Far West Coast - November 2013

I've finally found out why they call it Blow-vember! It wasn't all bad though - we had beer.

Because of the moon and tide cycles, we left on Thursday this year, instead of the usual Saturday. The first major blow of the trip came when, after making splendid time on the highway and rolling into Penong at midday, we were informed by the barman at the pub that they don't serve meals on Thursdays! I was really looking forward to that Schnitty too.

Onward to Fowlers Bay, where we aired down the tyres, and took that yearly trek across the dunes, anticipation high as the water comes into view. A few schools were spotted in the water, but as we got closer we discovered they were well out of casting range. The 20 knot headwind did not help either.

Camp was set up in our usual little alcove behind the dunes to get out of the wind, and then we headed to the ledge in hope that a school of salmon would cruise past like they sometimes do. We fished for hours for just one salmon and decided to head back to Scotts Beach to check out if there was any action going on there. The cars got separated on the maze of tracks back to the beach, and by time the two Kym's and I had reached the beach, we saw Will and Matt casting lures out into a school with about 5 other people. They had 3 on the beach before the school scattered and moved out further. We missed the action, but at least there were a few more fish in the bait pile. Not that 4 salmon was going to go far with 5 fishers.

Will was up at the crack of dawn the next morning and drove the length of Scotts Beach to look for any schools in casting range. With none sighted he returned to camp. Shortly later, I was standing on top of the dune at camp, and looking directly out when I saw a suspicious looking dark patch in the water. I tied on a lure and headed out for a cast, and Will came too.  We both cast to the school and had instant hookups, and then devastatingly, both snapped lines. They must have been some monster sized salmon. After running back to the cars to get more tackle, we came back to find they'd all vanished.

With no luck at another ledge visit, and Scotts Beach proving too difficult to land anything, we decided to roll the dice on hitting up a mulloway beach and hoping to score salmon whilst there. At least we'd be able to set up a proper camp and get comfortable. As we cooked up a feed before heading off, some quad bikes rolled into camp and it turned out to be Fisheries and Parks. Greetings were made and we let them know we had been here a night but hadn't had much luck on the fish. Then Parks asked about our permits. "You need a permit to camp here?" "Yes, it's on the sign on the way in, and you would have read this on the website before coming here". One, there is no sign. Two, who is reading the Parks website? Since arriving home I have tried to check it out, and can't even find Fowlers Bay Conservation Park on there at all. Perhaps the ranger also doesn't read it.

The two rangers were playing a bit of good cop, bad cop. After telling him I am sorry but wasn't aware and I'd ring up and get it paid once I got home, the bad cop said that wasn't good enough and I'd have to visit the Ceduna office to get it sorted out. I noted that it's likely we wouldn't be going back through Ceduna in business hours given our plan was to return on Saturday, and we usually hit the road very early. "Too bad, you'll have to work it out." said Bad Cop. Whilst Good Cop took my details, I explained to him our timing problem, and he said "No worries, pay it over the phone when you can". Thanks, Good Cop.

Further to that, we were issued a warning for camping "off track", as there was some dune vegetation on the path to the camp clearing (which was obviously well used by the recent camp fire remains). The irony was that they drove over the same vegetation to come tell us off. At least they didn't give us a $200 fine though!

So with that, we headed off, picking up a bunch of pilchards along the way as a back up plan. After much 4wding, wrong turns and scratched car panels, we hit the end of a beach and pulled up to to speak to a few other campers before heading off to find a spot to camp ourselves. The other campers said it was too windy to fish and not worthwhile, but we were here for a week anyway, so had to have a look. When we pulled onto the beach, we were greeted by an enormous, dark green gutter. Perfect.

Camp was set up behind a big mound of vegetation which provided a bit of respite from the wind. Soon after, we had baits in the water, mostly with salmon set ups to try and up the bait supply. There wasn't a long wait before all of us had bent rods and even a few double header salmons slid up the sand. There was no visible school to cast lures at, but they were taking baits and poppers with decent regularity. It was a great session and we soon had a few days worth of bait and played some catch and release with even more.

With the sun low in the sky, Will's rod (of course) had a huge bite and run, line screaming from the reel and some how managing not to get tangled in the absolute web of lines we had in the water. We knew this was something big, and hoped for a huge mulloway to kick off the week. It had the group of us about 200 metres away from the beginning point before we saw a fin emerge from the water, and knew it was a big bronze whaler.

Even once sighted in the shallows, it still took a fair amount of work to get it safely up on the beach. But once landed, we saw it was likely the biggest bronzy ever landed amongst our group. I fired off a number of photos and Will slid the shark back into the water to live another day. Great day 2 catch.

Conditions over the next couple of days were still very windy, but with a gutter so close in, casting was not an issue. I think it was Kym A, Will and Matt that landed 4 nice sized flat head during the day which made for a nights dinner.

Some local kids were fishing nearby when after many bust offs, Will decided it was time to change to wire trace which paid off shortly after when he hooked into another big shark. In front of a new audience he had the shark landed and was going to again release it, but instead offered it to the kids who had come over to watch. They quickly checked with their uncle back in the car and then graciously accepted it and called it a day for their own fishing expedition.

Whilst re-baiting one of my rods, a drag started screaming on another and there was panic to get to it quickly. I heard someone shout out "Ryan!" and without a thought grabbed the rod and commenced fighting something big. It was over quickly though as a shark took the hooks. Then I thought to myself "wait, my rod isn't red. Nor is it a Daiwa". Seems I'd grabbed Kym D's rod in the excitement. Whoops. He'd have his pay back later.

We found that the car fridge was cycling constantly, yet not actually cooling. After 2 days of this, the car battery was flat, and the temperature inside the fridge rising. When we ran out of cold beers, this became something of a crisis. Some googling suggested turning the fridge upside down for a few hours, so we used the bottom of the fridge as a table whilst we cooked up the flat head for dinner. The upside down fridge thing has actually worked for me in the past, but for a slightly different problem. But, after flipping it upright and plugging it in again, we watched the thermometer religiously for 30 minutes but it did not budge at all. What a let down. We turned it upside down again and went to bed.

The following morning we tried the fridge again, but with no success. It was decided that I'd head back to the nearest shop and buy a heap of ice and just use the fridge as an esky instead. After an hour of bouncing along the tracks, we got to the shop and felt that the fridge had kicked itself into gear again. We grabbed the ice anyway, just in case and headed back to camp. Spirits were mighty high when Kym D and I returned to camp with ice cold beer. The hours of driving, combined with solar panels plugged in had the battery charged up enough to keep the fridge going and it lasted the rest of the trip - even freezing up the water in the bottom.

From the start of the trip, I'd been calling Monday "Mully Day" due to the favourable conditions that were predicted. It was basically the only day of the trip that we'd have a break from the blistering south easterly winds. With that break, came heat. It quickly soared into the mid 30's and was stinking hot. And Mully Day wasn't turning out to be so great for fishing either. There was a school of Salmon about 1 km down the beach which we'd kept our eyes on as they looked too far out to cast to. Out of some boredom, and some much needed cooling off - I decided to walk down there and have a cast at them. I knew I'd have to get wet but getting neck deep was a bit much considering the shark bite offs we'd been getting! I managed to hook on to two of them, but they both dropped off in the wash. Some local guys pulled up and asked if I minded if they had a flick at the school. I appreciated the question (a lot would just cast over the top of you) and said go for it - I'd had enough. I headed back to the others defeated, yet much cooler. They later stopped at where we were fishing and offered us their bait and a massive bag of ice as they were heading back to Ceduna. Top blokes.

After the sun set, I made a quick call home from back at camp. I was watching my glow stick from up at camp but saw no action. As I finished the call and walked down to the beach, I see none other than Kym D winding my rod in, and Will about to grab a fish from the surf. I raced down to see what was sure to be a legal mully, and then raced back to camp to grab the tape measure. It came in at 76 or 77cm, just scraping in to legal territory. My second ever, and my first from the Far West Coast in 7 trips. Despite not doing any of the actual winding, I was still pretty happy. Mully Day!

Being a nice calm night, we all had rods out into the night, and there were regular bites happening and the odd big run. Kym A had a huge run on a stingray that he managed to get up on to the beach after a decent battle. Seeing the hook just in the sting rays lips, I though it'd be an easy removal. Unfortunately the stingray flapped at the wrong time, and the other 10/0 Gamakatsu hook went straight through the end of my pointer finger. With one hook through my finger, and the other attached to a flapping stingray, I had a moment of some concern - luckily Will was nearby with a knife to detach myself from the big ray. Note to self - carry a knife whilst fishing. It was a fairly eventful night with many more runs, and Will landing a banjo shark as well as a nice gummy shark, but no more mullies pulled in.

Tuesday started ok, with Will managing to land another bronzy. Given that the food situation looked to be running low, this one was kept and fillets put on ice. The weather turned bad though, and we had wind, spots of rain, and a whole lot of sea weed floating around in the gutter we were fishing. We sat around camp behind our wind break for the most part of the day, drinking coldies and listening to music. It was much the same on the following day as well. By Thursday the conditions, whilst still bad, weren't so bad that we huddled at camp all day. We had lines out and battled sea weed monsters most of the day. But it was a fruitless endeavour, and we were soon running low on fresh baits, despite the fact we were able to land a few salmon each morning.

By Friday, which was to be our last full day of fishing, we decided that rather than battle the weed all day long, we may as well head back to Fowlers and try get a few whiting or flathead from the sheltered area's before heading home. After two hours of cleaning and packing camp though, the idea of unpacking and packing again the very next day became unappealing. We decided to hit the road and head home that day instead. Before doing so, we had a quick look around and found some nice looking bays. Pity we didn't search earlier as we could have fished out of the wind. An obligatory group shot was taken and then we headed homeward.

We never had any final discussion on the Gashes Winner. I think Will takes the prize once again. Although I caught the only legal mully - our target fish of the trip, he once again cleaned up on the (big) sharks and also a few good flatties. Despite our mulloway beats all mentality... I think this one needed to be a bit bigger to get me over the line. Agree?

Yorkes - October 2013

I've made an executive decision to break the '2 nights' rule and award a Gashes for a one night trip away. 1) There isn't enough 'Gashes' trips nowadays 2) there was a good number, so healthy competition, and 3) we could have quite easily driven Friday night and had no extra fishing time at all.

Since we're getting old and soft these days, we have to actually check the weather report to make sure it's not raining before we go away now. As such, another last minute Yorkes trip was born, and we headed off at first light on Saturday morning. Harry decided to drive his own car so he 'could bring his swag'. I wasn't sure what this meant really, until later.


First stop on our Yorkes adventure was Armchair rock near Stansbury. Hoping to gather a few squid for both the upcoming FWC trip, as well as this trip, it got off to a great start. Harry and Kym both had a squid landed within a few minutes, and Harry had a second not long after that. Then it went very quiet. We persisted for an hour or two with out adding to the tally at all, before deciding that'd we'd move down to Klein Point Jetty and try our luck there. With no action there either, we soon headed to the Warooka Pub for a schnitty (rating: 6.5 out of 10). Kym showed off his fishing skills in the chocolate skill tester and then we headed over to the western side of the foot to find some where to camp for the night.

A nice patch of beach was settled upon, but Harry's X-Trail was having problems getting through the sand. After much max-traxxing, pushing, and snatches, we decided we were close enough and we'd just come back over the hill to grab his gear. At this point the whole bringing of his own car thing became clear. His swag is bloody massive, and aptly named the 'Hilton'.

Andre managed to find an old, worn $1 coin in the sand somehow, and passed it over to Kym as some kind of good karma. Andre needs all the help he can get. The beach had a very nice gutter formation right on the shoreline, but the fishing was slow. Kym managed to pull a few salmon trout in on his smaller rod, but they were all under size and went back in.

It took until night time, whilst we sat around the camp fire watching our glow sticks gently wave back and forth for a bit of decent action to occur. Kym's fancy new LED 'glow stick' started flashing red indicating he had something shaking the rod. He ran down the beach to strike into it and was onto something large. Without any head shakes though, he knew it would be a stingray. Using a small reel, it took some time to get up onto the beach, and then with no gaff to pull it up any further Kym snapped the line off and let the wash take the sting ray back in.

Andre had another run a bit later, but what ever it was got off before we had sight of it.

The next morning I was up first and caught a couple of tommies which went into the bait esky. Kym managed to catch a good sized salmon that got utilised for bait straight away. Andre had a whole squid tube out in the water, Kym with fresh salmon fillet, and myself with fresh mullet fillet (also caught that morning). We had good baits, but nothing was taking them.

I was busy giving Andre shit for his wayward casting that was resulting in his line going across mine. He was blaming me in return, but heading off to wind his line in to recast. As he wound in, he found a lot of weight on the line, and then shortly after sighted something in the water and yelled "I've got a fish!". I looked up to see a red fin and knew he had a snapper. And there is reason 4 for awarding a Gashes. Kym quickly grabbed it by the gills and slid it up to safety and we saw then that it was an absolute stomper of a snapper from the beach. High fives and hand shakes all round - I ran to get the camera and scales, and it weighed in at a hefty 10.2kg

It was quickly gutted and then curled up into the fridge. We fished on for a few hours into the afternoon, but no more action was had. We packed it up just as a lightning storm was rolling by and headed home for what turned out to be a very successful weekender! Andre with his first Gashes victory from 15 starts.

Matt With a Sheringa Salmon

Convention Beach

Since there is a distinct lack of fishing lately, I'll upload random photos instead.

Convention Beach, April 2011

Hillocks Drive - April 2013

In what I think is a Gashes first, we set off on our second trip in the same month. Just two weeks after a sea weeded out Coorong trip, and we were off to old favourite Hillocks, to see what the many rock ledges and beaches could throw up.

Will was an unfortunate late withdrawal, but we still had a decent group of people heading over. New Kym, Sally, Harry, Sani and I were all set to arrive on Anzac day, and Matt and Sarah followed on Friday night. With the best camp spot at Hillocks now blocked off, I thought we'd head the other way and camp above Treasure Cove. The benefit of this spot being we could head out for a rock fish in the mornings without having to get in the car and drive.

We arrived at out spot, with perfect weather shining above. We overlooked the cove, and saw our fishing spot getting drowned by waves. We called that a low tide fishing spot instead, and sat back for the first of many beers.

Overlooking the water, beer in hand, and sun shining above made it very, very hard to motivate to get up and go anywhere, but Kym and I eventually settled on going for a quick walk along the cliffs to suss out a potential spot to throw a line in. With a few likely locations in mind, we went to gather some gear, and the ladies, and soon made our way down to a nice rock ledge. We passed some other fisherman on the way who'd caught a few salmon trout, so things looked good.

It didn't take long at all for Kym to hook into a decent size tommy, and before long he had a handful of them in the bucket. I switched over to a float and hooked a couple more, but blunt hooks were causing many drop offs. Soon enough, we saw Harry strolling along the rocks, correctly guessing which way to walk in order to find us.

The tommies went off the bite a bit, so we decided to move back towards camp and fish another ledge. With not much light left before sunset, we cast out a few baits and sat back and waited.

Kym had a pilchard under a float and a decent sized salmon snaffled it. It put up a great fight on some light gear and was awesome to watch cruising back and forth along the rock wall. Kym managed to get it up on the rocks though and it was in the esky soon after, as we headed back to camp to get the fire going.

After a fairly large night around the camp fire  it was slow going in the morning. I got up and woke Harry up (by his own request) and we stumbled down to the nearby rock ledge. The target was squid, tommies or snook, but with the action slow, we soon succumbed to sore heads and were laid back on the rocks. Kym, mistakenly thinking he was missing out on a big fishing session came down soon after, but on the incoming tide we didn't have much time - with a tommy landed each, we headed back up to camp.

It was a slow day for fishing, and soon enough we were back around the fire, and Matt and Sarah were pulling in to camp.

The next morning we headed to the rock ledges we'd tried on the first day, but no tommies were about - so we casted out some big baits hoping for a few more salmon of the variety Kym had hooked on day 1. No salmon came to the party... but floats were going under indicating some squid having a munch. Matt nearly managed to get one up just on hooks, so I put a jag under a float, and Kym and Sally both cast out squid jags for retrieves.

Sally and I both hooked on to squid, but both had the squid drop off without getting it up onto the rocks. Sally then repeated the act with a squirt of ink flying up, but no squid following.

It was a frantic little session which yielded absolutely nothing, and soon the squid disappeared again, and hunger pains set in - so back to camp for lunch was the decision.

The afternoon plan was to head down to our old favourite spot on Salmon Beach, which thanks to the owners blocking off the road, now involves a 600 metre walk before climbing down the goat track. Once at the top of the cliff, we saw some other people fishing in our usual spot, but we thought it was worth a walk down anyway to see how we went. All the guys cast out and sat back to await the action.

It took a while before my rod had a solid bite, and I hooked into something large. It made a big run sideways along the gutter before a massive wave crashed down on it and whatever it was, got free from my hooks.

Another beer cracked, and a new bait out in the water, we waited some more. Again, I hooked on and this time wound in a small salmon. I followed up with two more small salmon and Kym had a very worried look of "I just lost the Gashes" on his face - but my 3 salmon were probably only equal in weight to his one, and he had caught many more tommies. Perhaps one more salmon would do it, and I was the only one getting bites. We sat back to crack our last beer and realised that Harry had made a fatal error in calculations regarding beach beer supplies. Some one had to go without. Kym went to rebait, so I took that as him volunteering himself to not have one.

The sun set, and we called it a night on the beach fishing. Kym still held a slender lead, put perhaps a morning fish might change things. Unfortunately for me, the next morning I got up and saw some fisherman down on the rocks below camp, and then all round laziness from all elected that we'd pack up and head home. Kym takes home his first Gashes!

Coorong - April 2013

After many months without throwing a line in, the planets finally aligned and we were able to organise a quick get away. The Coorong had been getting solid reports of Mulloway catches all summer, and although those reports had dried up, we had to get down and try it out before it got too cold.

We aired down and hit the beach around 11am, and soon found a massive wash out which meant driving down near the water's edge. I held my breath and put the foot down and we got through unscathed. After that it was pretty easy driving, but no gutter formations got out interest enough to set up camp, so we plowed on past Tea Tree Crossing.

At around the 5km mark, we finally hit upon a nice patch of water, with a cut out in the dunes to get camp set up and we pulled in and quickly cracked open the first beer of the trip, at 5 minutes before noon. We gave a call to Will, who was heading up later that day and let him know where we were, and warned him of the beach conditions at 42 Mile.

After just a couple of casts, we found a bit of seaweed causing problems, and sat back to have a few more beers and cook up some lunch. The fishing didn't get any easier through the afternoon with a large swell breaking right on the shore, and masses of sea weed getting tangled up in our lines.

Will turned up soon after and since we hadn't unpacked much gear, we decided to move further up the beach in hope that the weed wouldn't be else where. We travelled a further 15 kms or so before settling on a new gutter.

Things looked good when on our first cast, both Kym D and myself were soon winding in a nice little Elephant Shark.

Not very long after, Will too had an Elephant Shark on the sand. It was getting late, and the sun was low in the sky, so hopes were up for a good session, but the weed was rolling back in again, making life difficult.

Despite being one of the warmest evenings I've experienced at Salt Creek, we got a fire cranking and settled in for a few night beers, and the keenest of us even cracked open the glow sticks. This keenness didn't last too long though as the weed continued to be a nuisance. Not before Kym A had landed his first ever Elephant Shark though!

The next day was weed, weed and more weed. I managed to get another Elephant, and a small, undersized mulloway, but they were the only fish landed for the whole day. The weather was still great though, so much sitting about sinking cans of beer was done (so, really, not a lot different to normal).

It was another fine night, but the seaweed made any attempt of a night fish not doable. We woke up early to some light rain, and still no improvement in the sea weed department - so I was handed rare Gashes victory.

Far West Coast - November 2012

Back to 4 people, and the comfort of 2 cars for this years Far West Coast adventure - Myself, Will, Kym, and "new" Kym (Kym D for this story).

After stopping off at Penong for a delicious Schnitzel at the pub, and a few local characters talking up our prospects over the next week (one referred to Mulloway's as "c*#ts", as in - "you're gonna catch a big c*#t!") our hopes were high, and we set off on the last part of the journey to Scotts Beach.

Scotts had it's usual deep gutters and excellent looking water, but not the black schools in the water that we'd hoped to see. Having wasted many hours bait fishing for salmon in the gutters in previous years, we went off in search of schools, and ended up at the ledge. The ledge was quiet though, and we instead decided to try the deep gutter on Scotts after all, and set up camp. Things were promising when my first cast landed a Salmon, but it was all quiet from then on, and we soon called it a night after a long day.

The following day, we again searched for Salmon, desperately needing a few for bait before heading off to the dog fence. A great looking gutter at Mexican hat provided nothing and soon we returned to the rock ledges of Fowlers Point to berley up for some small fish. Instead of small fish though, a school of good sized salmon came swimming through, and Kym D who was persistently flicking lures out on his small rod, hooked up instantly. Will had a lure out in the water in no time at all and within a minute we had 2 good salmon up on the rocks. I hooked on myself, only for my lure to bust off as I was lifting the fish up onto the rocks.

Over the next hour, the school came and went multiple times, and we chased them around the corner and had persistent hook ups - at first I lost two lures for a single Salmon, but evened up the ledger and then got some footage of the boys hooking on - multiple hook ups at once were a common sight.

Bait esky loaded, and spirits high, we set off back to our campsite as the sunset, and soon everyone was relaxed and sinking some beers. It was good not to have a worry about bait on the back of our minds.

As we pulled on to the Dog Fence beach the following morning, we saw more fisherman than a winter trip to the Coorong! Most were fishing the nice looking gutter closer to the entrance, so we plowed on past, and into some really soft sand, but made it through no worries. We settled on a dark looking patch of water with some reef further out, which was creating a nice channel in front of it.

After setting up the tarp for some shade and shelter from the wind, we set up the rods and all casted out a fresh slab of salmon. Before Will required his first bait change, he was hooked on to a solid fish, and before we could get the camera's organised, he was already sliding a 96cm mully up onto the sand. A bloody good start, and gave us confidence about the gutter we'd set up camp in front of!

When the excitement of that fish wore off, Kym D got out the action kite and we had some fun screwing around with that. He then attached the GoPro to it, and got some awesome footage of our camp from up in the sky:


As the sun was setting, Will hooked and landed a huge dog shark, and then again hooked on to something even larger. He called large head shakes, and then no head shakes, and then definitely headshakes. Whatever it was, it was taking line down the beach and putting up a hell of a fight.Will put a heap of pressure on his rod to steer the mully away from the reefs, and soon we spotted a silver flash in the shallows. It was a big mulloway. He played it slowly and safely and waited for the right wave to push the huge fish up the beach. I grabbed it by the gills and slid it to safety. Will saw it was wasn't any chance of getting away now and let out a woohoo. There was jumping, clapping, and probably the odd high five or two between us all as I tried to snap off a few photos. In the fading light, getting the camera to focus was proving difficult. With a mulloway already in the esky, we'd have let this one go - but given it was easily the largest fish Will had ever caught, it deserved some justice in the photos. We decided to put it in the esky as well, and find some place to freeze it until we were on our way home. I grabbed out my flash and took a few pics that will no doubt be adorning the walls in Will's house soon.

Will's big mully - ~125cm long

After the excitement of that fish, we settled down and had some glow sticks out for any night action. I had a run and pulled in a good sized stingray - but it wasn't really the prize I was after!

The next day was quiet in terms of fishing. We saw that the left side of what we thought was a long running gutter was actually reefyness causing the dark blue water. This forced us to fish about 100 metres down the beach, making fetching a beer quite a journey. We did get the beach tent out to keep the bait esky cool and fished hard all day long. The weather was fine, but the fish weren't hungry.

Will landed a monster of a Salmon during the day, which the scales weighed in at just below 3kg. I think they must be broken because it was huge! That was the only thing landed until around 5pm though, when I noticed my line a long way sideways of my rod. I picked it up to check and felt some headshakes. It was an easy battle with an already exhausted bronzy. It's good to have at least one photo holding a nice sized fish, but I would have enjoyed a better battle.

When we woke up the following day, the gutter that had produced two mulloway was looking a lot shallower - sand had filled it in on the high tide overnight and we were restricted to a much smaller area to fish. We were really keen to fish the dog fence for a full 4 nights leading into the full moon, but accepted our fate and decided to pack up camp and move on. The plan was either to move down the beach to better looking water, or head straight to Tuckamore. With so many people fishing the beach on the way out, we didn't really want to muscle in next to anyone, so radio'd to each other that we'd just keep moving to Tuckamore and set up there for the full moon.

Whilst we were kind of disappointed to be moving away, it turned out to be a blessing. As we found out from other fisherman days later, a massive storm had blown through the area that same night and wiped out multiple campsites. Three metre swells washed up the beach and moved cars parked at camp sideways and washed gear out to sea. Down at Tuckamore where we were, we had very strong winds, but other than our tarp set up flapping around keeping us awake at night, we were relatively unscathed.

On the way to Tuckamore, I struck some trouble on the soft sandy track on the way in, slipped off the side and getting into a precarious position. The car was very tilted to the side, and the only way out was to back up, which would result in an even larger tilt. I edged up on the max trax slightly before we decided to tow it backwards with Will's hilux. This did the trick, and we were on our way again quite soon. We hit the beach soon after, and got about 80 metres in before Will's car bogged down. It was very shell gritty, and definitely going to be too hard to proceed, so we decided to camp back at the entrance. I tried to back up along the track but the slant of the beach had me sliding towards the water, and I soon gave up hope of getting out of there without assistance. The assistance was over at Will's car, which he'd managed to turn around, but was now having trouble going forward. With a lot of max traxing, we got the car back on to firm sand, and then did the same for my own car. Everyone was pretty exhausted from digging, so we cracked a coldy and watched the surf for 10 mins, before setting up shelter once again.

One thing was immediately obvious once we started fishing - there were plague proportions of these mini-Samson looking fish (I think they're called Sea Trumpeter, but we just called them shittys - far worse than c*#ts!). They were decimating our baits, and we were requiring a new slab of salmon practically every cast. Just to ensure our baits stood no chance at all, a few sand crabs were thrown in to the mix.

In the late afternoon Will had a large hook up, and sighted a huge shark out in one of the waves but soon busted off with nothing of his rig left. He then had a huge fight with a big black ray, which took some time to get in. Turned out that it was fouled hooked in the wing which would have made things more difficult. Once he was unhooked and released, Will's rod went off, and he pulled a fresh salmon in. Handy, since our baits were getting destroyed by shitties. As night fell, the wind dropped and it was the perfect night fishing weather. We stuck at it for a little while, but only Will got a run, and pulled in a nice Gummy shark which was then cooked up for dinner. You'll note the recurring theme of this day is that Will's rods kept getting runs, whilst every other rod, did not. Actually, that's the theme of the whole week! Kym A and myself are now used to this happening, but Kym D was left shaking his head in disbelief.

Kym wondering when his rod will get a bite

The next day Will must have hooked around 4 stingrays - even they were ignoring all other baits! The most humorous part about this was when Kym D went to gaff the ray in order to pull it up the beach for unhooking. He slipped and fell as a wave came in and sprung up in a panic as a ray swam around him. It wouldn't have been funny if he got a barb in his leg, but he didn't, so it was hilarious!

Will unhappy with the attention of stingrays

It was again a beautiful night for fishing, and we gave it a few hours (it gets dark really late over there) but once again, only Will got a run, and this time bringing in a very respectable Gummy. He hooked another massive Gummy soon after but this one snapped off and we called it a night.

After a quick fish in the morning for nothing more than an undersized mulloway (finally to someone other than Will, who didn't have a rod in at the time!) we ran out of bait, so had decided to head back to Fowlers for our final two nights, to clean up and maybe have one last crack at some salmon and mulloway.

We wanted to catch some fresh salmon for bait when we got back, and then hit up one of the beaches close to Fowleys for a final day session attempting to get a Mully. Unfortunately, the salmon once again weren't coming to the party (I did land a huge squid off though, which was destined for the dinner plate), so we opted to buy some pilchards and check out a spot within the bay itself.. We drove down the beach a number of km's but with an incoming tide and the beach being quite soft up high, we decided not to risk the cars. We turned around and set off to Cabbots beach. When we got there, the water looked very choppy and weedy, and to make matters worse, we'd left the rod holders back at the caravan park.

Plan C (D? E?) was to head back to Scotts beach and flick some lures / cast small baits in the shallows and see if we could get some Whiting or Flathead for dinner. Kym D managed to hook a Flathead on a soft plastic then devastatingly lost it in the shallows. Everyone besides me caught a good sized mullet though, so we all had our contribution for dinner.

Back at the park, we battered up our catch, and chopped up some potatoes into chips and had an awesome final meal of fish, squid, and chips. The only downer was running out of beer by about 6pm, but in hindsight, that was probably a good thing with all the packing still to be done, and a 10 hour drive ahead of us.

All in all, another great Far West trip. Three from three for legal mulloway in trips. It's pity Will has got every single one of them! Myself, I am shooting for the unwanted honour of most FWC trips without catching a legal Mulloway. Planning for 2013 will no doubt begin soon!