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Townsville breakwalls

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Sunday, 28 October 2007

Seeking protection behind the breakwalls

Protection from easterly winds behind marina breakwalls

Launch:	- 4:00 PM
Landed:	- 6.45 PM
Tide:	- 3:30 PM, Low
Weather:	- Hot, 29 °C, 25 knots
Caught:	- Small stripey bait fish
Method:	- Trolling hard body and soft plastic lures

With easterly winds blowing up around the 20 knot mark today's plans of putting in a sundown kayak fishing trip were almost shelved for the day but at the last minute I decided to try for the breakwalls around the marina and shipping channel at south Townsville. I was surprised by how many boats must have been on the water (plenty of boats at the marina car park) but most were heading back in while I was heading out. My plan was to make my way around the breakwalls from the shipping channel around to the marina, which I figured would be nicely protected from the incoming winds.

With barra season rapidly drawing to a close my plan today was to try for a few livies and do some bait fishing as well as the obligatory trolling and lure casting. My intention was to fish into nightfall, but that one went by the wayside as I launched without packing my lighting kit. So as the sun started to close in on the horizon line I made a move back to the boat ramp. At this stage I was still fishless.

Very nearly used for live bait

As I entered the channel I tied on one of my 'when-all-else-fails' lures, which is a little 2" Finn-S minnow shad. I was pleasantly surprised when it produced a fish for me, although the fish it hooked wasn't all that much bigger than it's humble little self. I was very tempted to use this little guy as a livie but with daylight fading fast I thought better of it. That was probably pretty silly of me in hind sight.

Hugging the breakwalls around the shipping channel & marina

Only 100 metres from the boat ramp I passed a few guys fishing from the rocks and we exchanged stories of woe as I did. Ironically, one of the guys got a nice hook up right there and then, pulling in a large barracouta that would have gone about 100cm. That's when I started kicking myself for throwing the bait fish back.