January 1, 2019 Fishing Port Douglas

After staying up to watch the local Port Douglas fireworks and the Sydney fireworks on TV we were a bit tired so the 7am alarm came early.  But we had to leave by 7:30am to be able to walk to the public pier and meet our charter by 8am.  It was about the time the fireworks were going off that we realized that Sydney was an hour ahead of Port Douglas so it was really 1am.  But then that also meant that our 7am alarm was really 8am.  So I guess it all evened out in the long run.

We uneventfully found the public pier and Andy, our fishing guide, had his trusty boat there and we hopped on.  Yes, there were comments made by us that the ‘crazy tourists’ really did want to go fishing when a Cyclone was in the area.  But looking at the low gray sky it didn’t look too bad (as long as you didn’t look out towards the open ocean and those black clouds and white caps).

Because of the seas and weather we were only going to be able to fish the one estuary and not travel up to any of the other rivers.  The expectations were set from the start that the fishing has been very slow and not many fish had been caught over the last few days.  (low expectations set: check)

White Bellied Sea Eagle keeping an eye on us - pretty impressive when it flew by

Look one way and it looks gorgeous...

My handsome, happy, husband (and ominous clouds)

Greg having fun (with more clouds)

Yolanda having fun - though the water was not the pretty blue it should be in December (Andy told us this was the wettest December in Port Douglas since 1973!)

Our first stop to drop anchor was literally 100 meters away from where we were picked up, in a derelict pier area with good substrata (aka sunken piers).  We all proceeded to get nibbles on our bait but Ken was the only one to pull in a fish there.  The rest of us flailed away and pulled our bait right out of the fish’s mouths (we assume).

We moved on after a while to the main part of the river where all the big boats were moored and continued to have fair success (i.e. Ken and Greg caught fish and Yolanda and I fed fish all the bait they could want.) We did also watch two snorkel/scuba boats head out....with 3 people on one and not many more than that on the other.

Fishing Australia together

Sharp, Pointy, Teeth

Mangroves

More Mangroves...but no crocodile sightings (I think that's a good thing?)

I caught a fish in Australia!!

Greg pulling in a crab pot

Our trusty guide Andy and a Mud Crab

same mud crab - with Greg

We made many moves through the day, including checking crab pots.  3 of the 4 had been pulled and reset that morning so no crabs were to be had until we got to the 4^th pot.  It had a nice sized mud crab but it was literally 2 millimeters too small to legally keep.  Rats.  We could have had a local restaurant cook it up for us, but nope.

 Ken and Greg each caught very nice sized Cod, some smaller Cod, and some smaller Mangrove Jacks.  I ended up only pulling in one fish, a Cod that wasn’t very large but was big enough for a picture.  I did manage to get my line in front of a Barracuda (according to Andy) who promptly grabbed the line, ran with it for a few seconds before severing it with its sharp teeth.  My fishing line literally went sailing in front of me before I knew what happened.  Pretty crazy.

Yolanda and I did manage to miss a couple spots with our sun screen so we got a bit lobster-like.  A stop at the local pharmacy set us up with Aloe so hopefully we’ll be good.

After a great day fishing (Out and About Sportfishing in Port Douglas is awesome!) then showering off at our apartment Greg, Ken, and I went swimming in our pool and Yolanda even threw a couple beer/cocktail refills down to us from our second floor balcony!

For dinner we all opted for “whatever is closest and open” (it being New Year’s Day that limited us a bit).  That meant we got a table at Baby (yep, really, a restaurant called Baby), a Pizza & Pasta joint.  We chose an outside table that blessedly ended up being under an awning.  I say blessedly because just after we finished our dinner the rains finally hit.  And Cyclone rains, at that.  It just DUMPED and Greg and I had our backs to the rain (and the Flying Foxes that had flown by just a bit earlier – those are bats in case you didn’t know) and Greg’s back got a bit wet, mine, not so much.  We sat out the rains until it was just a sprinkle (which meant waiting through two deluges) and hot footed it back to our apartment, managing to stay pretty dry. 

Great luck to end our first full day in Port Douglas.

As with many rain pictures, it doesn't look as heavy as it was

The down spout couldn't contain the water, though it was starting to slow down at this point

Tomorrow is unknown because the Snorkeling trip was cancelled due to the Cyclone.  We aren’t entirely sure what we’ll be doing.  Guess we’ll all find out together.

Happy New Year!