Picking up from my previous blog post, the new day would be the first "real" day of our trip. The first orders of business were to pick up our rental car, a nice Corolla hatchback, and do some shopping. Then, we headed to Crystal Cascades for a bit of a swim to cool off. Did I mention the insane temperatures and humidity in Cairns!? The walk along Freshwater Creek to the cascades was pretty interesting and gave us our first taste of Australia wildlife; giant spiders, brush turkeys, tropical fish, colourful butterflies, and others were present.
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| Cruiser (V. arsinoe) |
After finishing the short hike, I decided to try to catch some of the tropical fish downstream of the national park area. Seeing the fish upstream, but not being able to catch them, was driving me crazy! In short order, I located a pool with some big Jungle Perch hanging out in the shallows, mixed with schools of Rainbowfish and Blue-eyes. Surprisingly, the Jungle Perch wanted nothing to do with my bait, but the Rainbowfish were more than eager!
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| Eastern Rainbowfish (M. splendida) |
The beauty of the Rainbowfish was astounding, it must be one of the prettiest freshwater fish I've caught to date. Alex was similarly enthralled, enough for her to want to catch one of her own :)
Catching the Rainbowfish also meant I finally had access to some semi-decent bait, having only used Powerbait pellets up until then. I baited a size 16 hook with a small chunk of Rainbowfish and freelined it out to the bigger fish. Of course, the Jungle Perch ignored my best efforts. But, as the bait neared the bottom, a dark shape moved out from the rocks and grabbed my presentation! It turned out to be a Sooty Grunter, another popular Australian freshwater gamefish. I also quickly learned that they have more than their fair share of spines.
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| Sooty Grunter (H. fuliginosus) |
After releasing the grunter, I repeated the process of letting the bait slowly fall to the bottom, mainly because of the Jungle Perch's unwillingness. As soon as the bait neared the bottom, the Sooty's would come out and smash it! It was good fun but started to get old after catching a few fish without any added diversity. Eventually, my persistence paid off and a new species showed itself! I would called it the "spotted freshwater thing", as I had no clue what it was. Some friends on FaceBook later ID'd it as a Spangled Perch.
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| Spangled Perch (L. unicolor) |
Having exhausted the number of species in the pool, I returned my focus to the Jungle Perch. There were plenty of them, all willing to take bread from tourists but completely unwilling to take anything attached to a hook! I changed tactics and began treating my bait as if it were a dry fly and skittering it briefly along the surface to incite an aggression strike. This new technique worked and I finally hooked into one of them!
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| Jungle Perch (K. rupestris) |
After landing the Jungle Perch, we switched gears and headed up the coast to do a bit of saltwater fishing. The Palm Cove Jetty was a spot I knew literally nothing about, but seemed to be some of the better access I could find. It turned out to be a great first spot to wet a line in Australian saltwater and I managed to land a whole array of cool fish! The first was this duo of Grunters to round off my Terapon genus collection.
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| Spinycheek Grunter (T. puta) |
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| Largescale Grunter (T. theraps) |
Next, a rather bland-looking Emperor and similarly drab Sillago popped up (all new species btw). I also managed to land some sort of dark Grouper which one of the local guys told me was a "Cod". Turns out these three fish were Redspot Emperor, Western Trumpeter Sillago, and Chocolate Hind/Grouper/Cod. You may as well disregard half the common names here because they're all mixed up in Australia lol.
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| Redspot Emperor (L. lentjan) |
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| Western Trumpeter Sillago (S. burrus) |
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| Chocolate Hind (C. boenak) |
The last fish I wanted to show you guys was definitely the most exciting to me! It's one I had planned to catch much further south but I was super pleased to have one show up so early in the trip. I'm not much of a saltwater guy, but I do gotta admit there are some pretty wacky fish in the sea. Case in point, this cool Yellowfin Tripodfish!
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| Yellowfin Tripodfish (T. angustifrons) |
We ended the day by going for our first ride up the Captain Cook highway to look for a campsite. This has to be one of the most spectacular drives on the planet! Tropical rainforest on your left and blue ocean on your right! It might also seems like a great place to camp, but be prepared to sweat! This was our first experience with tropical car camping, and all I can say is bring a fan!!!
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