Salt Creek Again

When I saw new moon, low winds and sunny conditions for the weekend, I quickly asked for and received Friday off work. Unfortunately, the others guys don't have bosses as considerate to fishing needs as mine, and no one else was able to make it. So, it was just me and Sani, off for a romantic weekend away camping and fishing!

The destination, as it often has been this year, was Salt Creek. I popped into the Salt Creek servo around 11am to have a chat to Adam, who didn't fill me with great confidence on the recent catches ("a few sharks, a few salmon..." without much enthusiasm), but the good fishing has to begin somewhere.

I found a very likely looking hole about 4 or 5kms up from 42 Mile Crossing, and pulled the Patrol up and quickly set about getting my rods ready. Sani set up the cooker and prepped lunch - she was quickly proving to be a very useful companion.

I had wanted to get some fresh squid heads for bait, so stopped in at a fish store in Meningie on the way. It was more of a shed with a couple of fridges, but in any case, they didn't have squid and I walked out of there with some mullet fillets and a bag of 'just in' pilchards. They weren't brined, but looked very fresh and hadn't been frozen at all.

On my first cast, I am pretty sure I saw one of these super fresh pilchards disintegrate into the air before the sinker even hit the water. Nonetheless, I set up my other rod, my old Wilson 5120 that hadn't seen any action since I bought my Penn Prevail last year, and casted that out. The pilchard appeared to stay connected to the hooks this time.

I rebait my first rod, and cast back out. Being the only person fishing, I thought I'd go twice as hard as normal with two big set ups. The old Wilson had a few shakes, and I noticed the line well down the beach. I started winding it in, and found a bit of weight on the end of the line followed by some good headshakes. A nice little gummy was soon on the beach and I was stoked. Within the first 30 minutes of fishing, I had a good catch.

Although my baits were disappearing as soon as I cast them, it wasn't long again before I had another bite. This time a small mulloway which was quickly returned. Things were looking hopeful and confidence was then high.

Disintegrating baits were proving problematic, however. I had brought along some left over brined pilchards from a previous trip that were going to be berley. I found that they were actually holding onto the hooks better (not by much though) and saved them for bait. They'd be needed if I couldn't catch a salmon to use as bait, as the supply was quickly thinning, having to rebait every single cast.

I fished hard and long - into the dark hours without a single bite. The water looked primed for fish but it wasn't happening for me.

We retired to the tent around 10pm, and I was up early on Saturday in hope and need of an early morning salmon.

Some seaweed was floating through the gutter, but it was more of a nuisance than a problem. By lunchtime though, I still hadn't landed anything that could be used as bait, and had run out of mullet fillets, and was running low on pilchards. When I starting reeling in 20kg piles of ribbon weed, I decided there was no point sticking around for a night time fish, as my pilchard supply was bound to run dry by then (and didn't want to take the hour round trip to Salt Creek to continue battling weed piles). So, we had a slow pack up whilst I optimistically had lines out in the water, hoping for that last moment catch. Instead, I got a whopping pile of weed and snapped my rig off. Definitely time to head home then.

To make matters worse, my air compressor packed it in half way through inflating my first tyre. Lets hope 4wd Supacentre can do a warranty replacement before this year's Far West Coast trip!

Boating Newbies

With supposedly great weather predicted on Sunday, we decided to get Will's boat out on the water for a much overdue fishing expedition.

Whilst we're fairly comfortable these days when it comes to beach fishing, we are complete newbies in the boat. The plan was to get out in the morning and load up on squid, then catch some snapper on the arvo tide. Of course, we don't have a GPS or even GPS spots, but with some stories of mates of mates getting into a few close off shore from Wirrina, we launched the boat there about 10 am feeling rather hopeful.

We spent many hours drifting around for barely a touch (and in my case, not a touch). Kym and Will had a few cuttlefish between them, but chucked them back. Kym got a couple of perfect small bait sized squid.

We then headed out deeper and sounded around looking for some structure on the bottom which would be a likely snapper producing spot. This is a lot harder than it seems.. we'd see something good and then loop around to try settle on the spot and fail to find it again!

We eventually dropped anchor and commenced the waiting game.

Without any hint of life below deck, the weather report failed us with some very gusty winds chopping up the sea. It was getting quite uncomfortable, so we headed in shallow again to get onto smoother water.

After stopping at various spots, we finally hit upon some action as the sun was getting low in the sky. Kym winding in a big King George at 43 cm. That got the hopes up! A few big sweep were landed and released, and many rock cod too. Then Will got a good hook up that he thought might be a salmon. Instead, a monster KGW at 47cm come into the boat. Unfortunately, it went a bit quiet on the whiting after that and I was copping a well deserved ribbing about my lack of fishing ability.

With the sun getting quite low and the boat without any lighting, it was time to head in. Almost defeated, I changed back to a bigger rig declaring I would go out with a bang. On that last cast, I finally got a good bite.. excitement was huge... a whiting of my very own approached the boat, and I launched it out of the water and onto the deck. The others immediately pointed out it was smaller than theirs to belittle my moment in the spotlight, but I didn't care, I was finally on the board with something I could keep!

The last cast catch made us have another "last cast" and Will came up with a fish again, this time a really cool looking leather jacket, its blue sides shimmering in the sunlight. Being quite large, it went straight into the icebox.

So after about 9 hours on the water, we had 3 whiting, a couple of squid, and a leather jacket. Not exactly a great haul, but a few lessons learnt and it beats sitting on the couch.