Tossing up between Salt Creek and Yorkes could have taken weeks itself with our combined indecisiveness, so I called it as Yorkes mainly to give the new Gashes bus it's first run without too much risk of catastrophe (the beach at Salt Creek is quite sketchy at the moment from recent reports).
I'll glaze over our attempts to catch some squid for bait along the way. Lets just say we left them biting at Wool Bay - and we still left empty handed.
So, we head over to the Dust Hole to check it out and see if there were any schools about. Sad to see that the old 4wd access track is well and truly closed off now. With no visible schools in the water, and no desire to go walking for a few kms, we headed back to Gleesons and set up camp so we could cook up lunch.
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| The new Gashes Bus! |
Then we cracked beers, baited up, and waited. And waited. And waited.
Not a single bite. The next day, Kym attempted to catch some small salmon trout on his light rod to use as bait. I admire his persistence, casting continuously for an hour before finally landing one. When he landed a second soon after, I knew it was my time.
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| Kym working hard whilst I sit at camp |
One cast, and I land a tommy, which was soon sailing back out to sea on a couple of 8/0's. Content with having a good bait out in the water, I went back to my seat and continued drinking some of West End's Finest. Unfortunately, when I went to check on it an hour later, it wasn't there. I hope it didn't come off during the cast, at least. That would be more painful to accept than the idea that perhaps a huge mulloway came along and pried it off the hooks somehow.
Another night around the fire with rods out in the water until midnight, and still, not a single run. We did have a local mouse come and sit by the fire with us though. Kym fed it some cheese and it was very happy. You can actually see it in this photo on the left of the fire.
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| Fishing was slow but the scenery and weather were perfect |
With all hope of catching a decent fish lost, we casted out for one final crack in the morning. Kym was trekking off down the beach to the next gutter, when I noticed a small tap on my rod. Was that a wave? better check. I wind in a little and feel some weight on the line.. quickly followed by the glorious feeling of headshakes that I'd missed so much. On my light surf rod, it actually proved a bit of a challenge to get up past the breakers, but soon enough I had it on the beach. A nice 2.8kg Salmon. It looked like he'd been having some trouble with the local shark population.
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| Looking mighty happy here. |
Hopes were high that this was the opening of the flood gates, but it was just a lonely salmon and nothing more was caught. We soon packed up and headed back to Adelaide, thinking we mustn't wait 3 months before the next outing.
