Ok all,
Hows this for a diplomatic answer,
Tim,
You should go to Stanage Bay. With smaller tin boats you will still be able to access offshore Islands as well as highly suitable for estuaries chasing grunter fingermark, mudcrabs etc. In fact the smaller boats let you be a lot more adventurous in the rough country.
Vic,
You should go to Yeppoon. 6m glass boats and 6.8m Noble super vee (I assume with a lovley paint job) are pushing it at Stanage. The extra size will let you travel further from Yeppoon. The Keppels are heavily fished and unless you are a local they are tough. The attraction from Yepppoon is to head north which takes you along the coast past numerous headlands and Islands with GT populations. Most of these places are deep water right in close so pretty safe with the larger boats. There is also plenty of other pelagics on the more offshore Islands and heaps of reef on the depper red fern grounds which start about 50km out and extend all the way across to the Swains.
The big northern estuaries of Port Clinton and Island Head Creek are excellent as well.
I would not bother going out to the reef proper, Capricorn Bunker Group) as to me its relatively featureless and hit pretty hard from Gladstone boats (someone will no doubt tell me I'm wrong). The Swains Reefs are too far for your boats.
With regard time of year: it blows hard up here in Autumn,
Tim, April May is normally stiff SE, from late May it improves and probably calmest in September.
Vic,
December is normally fairly good with a bit of upredictable North westerlies and a few storms. We also get some big afternoon sea breezes, where it might start at dead calm and be up around 30knots by 4:00pm. So you need to work your way around the sea breeze...and its bloody hot!
Fishing wise: April May is excellent with both winter and summer species on the go (pity about the wind), but with a smaller boat at Stanage and prepared to fish the creeks ....
December is also pretty good and is the start of the summer species with reef fish in shallow water back on the chew. We have caught good GT's in both April/May and December.
Tides: if you are hell bent on GT's go for the spring tides. This is less important around Stanage as it always runs hard. Along the coast north of Yeppoon we find tides do make a big difference. For the deep reef species the neaps are better.
Like anywhere you can't beat local knowledge. Stanage, its less important as there are so many fish all over the place. Yeppoon its more important if you have a small boat and going to the local spots. If you are travelling 50 to 100km north along the coast the fishing spots are pretty obvious.
Of course you could always come on a charter with us???
Geoff,
There is a lot of water between GT's in the Keppels and those in the know keep it quiet. You can fish with poppers at the likely looking spots, current across rock ridges or isolated bommies and you are a fair chance of catching something. There are good queenies around plus a mix of smaller trevally. Scale back to maybe 100gm poppers on 50lb braid. Also some surprisingly good fishing on the mailand headlands and close in Islands.
Travis,
Mate what are you doing wrong?. We chucked poppers for an hour about 2 weeks ago for 4 missed GT's and 6 or 8 big queenies.
I did a quick afternoon fish on Saturday for a black jew 15kg, a couple of grunter and near bag limit red jew(nannygai), didn't have time for poppers as reefies kept biting. The other charter boat did try poppers for nil, very small tides, but pulled plenty of good trout on plastics and plenty of red emperor and nannygai in the deeper country.
Hope this helps.
cheers,
graham
