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!