Fishing Tips: Tackling Tropical Speedsters

Written by Mark Bargenquast. As a fishing addicted kid I used to always dream of a paradise where catching big fish on lures was an everyday occurrence, a place where bent rods and screaming drags was an easy feat to achieve, well I am now living the dream on the western side of Cape York!

With such a fish rich environment around me and so many options from the freshwater billabongs to offshore billfish the tackle room needs to be well stocked with plenty of goodies. Like many anglers now days I like quality tackle. Anglers will spend up on high end tackle, realizing that buying quality is the key with longevity and performance right up there.

Daiwa has for me broken these rules with some amazing quality rods and reels in the lower to mid-range area with black label and generation black rods, ballistic and freams reels to name a few. I have a few of these outfits that I have been putting g through there paces in some grueling sessions on big queenfish, longtail tuna and trevallies on surface lures then dropping jigs and plastics down 20 meters to dredge up fingermark and tuskies.

I am now full time guiding again and many anglers just can’t bring tackle on the plane so it’s good to know that the gear won’t let them down if they need to borrow something. As always the J-Braid has proven itself to be a real workhorse with unbelievable knot retention and superior abrasion resistance and even with quite a few hours on some of the outfits it still is like new with no color washout that some of the other well-known brands suffer from, I like the color too it’s easy to track a fish if I’m driving the boat which makes it a lot easier for me!

Reels between 3000 and 4500 sizes are perfect for the inshore fishing scene up here spooled with 20-30 pound braid will catch just about everything, personally I have opted for a slightly longer rod around 2.3 meters or 7 and a half foot long on the old scale, this allows for a slightly longer cast and a bigger rod arc when striking a fish or working a lure and believe me when a big queenfish hits a popper and keeps coming towards you ,you’re going to need it!