Fishing Australia

Occasionally a trip targeting extra hard trophy fish can ends up being one where you fall back on bread and butter species to save the day. However, sometimes when targeting bread and butter species the trophy fish ended up being easier to catch, which I certainly won’t complain about. 

In today’s blog I will be talking about one such trip where this happened and in the process I stumbled across some of the most amazing ‘big fish - shallow water’ action I have ever seen. Along the way there was much to be learnt about a phenomenal sports fishery right under the noses of Perth based fishos.

My team and I were being hosted local celebrity Michael Thompson who is the sports anchor man for Channel 9 in Perth.

On this trip Thommo and I planned to kick things off by chasing the basic species that would be easy enough for your average weekend dangler to catch around Perth. High on the list was the huge WA salmon which can average between 3 and 7 kilos and are a very common catch.

Unfortunately our efforts at Whitecliffs Beach, about an hours drive south of Perth, proved to be tough as far as salmon were concerned. That’s fishing but it was still fun to be able to drive along some 20 kilometers of beach polaroiding for schools of fish.

Despite driving up and down the beach several times not a single salmon school was spotted, made catching them a little hard… However the herring did come to the party. A 20 gram metal lure or similar sized softie retrieved across the surface would draw small pods of herring into attack formation and you could pull at least a couple of fish from each school.

For the record the spots with deeper gutters or the edges of reefs worked best. Ditto for the tailor which averaged between 30 and 40 cm long and were caught on the same technique. Fishing was easiest on the days when the east wind flattened out the waves and helped your lure soar a mile out to sea.

The herring are rated locally as a table fish and we could’ve easily caught a feed. However it was the huge WA salmon we were after that day so we let most of herring go keeping just a few for bait.

The score was Trophy Salmon 1, Fishing Australia Team 0! Meanwhile we heard on the grapevine that a huge migration of Salmon had reached Busselton, about 3 hours drive south of Perth. Too far for us at that point but you can bet your bottom dollar that people down that way would’ve soon become sick of catching them-that’s migrating salmon in a nutshell!

SAMSONS

Next up Thommo took us out to some reef on the way to Rottnest Island in 7 meters of water. The plan was to catch skippys (silver trevally), salmon, and possibly get a yellowtail kingfish.

Well the skippys and salmon were so scarce we didn’t dare predict these species from that day on. However we started spotting big pelagics cruising deep down along the bottom in the pilchard cube trail.

We started with 15 kg gear and a couple of bust offs later I pulled out the giant killer: a little short stroked rigged with 80 lb braid and 80 lb leader. While whole pillies (known in WA as Mullies) were getting the hits I opted for a whole herring about 25 cm long which was dropped down un weighted on a 10/0 hook.

By this stage I was holding the rod full time waiting for the clunk, and it came, a drop of the rod tip, a draw of the line and I set the hook as planned.

All hell broke loose from that moment on as I held on for dear life trying to stop this fish getting to a reef some 25 meters away. A previously measured twelve kilos of drag was peeling off the reel with disturbing ease so I had to thumb the spool as hard as possible to stop getting done. This was an extremely powerful fish in a close quarter combat situation and while I have run out of room for now, next week you’ll find out just what happened next!

See you on the water

Rob Paxevanos