Hillocks Drive - May 2007

I took a week off work in May 2007, and as it was my birthday, thought what better way to spend a birthday than fishing and camping. A trip was soon organised an a fairly big group of us headed down to Hillocks Drive.

Greeted by relatively calm water, we headed down to one of our usual spots off the rocks at the end of Salmon beach. The fishing off the rocks was one of the better sessions we’ve ever had down there, with double headers of tommies, mullet and sweep all being landed. Most of the sweep were a bit small and thrown back, but the tommies were kept for a later cook up.

I think Sani might have had a small claim to Gashes leader at one point here, but her hopes were dashed as the decision was made to head down to the beach to try and get into the some larger Salmon.

Before too long, a few salmon were being landed on the beach, with yours truly shooting to the top of the leaderboard. Nothing huge, but still decent sized fish that would go well on the BBQ.



Andre cannot wait to cook.



A nice mixed bag of fish caught from the rocks and beach on day 1.
We made the trek back to camp and got the fire going, and the usual camp fire drunken banter of how to solve the worlds problems etc begun.

I was feeling good about having the most fish going in to day 2, but Will wasn’t to be out done.

He landed around 8 salmon on day 2, to put him self out into the lead. Everyone else struggling to get a bite.

A big feast was cooked on the fire that night…



Will had to leave early on the last morning, which gave the rest of us a chance to catch some fish and take out the prize. Unfortunately, the fish weren’t coming to the party and appeared to have gone home them selves.

A good trip in terms of fish caught. I think we caught more fish than going to far west coast a few months earlier – and travelled about 1800kms less too!

New Tent

I've finally upgraded from the old 3 man dome tent, with this Safari II Extra touring tent from Ray's Outdoors.

For $200, this was an absolute bargain. I love the single pole design - so easy to put up and pack away again. Cant wait to give it some use at Hillocks in October. Standing up in a tent is quite the luxury :) This version has an extended back section for more bedding room too (I didn't think the square versions had enough room on either side of the centre pole for a double mattress)

Coorong - January 2007

After Novembers trip, Andre had the bug - straight down to Sportfishing Scene to spend $300 on a new surf combo. Penn 950ssm matched with a Wilson 8144. Nice work!

The beach north of 42 mile crossing was all well and good, apart from perhaps 300 metres of extremely soft sand, and the Troopy loved it!



After numerous boggings, diggings, and pushes, we made it passed the problem spot and continued on our way.

We settled on a spot with some nice looking water out in front of the campsite, and set up the tents, of which I photo'd from above once again! I cant remember where exactly we camped, but it looks from this photo as though we headed up further north of tea tree crossing.



Take particular note of the worst efforts to put up a shelter ever. Buying the cheapest tarp possible is not always the best idea. As long as it didn't rain, it provided some nice shade...

And then we saw this rolling towards us:



The cheap tarp shelter failed instantly and we all scampered to get into the front canopy section of Will's tent. Not exactly the most water proof area, but certainly better than under the now flapping around wildly in the wind tarp.

I should mention the fishing now. The fishing was crap. The beach had seaweed galore all over the place meaning every cast resulting in bringing in a big heap of weed. Amongst it all, we all managed to pull in a few mini-mullies, and I guess Will must have got the most of them, cos his name is on the trophy!

The only photo I have of fish is of Andre's first ever catch, boy was he happy!



Back at camp, Andre exhausted from pulling in such an ENORMOUS fish, fell asleep in his chair. So, we covered him in rubbish, of course.



On the way back up the beach to leave on Sunday, we stopped at an enormous gutter.. should have fished here all weekend! No weed at all, and managed to pull in a few soapies in the short amount of time we were there. Ah well...

Coorong - November 2006

Other than a time when we teamed up with my Dad and other rellies for a coorong trip, this was our biggest trip to the Coorong - 8 guys over 2 cars. I knew from the time the troopy pulled up next to me on the freeway and Will was hanging out the window with a beer in hand, there was gonna be some serious drinking done this trip.

First things first, set up an awesome campsite!



Click through to Flickr to see notes over the photo - I pointed out whos tent is who's.. very exciting stuff.

Lunch was soon cooked, beers soon cracked, and relaxing begun under the shade setup. It was hard to find the motivation to actually get up and go fishing, so comfortable it was.

Soon enough people drifted out to the beach, and in true Harry form, he caught a fish whilst sleeping in his chair. A nice sized mulloway to kick off proceeding, going about 60cm long.



He was released back into the water after a quick photo and Harry went back to sleep, now leader of the gashes competition.

After sunset, and a feed for dinner, the drinking around camp begun and tall tales and laughs all round well into the night.



It wasn't long before Matt was up to his usual antics, destroying some camp furniture



Ranger Will was up early the next morning and catching small Mulloway whilst the rest of us nursed our heads (dodgy burger or something I suspect). But it was this bronzie shark that put him out in front on the leader board.



I managed to hook onto and bring in a small salmon, and Will headed back to camp to commence work on the lunch burgers (yes, we had the camping burger every meal). He did leave his rod out on the beach though, and as luck would have it - Will is the luckiest fisherman ever - his rod started bouncing about in the rod holder. Andy was quick on the scene and had a decent fight with yet another bronzie!



Debate raged about who's fish it was, I think the general verdict was it cancelled itself out in a way, but really, we just wanted to have a chance of winning. It was really Will's catch.

Matt decided all this watching other people catch fish was a bit tiring, and headed back to camp to catch some zzzz's in the shade - something most people would stop drinking for. Not Matt.



I cant remember if any more fish were caught that day, but I don't have any photo's so I'll assume they weren't all that impressive if there was.

The next day, and no one had caught anything to catch up to Will, so once again, he continued his unbeaten streak with the Gashes. If only it was awarded for most sand dune borries taken, this man would win hands down:



Andre returning from the dunes, shovel in hand. A very familiar sight.

Beachport - August 2008

Deciding the gashes winner would be hard on this trip. What, with everyone hauling in so many fish we'd lose count of who caught what. Perhaps we'd have to go for a biggest salmon wins or something like that.

Oh, how I wish that was the problem.

Myself, with Sani, Andre and Ali, arrived in Beachport about 1pm and after driving around in circles looking for our house (I didn't bring a map, but I did know what it looked like ) for a while, we unloaded our gear and cooked up some lunch. Andy and Anna arrived soon after and before long we were on our way down to Beachport's famous Salmon Hole.

We were presented with a fantastic looking beach, a large reef running from one end to the other, creating a huge gutter in front of it.



I was pretty keen to bait up and get my hooks into the water in order to bring in the first fish of the trip, because it was sure to not take long in water like this. The fish had other ideas however, and had vacated the beach some time before we got there. So, we sat down and waited, and cracked open some beers.

There were thousands of these jelly fish on the beach. I think they are called Blue Bottles. Sani picked one up and its tentacles stung her - her hands puffed up like the Michelin Man!



Sani went off for an explore and nearly ran into this guy, who scared the crap out of her with an angry bark.



Andy couldn't resist the photo opportunity (I notice he took 2 beers with him for the "huge" walk - a few hundred metres)



We ventured back to the holiday home to watch the footy and tuck into a couple of beers. Before long, the music was loud, I was playing air drums, Andy was twirling around in circles, and Andre was doing laps of the decking around the house. Apparently there was a game of poker played too but my recollection is fuzzy.

A late start to the next day and after breakfast/lunch we headed back down to the Salmon Hole, with good faith that it could not fail two days in a row. It did.

We decided to pack it in there, and go for a drive down to Canunda. We were aiming for a spot called Whale Rock, but with the sun fast setting, we decided to put the lines in at a particular beach access point with a very nice gutter out in front.



Things were quiet here too, and there were still thousands of blue bottle jelly fish washed up on the beach. I blame them for the lack of fish. We were standing around having a chat, whilst I was holding onto my fishing rod, when I got a big bite and hooked onto what was probably a Salmon. It dropped off before I could get it up the beach though :(

With darkness setting in, we decided to head back - and my lazyness at not letting down my tyres started to come back to bite me. Lucky for me, I was driving and didn't need to get out to push! Eventually a largish hill caught me out though, and I succumbed and let down the tyres - would have saved a lot of time if I did this at the beginning.. doh. With that done, it was easy going to get out and back into Millicent to pump up the tyres at the servo.

An early night was had by all, still feeling the effects of the previous night.

Andy in a moment of Will like fishing keeness, decides getting up at 5:30am is a good idea. I happen to wake up and feel quite wide awake, so decide to get up too, and we head of to the Salmon Hole for a pre-dawn fish.

We get home around 8:30am and Andre is sitting there happy knowing he got 3 hours more sleep, and we had no fish at all.

Finally, that afternoon, I managed to get a fish on the board! You might be able to make it out in this photo - its in mid air as I am trying to catch it.



Yes a huge 15 cm Salmon Trout!

The next morning, Andy and I again tried the early morning fish, but again without any result. We went on to the jetty briefly on the way back, and Andy managed to catch a barracouta that came past. It was probably about 30-35cm - an ugly bastard of a thing. Back it went into the water.

In some last attempts to get any reasonable fish on the board, I went solo to the Salmon Hole to flick a lure around sunset for an hour, and with my failure, Andy went down to the Jetty to try his luck. Andy likes catching ugly fish, so he brought back to the house a large, but extremely ugly looking fish. I'm not even sure what it is, but Andy was keen to eat it and set about filleting it.



After a bit of "There's no way I'd eat that" talk, he decided to feed it to his cats at home :). Still, it was pretty big, and the rest of us caught absolutely squat, so Andy took home his first Gashes in a fairly unceremonious way (lets face it, its no Snapper).

This trip couldn't have been more disappointing in terms of fishing, but its gotta happen at times, even when you are fishing one of the best providing beaches in the state. Pity it had to happen when we were there though! It was good to see a few different areas that we don't normally venture down too, and also win a game of poker!

Preparation

Only a couple of days to go now!

Coorong - December 2007

A few days before Xmas and the boys and I decided what better time to squeeze in a trip with everyone having a day off work booked for Xmas eve.

We headed down to the Coorong, facing some of the worst weather we've ever endured, and this was in the middle of summer. Massive storms made visibility on the road limited, but as we rolled into the National Park, as seems to happen for us more often than not, the clouds parted and the sun started shining. Win!

Pulling into the campsite the wind was still blowing hard however and extremely cold. It shouldn't be like this in December! A look to the horizon saw the next big storm rolling our way and the decision was made to get out the "BIG TARP" for a shelter.

We set it up before heading out fishing just incase the rain came in and soaked everything. Finally we got out to the beach and it wasn't long before Matt had a big strike on his rod. The gutter was as close as it gets to the beach, and Matt's Alvey made light work of bringing in a nice 5.5 Kilo (from memory) Snapper to the beach.



As usual, Ranger Will suggested we throw him back, whilst the rest of us ran for camera's and scales, and the better suggestion of throwing it on the BBQ. Majority wins!



This will be a dinner fit for kings.



Matt cleaned up the Snapper back at camp, whilst the rest of us got back to fishing in a fruitless attempt to try and put our name of the Gashes trophy. It would be a dirty day to actually lose a gashes when you've pulled a 5kg Snapper off the beach and then someone goes and brings in a 100cm Mulloway or something. Of course, that didn't happen.

Instead, Ondie pulls in a worthless Skate (he says Shark, I say Skate)



And then it was off to camp to sit around sinking beers and listening to Matt and Will talk about how they are the sole members of "The Snapper Club".

Fishingwise, the rest of the weekend was slow. Highlights include: Matts $8 camping chair finally breaking after years of abuse (with suspected help from Will). Will finding a dead bird on the beach, and hooking it onto Matts line. Matt deciding it'll be good bait, and casting it out.. but giving up on the idea 1 minute later. Andre's enormous "FUCK" written on the beach - not sure what he was trying to tell overhead planes. And of course, catching a massive Snapper on a cheap arse surf popper!

Click for bigger versions of the photos