It's not often the forecast for Salt Creek shows light northerlies and blue skies for the weekend, so they swayed us to head down there for the weekend, hoping for a winter mulloway.
Will and Dana couldn't get the time off work, but were keen enough to come down early on Saturday to get one night in.
We rolled onto the beach Friday morning and very surprisingly, settled on a campsite / gutter with reasonable speed for us (Kym and I have been known for driving up and down the beach without committing to any spot for lengthy periods of time).
Our new Blackwolf Turbo Tents went up in a turbo like fashion, and the first camping burger of the trip soon followed. Eventually, we got the lines into the water, and Kym was soon winding a salmon back onto the sand after his very first cast. Straight into the bait bucket for that one.
His next cast landed an undersized mulloway. The cast after that, another salmon. This continued for his first eight casts with a mixture of salmon and small mulloway landed. The biggest mulloway went 68cm.
The one fish per cast was going well for Kym, but then he got a little bit too confident and decided to throw in a second line. The streak was over, and no matter how long he took before winding in that line, he knew there was likely no bait left on the hooks.
Around the same time, my line finally saw some action, and I grabbed the rod and pulled back to feel quite a bit of weight on it. I thought this could either be a big pile of seaweed caught in a rip, a big stingray, or a decent sized fish that wasn't putting on a lot of fight. I hoped for the latter, but after about 15 minutes of struggling and very sore arms, I saw the stingray come into the shallows. It took a long time to get a good wave to push it up onto the sand. I'm not sure if this is a different type of stingray to others I've caught, or someone has previously chopped it off, but it appeared to have no barb on it's tail. Still, I wasn't taking any risks so, cut my hooks off and let it slide back into the water on the next wave.
The salmon continued to be landed at semi-regular intervals, which meant we were able to have some good fillets of fresh salmon out for bait. As the sun set in perfect conditions, hopes were high for a big mulloway to come along, but unfortunately it was a very quiet sessions at night. We pulled in the rods around 9pm and sat around the fire.
I woke up the following morning surprisingly early, before everyone else, and before the sun at come up over the dunes. I thought some driftwood was washed up on the beach, but on closer inspection, it was a whale vertebrae! A cool find I thought.
I decided to go for a stroll up the dunes to look at the view and take a few photos. My rod was still in the water on the beach, so if I got a bite it was going to be quite a run.
Will and Dana rocked up around 9am and Will soon after had a salmon landed - also his first cast. He wasn't able to go on to beat Kym's eight in a row streak though.
The fishing was good again, although the catches not as regular as the day before. Will got another 68cm mulloway (Why are there so many mulloway agonisingly close to 75cm, yet so few just over?)
It was another awesome day in terms of weather, and the campfire drinks went late into the night. So late, that everyone was a little slow moving in the morning, but the seaweed had washed in and meant fishing wasn't much of an option anyway. We cooked up breakfast and headed off home.
