LET me state up front, beach fishing and myself have a love hate relationship. It is no secret that I have always preferred boats over beaches. However, in spite of all that confounded sand I agreed to recently travel with some stalwarts of the surf for a week of beach fishing to the far west coast of SA.
Privately, I have always envied any fisho prepared to endure the many elements associated with targeting mulloway from isolated beaches whilst quietly holding a desire to land a large mulloway from a beach.
After a 13 hour overnight drive we all arrived safely to our nominated campsite. On exiting the 4WD, I noted the aircon had been working damn efficiently at 20 degrees with the outside temp nudging 38 degrees at 11am in the morning. Perfect weather for setting camp and unloading vehicles … not!
Home away from home.
Not to worry, ice cold beer always provides immediate relief, or so you would think. Sadly though being indigenous land the entire area has a strict “no alcohol” policy, which I am reliably informed is enforced. So ice cold cans of soft drink became the general substitute… Mmmm.
The heat didn’t last too long as within 2 hours of arrival, a southerly buster arrived with cooling winds from the southern ocean that dropped temperatures to a moderate 30 degrees. Many west coast veterans believe that extreme day temperatures translate to similar hot fishing action. If true, we were to be disappointed as the remainder of our trip we saw day temperatures well below expected averages for December. We experienced daily temps of approximately 25 degrees, whilst winds trended 20 to 50 kmh generally from the south, which true to form didn’t set the fishing on fire.
Regardless, our group of five spent dozens of hours on various beaches and gutters chasing that elusive 50lb mulloway. As a result we found generally trying conditions, including long periods where the incessant broken swell would constantly pound the beach. The result being constant seaweed consuming fishing lines along with frequent unclogging.
No monster, but hey it’s a jewie! The author with an average sized SA beach fish.
During the short periods when the winds abated, the weed reduced permitting reasonable periods to wait for a jewie without interruption.
Not including numerous undersize fish, our group were fortunate to land a legal mulloway daily although the largest of these may have just nudged 13kgs, well short of that elusive monster fish. Added to this were some nice 4-5 kg Aussie salmon and a couple of very small bronze whalers.
A nice pair to put a smile on the dial.
A word of warning. Always take care wherever you camp and fish in these isolated areas as snakes are always present. We had a 4ft brown snake (possibly a dugite) within the confines of our camp for a few hours. To provide perspective, he was within half a metre of the camper trailer on numerous occasions over a 2 hour period. As a protected species they deserve our respect, but equally with medical assistance at least four hours away, it is reasonable to expect a safe campsite. During this period “Mr Shovel” was close at hand, though ultimately not required. Eventually “old mate” slithered away without injury to any of us or himself.
Overall, I guess an initial conclusion could be drawn that the overall fishing was below par and expectation. However, on reflection given the difficult conditions encountered we were able to consistently land legal mulloway (greater than 75cm) daily. I don’t know of any other area in Australia where in these conditions during daylight hours you can reasonably expect quality fish off the beach as the norm, rather than the exception.
Anyway for me it was yet another thing ticked off the bucket list. What’s next?
Is there a better sight in fishing than a nice silver jewie fresh from the suds?
