The Fitzroy town tactics – By Joon Boon

It can be a daunting experience to some. You look out over the water from the main bridges on the mighty Fitzroy River and see a large number of exposed rocks. They look like prop munchers to some while to others they look like opportunity.

Locals who have fished the Fitzroy for many years know where to travel and where not to at different stages of the tide.

I was one of those people a long time ago that would never fish around the bridges as I considered it too dangerous. Well, I’m here to tell you that it’s not all doom and gloom if you want to get into some Fitzroy town reaches action. The age old saying of “If you never go, you will never know” rings very true. It’s time to take a leap of faith so to speak, and also take on board some advice from the following words.

I consider the town reaches to run from Devils Elbow which are the big bends around a couple of kilometres downstream from the old bridge (first bridge you get to heading up stream) all the way up to the 400m limit just before the barrage.

We have had many a good session in this relatively short stretch of waterway. My first piece of advice would be to have a look over the general area on google earth. This will give you a good idea on the layout of the entire area. You can see snags, rocks and areas of interest.

 

The beauty about the town reaches is that you don’t need a big fast boat to catch good fish.

 

You can just poke around and get a good feel of the place while watching the sounder. I’ve caught trophy sized fish in this area and probably used about 5 litres of petrol for the day.

We will start down around the Devils elbow area. There are many rock piles against the bank and big snags to keep you busy for the entire day. A really good side imaging unit is a must if you really want to become consistent at putting fish on the deck. Scanning along the banks is a great way to find fish rich areas to invest your time into. I personally love my Humminbird Helix 12 and would find it hard to do a day on the water without it. I still believe they have the clearest imaging on the market so we know exactly what we are casting at.

On Devils elbow there is a set of old machinery parts against the bank. You will see them clearly around the low tide. This is a great place to start. It’s fairly popular but there are always good numbers of fish here. If you scan down that bank towards the meat works there are plenty of snags and fish numbers to find.

If you head back towards the barrage up stream then search along the deep bank all the way to Gavial Creek. There’s rock bars and snags along here that hold good barra and king. Those rock piles are also good for grunter and bream.

If you head up Gavial creek you will find good snags and also good numbers but generally the fish are small. Just watch out because the front part does get very shallow at low tide.

Just past Gavial creek is an old collapsed wharf. This is home to some true river monsters. We have caught good threadies here up to about 1.2m long and barra to about 90cm. We have had our arses handed to us on numerous times so it’s not for the faint hearted. I’ve seen plenty of barra caught here up to 1.3m in length.

From Gavial creek to the first bridge which we locals know as “the old bridge” it is now a 6 knots zone. I’ve seen threadies schooled up through the moored boats in their hundreds at times so make sure to side scan your way down.

I believe that around the old bridge there would have been more barra caught here than in any other part of the Fitzroy. There’s a lot of structure under the water from the old bridge and there’s a couple of rock piles on the downstream side that are very reliable for barramundi. My young fellas first ever barra and my wife’s PB was caught here.

The next bridge along is known as “the new bridge” and then the third bridge is “the train bridge”. So from the old bridge all the way to the 400m exclusion zone of the barrage is where it gets the most tricky. At low tide there are a lot of exposed rocks. There’s a safe passage along the south bank. Having a look here on low tide is a great idea.

On a busy weekend when there are a lot of boats on the water it’s a great idea to pull up and watch where the boats go and don’t go. Most of the locals are happy to point you in the right direction if you ask them nicely. When you take the plunge and go for a drive through this area just take your time. You will get to know the area very quickly.

On the small tides, so on the neaps, there’s enough water through the passage to navigate safely on low tide. Those lows are generally around the 1-1.5m mark. On the big tides around the full and quarter lows can get down to .3-.5m. I would give travelling up into town a miss around the low, it’s very sketchy.

Around two hours either side of high tide during the small or big tides you are pretty right to navigate wherever you want except under the new bridge.

Tide times vary a bit to the Rosslyn Bay tide times which we look at. You can get Rockhampton Fitzroy tide times but if you work on plus one hour for high and plus two and a half hours for low on the Rosslyn Bay tides you will be pretty close. The reason for the time difference is that Rockhampton is about 40-50km from the mouth, that’s a long way the tides got to run.

Righto that’s enough about the basics and navigating, let’s get down to business of catching a fish up in town. If you’re a bait fishermen then the town reaches usually has a pretty good supply of live prawns if you’re handy with a cast net. When the prawns are thick they can be caught off the pontoons on either the north or south side boat ramp pontoons. When they aren’t thick and you need to hunt for them try either up Gavial creek or on the shallow side drains along Devils elbow.

If you’re a lure fishermen then here’s a few ideas to get you started. Basically you want to cover a range of options to find out what they want on the day. Some fantastic paddle tail options are Castaic Jerky J and Zerek Flatt Shads. Grab some sizes between 3 and 7 inch and a variety of colours.

For prawn imitations you can’t go past a 3 inch Gulp shrimp. They don’t look like much but man do they work. Zerek live shrimps are another top option in the 3 and 5 inch size. If you’re looking for one of the most realistic prawn lures on the market then check out the Chasebaits Flick Prawn, especially the banana colour.

It wouldn’t be a trip to the Fitzroy without picking up some soft vibes. Soft vibing would be the most used technique in this entire area. Just duck into a shop like Barra Jacks in Rockhampton and you will see a big wall full of soft vibes. Heaps of brands to choose from so which ones are best?

The two main ones I use are Zerek Fish Traps and Samaki Vibelicious and thumper tail. Grab a few different sizes and colours. It’s amazing how many times I’ll be soft vibing with no interest and either go up or down a size and get the bite straight away.

So now we’ve got bait and an arsenal of lures, what tactics do we employ to fish the rock bars around the bridges and up to the 400m mark of the barrage?

It would be hard to fish up there properly without a ‘you-beaut’ side imaging sounder. I love my Humminbird Helix 12 but as long as your unit shows you good detail if there are fish, bait or structure then you’re on a winner.

I like to think of the entire rock bar as a bit of an underwater city. The holes and channels that run between and around the bommies are the highways and the tops of the bommies are the restaurants. It will become obvious once you see some of the bait piled up on top of the rocks. They use the highways to move about and the tops of the bommies to feed. There are a few exceptions to this rule but overall this is a great place to start.

The more that you fish the bommies the better understanding you will get of which ones fish well and at what stages of the tide you should be fishing them. If you only see a fish or two on top of one of the bommies then make sure to have a cast as those fish might be actively feeding.

 

If you want to take this technique to the next level then Humminbird have a pretty cool feature called Auto Chart Live.

 

Once you turn this feature on you can scan and create your own chart. Using this feature will make bommies stand out and make it so much easier to navigate and fish. I’ve also got the Auto Chart software so I can view my maps on my computer and then convert them into 3D. This is a very cool feature and can help identify areas of interest to concentrate your efforts.

Another tip to fishing the town reaches rock bar is when fish are difficult to find on the bommies it can pay to change your tact to fishing the edges and snags. This little technique has saved us on numerous occasions from the dreaded donut. We don’t seem to get big barra but a barra is a barra all the same when you’re on struggle street. Weedless plastics are your friend.

The final tip to fishing the town reaches are looking for transient spots. Places where the tide might be creating a back eddy, pressure on the front of rocks and places where barra will have to pass through with the tide going in or out.

Finding transient spots can be a matter of trial and error and also using your eyes to watch how the water moves and where the bait is concentrated. I like to position the boat so I can watch the sounder and see if fish are moving through or not.

Well, I hope I have shed some light on one of the most iconic places to fish in Central Queensland. It’s a great place and generally has fish rich areas you can park up on even if the wind is blowing. Keep an eye out as I might see you out there.