Hillocks Drive - May 2007

I took a week off work in May 2007, and as it was my birthday, thought what better way to spend a birthday than fishing and camping. A trip was soon organised an a fairly big group of us headed down to Hillocks Drive.

Greeted by relatively calm water, we headed down to one of our usual spots off the rocks at the end of Salmon beach. The fishing off the rocks was one of the better sessions we’ve ever had down there, with double headers of tommies, mullet and sweep all being landed. Most of the sweep were a bit small and thrown back, but the tommies were kept for a later cook up.

I think Sani might have had a small claim to Gashes leader at one point here, but her hopes were dashed as the decision was made to head down to the beach to try and get into the some larger Salmon.

Before too long, a few salmon were being landed on the beach, with yours truly shooting to the top of the leaderboard. Nothing huge, but still decent sized fish that would go well on the BBQ.



Andre cannot wait to cook.



A nice mixed bag of fish caught from the rocks and beach on day 1.
We made the trek back to camp and got the fire going, and the usual camp fire drunken banter of how to solve the worlds problems etc begun.

I was feeling good about having the most fish going in to day 2, but Will wasn’t to be out done.

He landed around 8 salmon on day 2, to put him self out into the lead. Everyone else struggling to get a bite.

A big feast was cooked on the fire that night…



Will had to leave early on the last morning, which gave the rest of us a chance to catch some fish and take out the prize. Unfortunately, the fish weren’t coming to the party and appeared to have gone home them selves.

A good trip in terms of fish caught. I think we caught more fish than going to far west coast a few months earlier – and travelled about 1800kms less too!

New Tent

I've finally upgraded from the old 3 man dome tent, with this Safari II Extra touring tent from Ray's Outdoors.

For $200, this was an absolute bargain. I love the single pole design - so easy to put up and pack away again. Cant wait to give it some use at Hillocks in October. Standing up in a tent is quite the luxury :) This version has an extended back section for more bedding room too (I didn't think the square versions had enough room on either side of the centre pole for a double mattress)

Coorong - January 2007

After Novembers trip, Andre had the bug - straight down to Sportfishing Scene to spend $300 on a new surf combo. Penn 950ssm matched with a Wilson 8144. Nice work!

The beach north of 42 mile crossing was all well and good, apart from perhaps 300 metres of extremely soft sand, and the Troopy loved it!



After numerous boggings, diggings, and pushes, we made it passed the problem spot and continued on our way.

We settled on a spot with some nice looking water out in front of the campsite, and set up the tents, of which I photo'd from above once again! I cant remember where exactly we camped, but it looks from this photo as though we headed up further north of tea tree crossing.



Take particular note of the worst efforts to put up a shelter ever. Buying the cheapest tarp possible is not always the best idea. As long as it didn't rain, it provided some nice shade...

And then we saw this rolling towards us:



The cheap tarp shelter failed instantly and we all scampered to get into the front canopy section of Will's tent. Not exactly the most water proof area, but certainly better than under the now flapping around wildly in the wind tarp.

I should mention the fishing now. The fishing was crap. The beach had seaweed galore all over the place meaning every cast resulting in bringing in a big heap of weed. Amongst it all, we all managed to pull in a few mini-mullies, and I guess Will must have got the most of them, cos his name is on the trophy!

The only photo I have of fish is of Andre's first ever catch, boy was he happy!



Back at camp, Andre exhausted from pulling in such an ENORMOUS fish, fell asleep in his chair. So, we covered him in rubbish, of course.



On the way back up the beach to leave on Sunday, we stopped at an enormous gutter.. should have fished here all weekend! No weed at all, and managed to pull in a few soapies in the short amount of time we were there. Ah well...

Coorong - November 2006

Other than a time when we teamed up with my Dad and other rellies for a coorong trip, this was our biggest trip to the Coorong - 8 guys over 2 cars. I knew from the time the troopy pulled up next to me on the freeway and Will was hanging out the window with a beer in hand, there was gonna be some serious drinking done this trip.

First things first, set up an awesome campsite!



Click through to Flickr to see notes over the photo - I pointed out whos tent is who's.. very exciting stuff.

Lunch was soon cooked, beers soon cracked, and relaxing begun under the shade setup. It was hard to find the motivation to actually get up and go fishing, so comfortable it was.

Soon enough people drifted out to the beach, and in true Harry form, he caught a fish whilst sleeping in his chair. A nice sized mulloway to kick off proceeding, going about 60cm long.



He was released back into the water after a quick photo and Harry went back to sleep, now leader of the gashes competition.

After sunset, and a feed for dinner, the drinking around camp begun and tall tales and laughs all round well into the night.



It wasn't long before Matt was up to his usual antics, destroying some camp furniture



Ranger Will was up early the next morning and catching small Mulloway whilst the rest of us nursed our heads (dodgy burger or something I suspect). But it was this bronzie shark that put him out in front on the leader board.



I managed to hook onto and bring in a small salmon, and Will headed back to camp to commence work on the lunch burgers (yes, we had the camping burger every meal). He did leave his rod out on the beach though, and as luck would have it - Will is the luckiest fisherman ever - his rod started bouncing about in the rod holder. Andy was quick on the scene and had a decent fight with yet another bronzie!



Debate raged about who's fish it was, I think the general verdict was it cancelled itself out in a way, but really, we just wanted to have a chance of winning. It was really Will's catch.

Matt decided all this watching other people catch fish was a bit tiring, and headed back to camp to catch some zzzz's in the shade - something most people would stop drinking for. Not Matt.



I cant remember if any more fish were caught that day, but I don't have any photo's so I'll assume they weren't all that impressive if there was.

The next day, and no one had caught anything to catch up to Will, so once again, he continued his unbeaten streak with the Gashes. If only it was awarded for most sand dune borries taken, this man would win hands down:



Andre returning from the dunes, shovel in hand. A very familiar sight.