Will was an unfortunate late withdrawal, but we still had a decent group of people heading over. New Kym, Sally, Harry, Sani and I were all set to arrive on Anzac day, and Matt and Sarah followed on Friday night. With the best camp spot at Hillocks now blocked off, I thought we'd head the other way and camp above Treasure Cove. The benefit of this spot being we could head out for a rock fish in the mornings without having to get in the car and drive.
We arrived at out spot, with perfect weather shining above. We overlooked the cove, and saw our fishing spot getting drowned by waves. We called that a low tide fishing spot instead, and sat back for the first of many beers.
Overlooking the water, beer in hand, and sun shining above made it very, very hard to motivate to get up and go anywhere, but Kym and I eventually settled on going for a quick walk along the cliffs to suss out a potential spot to throw a line in. With a few likely locations in mind, we went to gather some gear, and the ladies, and soon made our way down to a nice rock ledge. We passed some other fisherman on the way who'd caught a few salmon trout, so things looked good.
It didn't take long at all for Kym to hook into a decent size tommy, and before long he had a handful of them in the bucket. I switched over to a float and hooked a couple more, but blunt hooks were causing many drop offs. Soon enough, we saw Harry strolling along the rocks, correctly guessing which way to walk in order to find us.
The tommies went off the bite a bit, so we decided to move back towards camp and fish another ledge. With not much light left before sunset, we cast out a few baits and sat back and waited.
Kym had a pilchard under a float and a decent sized salmon snaffled it. It put up a great fight on some light gear and was awesome to watch cruising back and forth along the rock wall. Kym managed to get it up on the rocks though and it was in the esky soon after, as we headed back to camp to get the fire going.
After a fairly large night around the camp fire it was slow going in the morning. I got up and woke Harry up (by his own request) and we stumbled down to the nearby rock ledge. The target was squid, tommies or snook, but with the action slow, we soon succumbed to sore heads and were laid back on the rocks. Kym, mistakenly thinking he was missing out on a big fishing session came down soon after, but on the incoming tide we didn't have much time - with a tommy landed each, we headed back up to camp.
It was a slow day for fishing, and soon enough we were back around the fire, and Matt and Sarah were pulling in to camp.
The next morning we headed to the rock ledges we'd tried on the first day, but no tommies were about - so we casted out some big baits hoping for a few more salmon of the variety Kym had hooked on day 1. No salmon came to the party... but floats were going under indicating some squid having a munch. Matt nearly managed to get one up just on hooks, so I put a jag under a float, and Kym and Sally both cast out squid jags for retrieves.
Sally and I both hooked on to squid, but both had the squid drop off without getting it up onto the rocks. Sally then repeated the act with a squirt of ink flying up, but no squid following.
It was a frantic little session which yielded absolutely nothing, and soon the squid disappeared again, and hunger pains set in - so back to camp for lunch was the decision.
The afternoon plan was to head down to our old favourite spot on Salmon Beach, which thanks to the owners blocking off the road, now involves a 600 metre walk before climbing down the goat track. Once at the top of the cliff, we saw some other people fishing in our usual spot, but we thought it was worth a walk down anyway to see how we went. All the guys cast out and sat back to await the action.
It took a while before my rod had a solid bite, and I hooked into something large. It made a big run sideways along the gutter before a massive wave crashed down on it and whatever it was, got free from my hooks.
Another beer cracked, and a new bait out in the water, we waited some more. Again, I hooked on and this time wound in a small salmon. I followed up with two more small salmon and Kym had a very worried look of "I just lost the Gashes" on his face - but my 3 salmon were probably only equal in weight to his one, and he had caught many more tommies. Perhaps one more salmon would do it, and I was the only one getting bites. We sat back to crack our last beer and realised that Harry had made a fatal error in calculations regarding beach beer supplies. Some one had to go without. Kym went to rebait, so I took that as him volunteering himself to not have one.
The sun set, and we called it a night on the beach fishing. Kym still held a slender lead, put perhaps a morning fish might change things. Unfortunately for me, the next morning I got up and saw some fisherman down on the rocks below camp, and then all round laziness from all elected that we'd pack up and head home. Kym takes home his first Gashes!
