My blog always seems to start with the same. so today we will go straight to the interesting stuff.

I wont tell you we worked till 9 am before organising ourselves for a fishing and crabbing expedition. Oops

The dinghy was loaded with rods, bait, Morgan and the only two crab pots we have onboard,

With a tidal range of 2.3 metres we  needed to find a spot our traps wouldn’t be out of water at low tide, I put mine in a little too close to the mud bank believing that was the spot and John deployed his in deeper water. We only had one mullet between both pots (we should have kept yesterdays tuna skeleton) and were hoping for crabs for dinner.

The water was  clear and visibility to the bottom was great although it looked rather barren. Didn’t look like crab habitat either. We  tried fishing but there were no fish.

We headed out the estuaray towards the mouth where we could see outcrops of coral and as we passed over the deeper areas and fish darting between them. Dropping a line I caught a Monocle Bream which went straight into the bucket. Johns line was twisted badly from trolling so he was unable to fish. He kept the dinghy in position for me to fish though I didn’t catch anything more, got snagged on coral a couple of times and gave up.

Oh well back to the boat  for morning tea or early lunch of pancakes. A fitting morning tea for the location.

Once the tide dropped to low we motored to shore and scoured the mud flats for crabs, couldn’t find any. Last time we were here I watched a couple pick two up from the small  depressions in the sand. I think there are more people getting to Pancake these days. There was even a bunch of professional fishermen netting mullet and whatever else they could get.

Doug seraching the tidal pools for crabs.

Morgan and I wandered for a couple of hours along the mud flats, she chasing small fish and me looking for crabs.

She had a wonderful time, I could hardly get her to head home.

The water was so clear running over the sand.

I found one small crab camouflaged in the sand and Debra found one large one but it was a jenny and female crabs cant be taken in Queensland.

My pot at low tide.

The water goes out a long way .

We came back along the beach behind the mangroves which we wont do again as there were fallen trees across the sand strip and no access through the mangroves back to the sand flats. We walked for about 40 minutes before I decided that was enough and we would try going through the mangroves. Morgan found it very difficult as struggled to climb over and under their intricate roots system.

John picked us up in the dinghy once we reached the water on the sand flats and we headed off to pick up the traps before leaving in the morning.

We could only find my trap, empty of course and John’s seemed to have disappeared under the water with the rising tide.

The next morning Wayne found our float but no trap, we reckon someone ran the rope over and cut it leaving the trap below.

Back to the boat it was roast chicken and baked vegies for dinner in preparation for an early start for the next leg.