Far West Coast - November 2015

My first far west trip as a 'guest'. Quite a luxury I must say. This was a very last minute organised trip, and although we told ourselves we've done it so many times before, we could just pack and leave on a whim, I knew we'd forget some important items. This time, it was anything remotely capable of cleaning dishes! Ah well, we're used to eating filth.

So, it was a usual 3am departure, and a semi-usual stop at the Penong Pub for lunch prior to hitting the beach. Unfortunately, as it the case more often than not, the pub wasn't serving lunch. The hot dog from the servo was pretty good though!

We arrived on Scotts beach mid afternoon, and spotted a school of salmon out the back of the breakers. Way to far out to cast lures to, we soaked a few pilchards in the big gutter mid way around the bay, hoping the school would at some stage come closer. They didn't, so we decided to go set up camp around on the point.

Two new Gashes beasts!

It was a fairly early night after the early start that morning, which meant I was up on sunrise and hoping to sight a school of salmon in front of us. That wasn't the case, so we had to do bait collection the hard way... catching the odd tommy ruff here and there and patiently awaiting any salmon to swim on by. By mid morning, a few other fisherman had gathered and were fishing all around the point. Normally this might be quite annoying, but everyone kept a good distance from each other, and it worked well.

It turned out to actually be useful, as the guys out on the farthest point would hook up and then we'd know salmon were on their way around, and one by one everyone (or almost everyone) would get a hook up. Dropping big fish at the waters edge was annoyingly common, but Kym was having greater success with a pilchard hanging below a float.

The guy in the blue shirt was a champ, helping people land Salmon with his crab net

Talking to the other guys, it seemed that everyone was headed towards the dog fence. This got us concerned on the best gutter being taken before us, so we decided to get 12 salmon in the esky and take off before the others. We ended up with 15 and after a quick stop at Fowlers to grab more ice, scooted off towards Nundroo.

The track into the dog fence has not got any better over the years. An hour of dust, bumps and rattles, and we finally hit the coast. There wasn't much point worrying about missing out on the best gutter, as with the amount of fisherman on the beach, that was surely taken days ago. I've fished the dog fence and not seen another person the entire time I was out there - but this time, people everywhere!

Choosing from the remaining gutters was a difficult decision, nothing really standing out as brilliant (I suppose it would have been taken if it did), but we found a decent gutter adjacent an area where we could park the cars safely above the high tide mark.

We parked, and got out the car to almost be blown away down the beach - it was blowing an absolute gale. We setup a bit of a wind break, but sand was still ripping through camp and covering everything in a fine layer of sandy dust. Thankfully, the wind dropped off as it got later in the arvo, and fishing became possible. At this point, I ticked off a long time fishing and camping goal: we had an icey pole out on the beach, an hour away from any sign of civilisation. Since we ended up bringing two vehicles, we had one fridge on freeze, and the other keeping the beers cold.

However, it was the next day that would prove to be a good day for fishing. Right around midday, I got a blistering run on a full tommy ruff I had sent out. Unfortunately, I did not know about this, as I was walking back through the dunes after having a crap. As I got sight of the beach, I saw Kym holding my rod and waving at me. Luckily I was now a few kgs lighter and made good time floating across the sand down to the beach. As Kym handed over the rod, I saw that there must have been about 200 metres of line out to sea! I pulled on the line and just got heavy weight, then after getting a bit of line back in, it went on another run, straight out. It then sat still, dead heavy. I picked it as a big stingray, for sure.

After 10 minutes of slowly retrieving this beast in to the shallows, I saw a tail flash through the water, and Kym said what I was thinking "That's a mulloway!". Only catching a quick glimpse, I thought it wasn't that big, although the weight on the line should have told me otherwise. We called out to Will to grab the gaff from camp and come down. Another few minutes of carefully working the fish through the shallows, Will had the gaff in and slid it up the sand. It was a solid fish! A few high fives, and then a measure on the brag mat showed it at 133cm. Easily my largest fish, and our biggest Mulloway caught yet on these trips, in both length and weight.

It weight just under 24kg (~52lbs) and was slippery as anything making picking it up for a photo incredibly hard. Still, photos must be had!

After 15 minutes of what can only be described as a poor filleting attempt by me, Kym had enough and took matters into his own hands. He did a fine job, apart from stabbing me in the hand.

A few (many) celebratory beers were had, and before long, the sun was setting. It had calmed right off by Tuesday night, and we all had baits out as it went into darkness. It doesn't get dark until quite late that far west, so it was probably close to midnight when Will got a bite and then brought in a mully which just tipped over the 1 metre mark.

Less than an hour later, he caught an impressive gummy shark to add to the freezer (which was now struggling with a shit load of fish fillets in it).

By this point, I had celebrated my own fish far too hard and was struggling to keep awake (or walk, talk etc) so I decided to call it night.

Kym trod off into the dunes trying to get phone reception off one of the higher points, and meanwhile, Will was hooking onto another big fish. Somehow, he managed to get it up onto the beach with the help of a good wave. He came back to camp to get assistance (photos) but no manner of yelling at my swag was waking me from my slumber. Kym returned from his unsuccessful phone reception hike in time to grab the camera and shoot off a few good pictures.

Late night mully for Will

Everyone was a bit slow to get going on the Wednesday after a big Tuesday fishing. Some sea weed was starting to wash around in the gutter which made things difficult, but a few salmon were caught amongst it, which was well needed fresh baits.

On the Thursday, the weed situation was still bothersome, and our salmon fillet baits were looking worse for wear. We were pretty certain that no mulloway was going to want these rank old baits, so catching some freshies became a priority. Right around high tide, I landed a solid salmon, and immediately cut it into baits and chucked one Kyms way. Almost before I'd finished cleaning up the baits and putting them on ice, I hear Kym celebrating and turn around to see another mully on the beach. This one went 93 cm and 7kg. It meant that we'd now all landed a legal mulloway for the trip - a first in all our adventures.

Will caught an absolute stonker salmon, weighing in at 4.7kgs which added to our fresh bait supply. The only problem was keeping a bait out in the water without seaweed getting caught up in the line.

The weed was problematic, but the sunset that night was pretty spectacular. Very bright purple, red and orange sky. Looked great.

Friday was weed, weed and more weed. By mid afternoon we were over it and contemplating a move back to Fowlers. We'd had too many drinks by that point though, so decided to see how it looked in the morning. Randomly, some kind of stunt plane made a low pass over our camp site. Not sure where it came from or where it was going!

Saturday was our last full day, and the weed was still annoying us in the gutter, so we packed up camp and headed back towards Fowlers Bay. A few hours packing, a few hours driving / inflating tyres, and it was lunch time by time we arrived.

We cooked up a feed in the camp kitchen and went back out to Fowlers point just to see if we could have some fun on a Salmon school. There weren't any schools about, but Kym and Will managed to get a couple each still. I also sniped a squid that Kym brought in close on his pilchard - bait for next trip now.

Before we know it, it was getting towards dinner time - so back to the caravan park for a well overdue shower and to get ready for the big drive home. A good trip - everyone happy with legal mullies.