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.
