Oh, how I wish that was the problem.
Myself, with Sani, Andre and Ali, arrived in Beachport about 1pm and after driving around in circles looking for our house (I didn't bring a map, but I did know what it looked like ) for a while, we unloaded our gear and cooked up some lunch. Andy and Anna arrived soon after and before long we were on our way down to Beachport's famous
We were presented with a fantastic looking beach, a large reef running from one end to the other, creating a huge gutter in front of it.
I was pretty keen to bait up and get my hooks into the water in order to bring in the first fish of the trip, because it was sure to not take long in water like this. The fish had other ideas however, and had vacated the beach some time before we got there. So, we sat down and waited, and cracked open some beers.
There were thousands of these jelly fish on the beach. I think they are called Blue Bottles. Sani picked one up and its tentacles stung her - her hands puffed up like the Michelin Man!
Sani went off for an explore and nearly ran into this guy, who scared the crap out of her with an angry bark.
Andy couldn't resist the photo opportunity (I notice he took 2 beers with him for the "huge" walk - a few hundred metres)
We ventured back to the holiday home to watch the footy and tuck into a couple of beers. Before long, the music was loud, I was playing air drums, Andy was twirling around in circles, and Andre was doing laps of the decking around the house. Apparently there was a game of poker played too but my recollection is fuzzy.
A late start to the next day and after breakfast/lunch we headed back down to the Salmon Hole, with good faith that it could not fail two days in a row. It did.
We decided to pack it in there, and go for a drive down to Canunda. We were aiming for a spot called Whale Rock, but with the sun fast setting, we decided to put the lines in at a particular beach access point with a very nice gutter out in front.
Things were quiet here too, and there were still thousands of blue bottle jelly fish washed up on the beach. I blame them for the lack of fish. We were standing around having a chat, whilst I was holding onto my fishing rod, when I got a big bite and hooked onto what was probably a Salmon. It dropped off before I could get it up the beach though :(
With darkness setting in, we decided to head back - and my lazyness at not letting down my tyres started to come back to bite me. Lucky for me, I was driving and didn't need to get out to push! Eventually a largish hill caught me out though, and I succumbed and let down the tyres - would have saved a lot of time if I did this at the beginning.. doh. With that done, it was easy going to get out and back into Millicent to pump up the tyres at the servo.
An early night was had by all, still feeling the effects of the previous night.
Andy in a moment of Will like fishing keeness, decides getting up at 5:30am is a good idea. I happen to wake up and feel quite wide awake, so decide to get up too, and we head of to the Salmon Hole for a pre-dawn fish.
We get home around 8:30am and Andre is sitting there happy knowing he got 3 hours more sleep, and we had no fish at all.
Finally, that afternoon, I managed to get a fish on the board! You might be able to make it out in this photo - its in mid air as I am trying to catch it.
Yes a huge 15 cm Salmon Trout!
The next morning, Andy and I again tried the early morning fish, but again without any result. We went on to the jetty briefly on the way back, and Andy managed to catch a barracouta that came past. It was probably about 30-35cm - an ugly bastard of a thing. Back it went into the water.
In some last attempts to get any reasonable fish on the board, I went solo to the Salmon Hole to flick a lure around sunset for an hour, and with my failure, Andy went down to the Jetty to try his luck. Andy likes catching ugly fish, so he brought back to the house a large, but extremely ugly looking fish. I'm not even sure what it is, but Andy was keen to eat it and set about filleting it.
After a bit of "There's no way I'd eat that" talk, he decided to feed it to his cats at home :). Still, it was pretty big, and the rest of us caught absolutely squat, so Andy took home his first Gashes in a fairly unceremonious way (lets face it, its no Snapper).
This trip couldn't have been more disappointing in terms of fishing, but its gotta happen at times, even when you are fishing one of the best providing beaches in the state. Pity it had to happen when we were there though! It was good to see a few different areas that we don't normally venture down too, and also win a game of poker!
