rod in gin clear water  is a very special experience. Even small mangrove jacks are an easy target along the shallow clear water mangrove edges.

My wife and I have just spent 2 great nights in Hill Inlet, caught a few crabs, a heap of nice Grunter and Jacks, read a book and whiled away the time, out of phone range and with the inlet entirely to ourselves. It really is a perfect piece of paradise.

So a few tips.  

Always enter and leave on the last hour of a rising tide.

Small tides fish better but are harder to get in far enough on.

The deep pool with the big rock shelf on the left about 2k’s in is a good overnight anchorage and anchor about 50 meters upstream from the rocks. Be alert at each change of tide for swing room.

Squid or peeled prawns are the best baits for grunter.

Also for any "where's Wally" lovers. Yes, both the cat and the dog come out on the boat with us. They have done since puppy/kitten days and are absolutely at home on the water. Just like me =). Look carefully at the photos.

Why Size Matters

A recent overseas holiday allowed a great opportunity to visit fresh fish markets in Bali and even a Bali cooking class. I am just fascinated by fish markets. The sights and sounds, smells and the entire buzz as boats unload and buyers throng to everything that comes into the market. The large market in Bali is right on the foreshore and the many boats pull up to the wharf or beach on the sand right in front to remove catches from the nets, or unload the line caught boxes. This is a market best described as “rustic” and far below the OH & S standards required in Australia. The fish was however same day fresh, lightly iced and going out the door as quickly as it was coming in so health standards were being maintained with the sheer speed in which everything was being sold.

The striking feature of not only this fish market, but others I have been to overseas is just how well managed our own fishery is. So much science and research is done with each of our significant fisheries. Minimum size limits with a guiding principle that every fish has to reach a size allowing at least 1 spawning cycle before it reaches legal size. Slot sizing (minimum and maximum) of some species like Barramundi and Flathead where all big fish are breeding females are identified and have to be released. TAC’s (total allowable catch) or catch quotas so that overfishing does not occur. Strict bag limits on every type of fish caught be recreational anglers. We have so many rules and regulations around what we catch in this country, how we catch them, how many we keep and what size they have to be that any Eco driven rhetoric about “overfishing” just does not stand up to scrutiny. A quick glance through the Bali markets where literally anything and everything is fair game, regardless of size and variety is what overfishing looks like.

It is impossible to condone what is clearly happening in some countries. I have snorkelled in the Mediterranean Sea around the Amalfi coast and found it to be almost a fish desert and the attitude of take everything that you can catch which was apparent in Bali has to be unsustainable but by any international standards our fishery is clearly well managed and here for the long run.

Our fisheries managers often get a kicking for being too restrictive, and often they are; but a trip to an international fish market is a very sobering example of unregulated fishing. The fish in Bali are tropical reef fish, all the same (or very close too) the same species as we get here in the Whitsundays and to see what was being taken was very disheartening to say the least.

Fish see only as bait fish like fusiliers or female mud crabs barely 8 centimetres across the back, tiny wire netting cod and baby emperor, all destined for the dinner table without apparent though for the long term consequences.  While it is unfair to the culture of another country to try to impose our standards, and also impose our standards with little or no consideration that many of these fisherman are literally subsistence fishing trying to feed a family, there is also plenty of visual evidence of large scale commercial fishing, not just small single man commercial fishing.

We are lucky to live in country where we can afford to have the kind of rules and fisheries management which will sustain our industry well into the future.

Things that go bump in the night

Another patch of dead calm weather and perfect reef tides resulted in an all-nighter after work on Saturday. I enjoy night time fishing and all it entails. More care with navigation and travelling and having a well thought out plan can result in some spectacular fishing opportunities for species not as common during daylight.

Heading out at 11.30 for the hour and a half run to the first of my marks I was delighted to see the sounder light up and enjoyed a few solid hours of night fishing before moving on to my Coral Trout haunts after sunrise.

For those not experienced with the fish of the Great Barrier Reef, Coral trout do not feed at night. This is instead the haunt of nannygai, red emperor and mangrove jacks. It is also the time the spangled emperor feed and while all of these species can be caught by day, it is by night when they are far more active. It is also a time when the sharks are not so active. Sharks have become the absolute enemy of reef fisherman.

Seemingly far more abundant, aggressive and brazen in recent years it is now commonplace to have sharks turn up and cruise around your boat almost as soon as you drop anchor.  This seems to be a “learned response” and may make an interesting case study for a marine biology student but as an experienced fisho there is no doubt that sharks have become conditioned to identifying small boats as food sources. They will regularly just park themselves under a fishing boat and just wait till a fish is being brought boat side to pounce.

 I fish Weipa every year and started to see this phenomenon happening about 8 years ago. As soon as you stop a boat near a school of feeding tuna, 2 or 3 big sharks would turn up and start circling under the boat and cruise around until a tuna was fought to the boat and then it became an almost impossible task to get the tuna past them. Awe inspiring and at times a little frightening to some having sharks as large as the boast launching themselves as tuna within meters of the boat, sometimes even bumping the boat out of the way to get at a fish.

On to our area this has become more and more an issue here as well. Fishing around the reef drop-offs has become almost impossible, the deep shoals, which were usually pretty shark free, are now also getting hit and at plenty of common mackerel spots large sharks are now following boats around as they troll just waiting for an easy feed.

I don’t know if the shark issue is about more sharks, better “trained” sharks or some combination. It is certainly not a lack of feed because the reef fishing in general seems in very good shape. Plenty of fish getting hooked but often only 1 in 5 making it to the boat.

I know a general acceptance of “save the sharks” and “sharks are endangered” is the norm but wonder if this position is actually science backed. It may be the case that as we have continued to take fish and shark fishing and other shark control mechanisms have been phased out that numbers may well be out of whack. These creatures have evolved unchanged for many many eons and clearly have an ability to adapt to opportunity. Whether this is some form of what we would describe as intelligence, or learned response I don’t know. I would love some research done to find out. I get a bit sick of seeing great fish end up as shark food.

I managed to get a few past them during the night session but as soon as it came light it became impossible in any water depth over 4 meters. I did end up pulling a few nice trout right up in the reef shallows but even then had a few lost to sharks clearly cruising around the boat, even in the shallows. Still a good day (night) out enjoying the beautiful weather in what is supposed to be our wet season and still lots of tourists in town.

Kev