Kym Pops His Mully Cherry

After many months of trying to organise a coorong trip with an old friend, Ben - we finally found a date good for us both. Kym D and Andre were keen to get along for a coorong visit as well, but after the forecast changed from 36 and fine to rain and thunderstorms, Andre bailed.

With late notice, it left just Kym and I, driving through hours of rain to hit the beach, and after travelling 20kms up the beach, we finally settled on a spot we could set up camp and got out the car - for the rain to dry up and barely bother us for the rest of the weekend.

I sent a message to Ben to let him know our location and he informed me he was on his way back from Brisbane - that's dedication to a fishing trip! He was to arrive later that day, and then leave the following evening.

I had the first soapy on the board which was clearly undersized and quickly returned. Kym, having never caught a mulloway of any size, was excited even by undersized fish being in our gutter. Regardless of that, we set up a pretty cool shelter just in case the rain came back:

Ben and his father-in-law, Francis rolled up around 5pm, and before long we had a nice selection of baits in the water. Everyone was able to pull in a soapy, including Kym who looked pretty happy with his:

Whilst my mulloways got consistently smaller, Kym got a couple more that had us racing for the measuring tape - but fell short at just under 70cm.

It was a nice calm night and as the sunset, we chucked on some glow sticks and fished right up until midnight, but not a single bite was had.

The following day the winds picked up a bit, but nothing bad enough to stop the fishing. Ben and Francis were due to head home around dinner time and were desperate to get something in the esky before leaving. But with only undersized mulloway about, it didn't seem likely.... until Ben wound a stocky little bronzy up onto the beach! He was de-finned and prepared for the esky and they were soon on their way. Fresh flake for dinner.

Kym & I chose to forgo the night fish with the wind being too much of a pain. We instead rose early (for us at least) and threw some baits out. Without any hits, we quickly decided this spot wasn't going to provide, and packed up with the intention of fishing another gutter before heading home.

With no gutters really standing out as saying "fish here!" we were very indecisive and ended up back towards 42 mile crossing before finally settling on a spot. A few enquiries were had on our baits which resulted in no fish, but raised hopes. I landed a couple more tiny fish, before Kym had a definite hookup on one of his lines. He ran over, struck hard, and was on. We saw the shape of a mulloway cruise through the shallows and I knew it would be close. I grabbed out the brag mat and raced over to pull the mulloway up onto the beach. It came in at 76cm (or 76.5cm as Kym tells the story).

Not much better feeling than your first legal mulloway.

Hillocks Drive - December 2013

A few days on Yorkes with Kym, Sally, and Sani. What might have been a Gashes trip (that I wouldn't have won, as usual) wasn't to be when Andy couldn't make it at the last minute. Will was busy down at Salt Creek capturing big Mulloway. I don't know what everyone else's excuse was!

Our camp was set up right next to the long drop toilet, just in case Kym came down with any food poisoning. It's happened before at Hillocks.

It was quite windy on the first day, but at camp it was perfect conditions, so beers were cracked, and the seats certainly weren't getting any less comfortable. That was until some guys walked past us, and they'd been fishing down at Salmon beach. They made mention of a big school of sambos cruising up and down the beach, and it was enough to get us assembling the surf rods.

We made it down to the beach and found the school right down the far end. Quite a walk, damnit. Even worse was the fact they were too far out to cast to in the strong head winds. However, they soon moved within casting distance of Pete's Rocks (where he once copped a large wave sending him crashing into the drink). 

Kym and I dodged big swells, and had a ball hooking up big salmon on almost every cast. It was difficult getting them to stay on the hooks though as they often spat the hooks when trying to get them up the rocks. We were dodging waves, catching fish, and trying to wave to the girls still sitting 50 metres down the beach chitchatting to get over here and join in. 

Eventually I lost my lure and had to walk back to the girls who had our tackle bags nearby, but by time we all got back to join Kym again on the rocks, the salmon had moved on.

The following day we fished off Treasure Cove rocks for little result, but did have a bit of excitement when something massive took a big chunk of salmon on my surf rod and headed for the horizon. I wasn't close to the rod and had to do a mad scramble to get there - by that time I had a bout 200 metres of line out of sea, and as soon as I put pressure on the rod, the line snapped. I spent 5 minutes winding it in, and then we called it a day on that session.

The next day was slightly more successful, again at Treasure Cove. There was another big school of Salmon hanging around, but generally weren't interested in our lures. We still managed to hook the odd one on light tackle though, which was great fun. A lonely squid joined them in the bait bucket.

It was deemed hot enough for a swim after that, so we headed off to a fairly crowded rock pool. Luckily enough, the other people were just about to head off when we arrived.

Kym and I decided on a sunset fish at Salmon Beach. We had fresh squid and salmon for bait, so rigged up some heavy duty traces.

Just on sunset, I had a huge bite on my rod, but before I could even pick it up, the line when slack. I wound it in to find that the hook on my cheap surf popper had bent out backwards, accompanied by some toothy marks on the popper itself. Snapper maybe?

Unfortunately I didn't bring my camera down, as we had an awesome sunset. The entire sky was lit up bright red. It was Kym's turn to have some fun though, and over the course of the next few hours, he had three scorching runs, but each one resulted in no fish. One was a big run that just pulled hooks, then another even bigger run that took him beyond the reef and snapped him off. Then a final run which had a decent fight before finally busting off. The trace was very torn up, evident of a shark having taken his line. We finished up with absolutely nothing, but it was still one of the most enjoyable night fishing sessions I've had.

The next morning we headed back to Adelaide - no Gashes winner here due to the lack of numbers.

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!