Christmas 2005

PO Box 63 KALBARRI WA 6536 PH/FAX (08) 9937 2043
http://www.murchisonboathire.com.au/

MURCHISON BOAT HIRE CHRISTMAS 2005 ELETTER
A very merry Christmas to all!
The school holidays are in full swing now but town is still fairly quiet. Most people stay at home until after Christmas and then arrive in town en mass. The boats have booked up quite well during the Christmas/New Year period but still a few spaces after the New Year, but if you haven’t already booked accommodation there is no chance that you will get any. Nearly every room in town is booked out between Christmas and New Year!

Fish catches have improved remarkably with snapper and baldchin the main catches. The snapper are in close, sucking all the soft-shelled crays out of their holes in the reef. Anglers staying in my accommodation, “The Secret Waypoint” picked up loads of big snapper and a big baldies.

Ian Pilkington, son Matt, Phil Webster and Michael lush brought their own boat up and had a ball catching big snapper on light gear close in by the Sand Patch.

You can see they picked a few good days – getting fish each day

I am hoping for a mackerel for Christmas. They are usually about by the end of December but the water temp has to be at least 23 degrees. It’s not that yet.

With the slow start to the cray season, Bruno and my self spent a week or so pulling pots for little return. Getting 1’s, 2’s and 0’s and then it happened over night, just after the full moon. We got 10, 16, 11, 16, 16 and then 11 today 22nd Dec, all whites as shown below, what will tomorrow bring?

Easy to catch at this time of year, even the kids can do it! We got 22 size crays this morning, had to throw back 6 plus the 10 or so undersize ones!
Cray for Christmas lunch?

We have kept our pots in the same place and they continued to catch. Amateur cray licences are available at any post office or on line at http://www.fish.wa.gov.au/ or http://www.fish.wa.gov.au/, which is a mirror site. You may have 2 pots and catch 8 crays per day. We have two licences on my boat which is the max so we are permitted to pull 4 pots thus allowing us to catch 16 crays max. We share the crays, bait and fuel.

Ryan Jeffery booked the 6.1m boat waiting around for better weather mid December. When it came he went out with his mum Le-ann, Daniel Salmon and Bob Hattley. The day was quite good and after an early launch were soon at the Sand Patch. I told them that their best bet was to fish in close for pinkies and taking my advice were soon into a couple. A few drifts over the inshore reef in 18m of water secured the fish. The early sea breeze this time of year did not make it easy but they enjoyed the day.
Bob Hattley got the biggest while Daniel holds up his and Ryan’s

Kalbarri Offshore & Angling Club, Wagoe weekend 5th December

Our weekend away comp this year was at Wagoe again and is a land based only comp. The big mulloway is the one reported in the Sunday Times at the beginning of the month, it went 19.5kgs. Caught by Cheryl Eley on Wagoe beach on the Friday night. We all thought she would win the day but Tristan Neumann came in with 7 fish - snapper, baldchin groper and sand snapper (sweetlip) to win.The weekend was rounded off with a BBQ and a rare sighting of the meteorite that lit up the sky before exploding in a green flash!

Theo Van Der Merve and a mate Richard Jarvis were up last month and caught some nice fish in the river from my dinghy. I asked him for some photos but none arrived, but he recently contacted me to say he had had a computer problem and that the photos were now available. He sent them on a CD, nice fish Theo! Caught in the river around Castle Rock they picked up mulloway and tailor on what was a bit of a rainy overcast day.
Richard Jarvis with small mulloway and Theo, feeling the cold, with a mulloway

We are coming into the best time of year. From now on there will be easy mackerel and tuna to be caught and the bottom fishing is at it’s best. The weather starts to fine up and the wind drop. It is also our busiest time with the boats. You will need to book if you want to be ensured a boat so plan ahead and don’t be disappointed.

Remember if you rent our accommodation you get big discounts on our boats. Have a look on my website for the details, and check out the savings.

Check out http://www.oceanoutlook.com.au/ and go to the Geraldton weather for local weather conditions

5-day weather forecasts, or http://www.buoyweather.com/ and go to virtual buoys, is not a bad one!

If you would like to recieve my newsletter by email each month just send a blank email to lasue@wn.com.au with the subject "Add to newsletter group" and one will be sent to you each month.

Big bait – big fish
Laurie

November 2005

PO Box 63 KALBARRI WA 6536 PH/FAX (08) 9937 2043
http://www.murchisonboathire.com.au/

MURCHISON BOAT HIRE NOVEMBER 2005 ELETTER
Cray season has started and in the first couple of weeks lots of crays were caught. Things usually go quiet the third week as the crays shed their shells and hide under the reef until the shells harden up. It gets easy to catch them when their shells have hardened and they start their migration out to deeper water. A cray pot dumped on sand west of a reef usually attracts the crays as they move out from one reef to the next on their western migration. It is called the “run of the whites” as their shells are usually quite pale and soft.
These “Reds” are before they moult
Fishing becomes a lot easier now that the cray season has started as there is a lot of cray bait in water acting as burley bringing fish in from out deep, the dhuies and snapper come in for the easy pickings of soft shelled crays! Also the cray floats mark the reef easily identifying the better ground.

The river has been fishing very well with lots of soapy mulloway in the river. Most anglers have been picking up more that their bag limit from around the Castle Rock area. Having to let mulloway go is hard but lots of fun on light line and river prawns set for bream.
Average size mulloway in the river this time of year

The 5.3m boat steering was getting a bit tight so thought it best to bite the bullet and install hydraulic steering now before the start of the busy season. It’s no good waiting until it breaks during a hire! It would ruin your day; I would have to refund your hire and pay for a repair, probably loosing a few booked days as well. It cost me $1000.00, I hope you appreciate it.


Preparations are well under way for this our big annual fishing comp in early March next year. We will be expecting around 45 boats and 35 river anglers competing for $10.000.00 worth of prizes in 29 categories. Game fishing, bottom fishing and river fishing, there is a category for every one. Entry forms have been sent to nearly every tackle shop and fishing club in WA so get one there or email me and I will send you one if you want to be in it. (Both the 6.1 and 5.3m boats are already booked for that comp)

Christmas is just around the corner now and the boats are booking up fast for the holidays. The mackerel should start to show up around Christmas time and early January is when a lot get caught, followed very closely by the tuna schools. I can’t wait!

Mark Payne and mate Spot had a superb day out this month. I know Mark from a trip to the Abrolhos Islands a couple of years ago. Waiting a couple of days for the weather to improve, they picked the best day of the week and headed south to the Natural Bridge area. The 6.1m & 5.3m boats have 15 or so waypoints plotted on the GPS around this area. Picking spots at random they picked up a few blue-lined emperors before anchoring on a spot that went off, right on the predicted bite time for the day! First up they were into a frenzy of blue-lined and then the little snapper were being grabbed and then let go on the way up by something big! Mark baited up with a full sergeant baker head and sent it down. Seconds from hitting the bottom he was on to this 24kg estuary cod, while Spot was complaining about getting his fish eaten and then let go as well. He rigged up with a whole blue-lined emperor, but things went quiet. Patience paid off when the hit came later with this fine 7.5kg cod.

Mark struggles to hold up his biggest fish ever,

while Spot also holds his biggest to date

There must have been another big cod down there, as Spot will testify, because the one that was stealing Spot’s fish was a lot heavier he said.

A mate of mine in South Africa went on his annual fishing trip to Angola and promised some photos of the trip. When I emailed him to find out what happened he told me that he caught lots of good fish but got rolled in the surf loosing his camera so no pics!
He did manage to get a copy of a pic taken by another group with this big mulloway. They call them cob in South Africa; they sure grow big there!

Kalbarri Offshore & Angling Club, Local Competition November 19th

Only two boats in the under 7.5m section fished the comp. My 6.1m boat was booked and my 5.3m boat was in Geraldton having the hydraulic steering fitted and having a survey, so I was without a boat! Charlie Messina from Mullewa was up and being a member of the club asked me out. He has a big 7.2m Seaquest, so we went out wide to the 9 mile reefs. Charlie got this nice rankin cod and dhufish and a couple of red-throat emperor while I only got one dhufish some red-throats and a pink snapper. The other boat, “The Master Baiter” skippered by Paul Loffler with Mark Flanagan and Harry Rice fished south along the cliffs picking up some good fish. Mark’s bag of an 8.7kg dhuie and 4.3kg baldchin groper among his 7 fish was good enough to beat everyone.

Charlie Messina with his big rankin cod and dhuie.
Peter Dooley fished with Paul Maindok aboard Paul’s “Santa Barbara” in the over 7.5m section catching their bag limits of big pink snapper close inshore north of Bald Face.

Peter Dooley’s catch, 2 of his 4 snapper

Right at the end of the month there was a knock at the door. Three guys were at the door and they had a Perth based 5.7metre Hire Boat hitched up to their 4WD. Seems that they thought they would save a bit and hire a cheaper boat from Perth, tow it up here and fish. Well, the boat motor, a 2-stroke 115hp was over heating and they were having to stop every now and then and let it cool down before continuing, spoiling the day. There was nothing I could do to help and there is no one in town who services outboards. They found out when flushing the motor that it was all clogged up with sand and managed to clear it. A couple of days later at 5pm one of the guys knocks on the door, he had got this mobile phone call to say his two mates had run out of fuel, could I help! I radioed VMR and as there was no one else available got the authorisation to go and get them. It turned out that their radio in the boat did not work so had to communicate by mobile phone. I towed them in and they were grateful. The seriousness of the day was probably lost as if they had been out of mobile phone range (which is not very far) and their mate had been aboard and not at home suffering the effects of sea sickness, no one would have known they were out there and would have spent the night freezing their butts off praying that their anchor held.
In hindsight they agreed that had they hired my boat for 5 days (saving 2 days travel) combined with the 4-stroke economy and reliability of my Yamaha 115hp and 75 waypoints on my GPS they would have at least had a chance to get into some fish.
Safety is important - everything works on my boats!

A good weather map showing the surface pressure over 4 days can be found at http://www.travellingwa.com/ quite good to show what is really happening around Australia.

Remember if you rent our accommodation you get big discounts on our boats. Have a look on my website for the details, and check out the savings. We have bought a new fridge to keep your beer ice cold.
Comfort is important – our fridge is cold.

Check out http://www.oceanoutlook.com.au/ and go to the Geraldton weather for local weather conditions

5-day weather forecasts, or http://www.buoyweather.com/ and go to virtual buoys, is not a bad one!

Big bait – big fish, just ask Mark Payne, Spot, Gary O’Brien, Daniel Kwek, Barry Crouch, Jason De Rosario, Tony De Abreu, and James Scovell.

Laurie

If you want to receive a monthly newsletter by email just send me a BLANK email to lasue@wn.com.au with the subject line “add to newsletter group” and you will get it each month.

October 2005

PO Box 63 KALBARRI WA 6536 PH/FAX (08) 9937 2043
http://www.murchisonboathire.com.au/

MURCHISON BOAT HIRE OCTOBER 2005 ELETTER

No newsletter last month! Had a serious computer crash due to a virus. I was expecting a quote with some prices and when I opened an email with the subject “prices” things started to happen in a worrying way. Too late! A reformat of the hard disc sorted it out but we decided on an upgrade, which took another week to deliver and a fair bit of time sorting it all out and re entering 650 newsletter emails!
Besides, shocking weather last month meant few hires and few fish photos equals limited newsletter content!

Nick Carrol from NSW joined his mates from all over Australia for their bi-annual trip to Dirk Hartog Island. He organised my 6.1m boat from NSW and took it up with another boat to Denham where they launched both boats and drove them over to the Dirk Hartog Island Homestead, anchoring them in the Homestead Bay and stayed at the Homestead. Each day venturing out and about the island. I watched the weather map for the 10 days that they were away, it did not look the best but with the island they can shelter one side or the other. They ended up doing a fair bit of land based fishing and did well on a number of species such as baldies and snapper and tailor. I asked for pictures but sorry, none turned up!

The 4.3m dinghy was busy over the school holidays, going out nearly every day. The tides were very low so not much water under the boat but everyone enjoyed their day out. Anglers were mostly plagued by undersize bream further up river, but the bigger bream and lots to tailor came from around the moorings and jetties. Bait and small chrome slices did the damage.
John Millar went out in the 4.3m with wife Jacquie and son Jake and had a ball catching these 32 to 38cm tailor. Jake landed 4 of them, being very pleased with himself. You made “Bite of the Month” for September, Jake, check it out at “Biteofthemonth”

John Millar and son Jake with their catch

When size bream were caught they were thumpers. Chris Miller’s 1.5kg fish caught during our monthly fishing comp this month was the biggest for the year.

The land based guys and girls are doing well, Brad McGhie and girl friend Wendy Sullivan fished from the Oyster Reef across the river picking up some very nice snapper like shown below. Fishing with mulies as bait they picked them up mainly on the turn of the tide 9pm, 1am, and even during the day. That’s dedication for you! The big one weighing 8kg was caught by Daniel Tarasek but held by Wendy.

The river silted up very badly this year. Getting in and out has been quite hard as there has only been 300mm of water at low tide. Pushing and pulling to get through has been the norm as you can see from the pic below before dredging. The black dot in the river is in fact one of the rocks that is usually in the middle of the river and the channel was 50m to the north of it, which is dry land now! The dredge has been working since 10th October and the channel is now open and navigable.

Before dredging.

Dredging in progress, you can see the channel being cut through dry land.


The Kalbarri Sports Fishing Classic is on the agenda and the Kalbarri Offshore & Angling club is busy with organising it all. To be held next year on the 3rd, 4th and 5th March 2006. We are printing glossy flyers this year and encouraging pre-entry so that all the details can be on the computer before the comp starts, making it a lot easier. We will be giving away metal commemorative badges, as it is our 20th anniversary comp. Don’t ask, both bigger boats are booked for the comp! If you would like an entry form, let me know and I will post one out to you. There is an individual river section and 3 boat size sections in game and bottom as well.

Richard Hay was out with son Martin and Katherine Hay and friends Greg Goddard and Suraya Harharah. Waiting for the best day they went up north in the 6.1m boat catching a variety of fish including a big Red-throat emperor for Katherine and a shark for Martin.

They all caught fish such as pink snapper, red-throat emperor, baldchin groper, undersize dhuie, a sambo (released) and the shark but the really big ones eluded them!

Every October School Holidays, the Kalbarri Offshore and Angling Club, hosts a whiting competition for kids on each Thursday of the holidays. It has been very popular in the past and it proved to be so these holidays. With thanks to SunSmart as our major sponsor this year we were able to give out some great prizes. We had 114 excited kids registering on the first Thursday fishing around the Sand Spit, for any fish.
Some of the 114 kids and parents on the Sand Spit the first day

Rules of the comp allow any fish to be caught, kept in a bucket and brought to the weigh-in live, weighed and then released. The Volunteer Sea Search and Rescue and the Police 4WD quad bikes gave kids a lift to the weigh station saving them the long walk over the sand.
There where 18 prizes each day including 6 rods and reels each day for species, smallest, biggest, most, most unusual etc. Two sections were competed for, under 8s and 9 to 14 years. The quality and diversity of the species caught showed that the river is in good condition. Unlike last year when most of the fish were whiting, this year lots of blowies were weighed in. Alex Knight in the over 8s caught the biggest whiting of 106grams, which won him one of the 6 rods and reels for his efforts. While Sophie Ellis, under 8s, won a rod and reel for her whiting of 68grams. Each day we finished off with a lunchtime sausage sizzle and prize giving. Murchison Boat Hire offered a one-day free hire of their 4.3m dinghy as a raffle prize each day. Murchison River Cruises donated two river cruises and Kalbarri Surf Shop, Kalbarri Sports and Dive and Kalbarri Entertainment Centre also donated prizes.

The second Thursday saw a record 136 kids line up on the Sand Spit with the biggest whiting of 90g going to Andrew Grayson in the 8-14 age group while Jeb Duigan won a rod and reel for his 70g whiting in the under 8s. About 1200 fish were caught and released over the two days in four hours! Species recorded were as follows: blowies, whiting, trumpeter, tailor, black bream, silver bream, gobble guts, crabs, flathead, yellow-eye mullet and spangled perch, a total of 11 species.


Featured website this month is http://www.travellingwa.com/ quite a comprehensive site on travelling around Western Australia.

Remember if you rent our accommodation you get big discounts on our boats. Have a look on my website for the details, and check out the savings.


Check out http://www.oceanoutlook.com.au/ and go to the Geraldton weather for local weather conditions

5-day weather forecasts, or http://www.buoyweather.com/ and go to virtual buoys, is not a bad one!


Big bait – big fish
Laurie

If you would like to be included in our email newsletter group and recieve a monthly newsletter just send a blank email to lasue@wn.com.au with the subject "include in newsletter group and you will be added.

August 2005

PO Box 63 KALBARRI WA 6536 PH/FAX (08) 9937 2043
http://www.murchisonboathire.com.au/

MURCHISON BOAT HIRE AUGUST 2005 ELETTER

You are no doubt aware of the unfortunate accident recently in Kalbarri. For my Eastern States and overseas readers who would not have seen the newspaper reports, the facts are: A 4.3m pressed aluminium dinghy with four experienced 50-60 year old Perth guys were returning from fishing around the Sand Patch. The weather was good with a 2m dropping swell. It seems that about 2km north of the river mouth they tended to come in too close to the shore line and unfortunately picked up a wave that turned them over. They all had life jackets on but looked like cheap non Aust Standard ones. Two made it to shore, one drowned and they pulled him onto shore and at the time of writing a 10 days later still no trace of the fourth!
My 6.1m boat crewed my Mal Craig and Wayne was on the scene first and assisted in the initial search until sunset. I spent 2 hours in the plane spotting to no avail. The following day 15 or so boats including both of mine searched the area from Red Bluff to the Sand Patch. Since then the swell has come up and 20 – 40 knot westerlies have blown, so it has been down to searching the beach north of the river. Not a good result and the whole town has been devastated.

Some big dhuies were caught last month. This is the time they migrate into shallower water and school up to spawn. They are easy to catch if you get onto a spot where they are aggregating around and there are many places that they do this, usually around a quality lump in fairly shallow water. When you find a spot, double headers are quite common, which makes the 2 fish bag limit sensible as you could clean out a spot very easily.

At the beginning of August I went up north to fish some of the creek systems around Point Samson with mates Lou Parker, Scotty Grant and Zac Goninon. We got to some quite remote creeks and had a ball catching fish as shown below. Dinghies that were small enough to manhandle into the water were the go and fishing was restricted to a couple of hours on the incoming and out going tide. After that the fishing shut down but still gave us time to catch mud crabs and explore the area.
Soldier crabs were everywhere on the mud flats at low tide
Average size threadfin
The biggest for the trip, a 5kg 80cm threadie for Lou Parker,

and a javelin fish on soft plastics for me

Jason Lowe and mate, Kamal, fished down south of the river around the Natural Bridge area last month picking up lots of nor west snapper and this big sand snapper for Jason. The second day out in the 5.3m boat they headed north picking up some good fish as well.
Sand snapper for Jason, caught down by Natural Bridge

Mal Brown with mates Craig and Wayne hired the 6.1m at the end of August getting the boat hire discount of $50.00 off the first day and $25.00 off the next two days because they were staying in my accommodation. See my website http://www.murchisonboathire.com.au/ and go to the accommodation page to see the great deals there.
They fished north of the river striking good weather days but not really getting into the fish. They did all the right things, had the right bait, tackle and spots but sometimes the fish don’t bite! They also assisted in the search for the lost fisherman. Mal sent an email with the following pics, and this is what he had to say.

“Gidday Laurie and Sue,
Thanks heaps for hiring us your boat. Rest assured that even with the unfortunate events that transpired, we had a ball. We have been keeping an ear out to the news, and have heard sadly that the fourth fisherman has still not been found.
The efforts of the Kalbarri VMR, is phenomenal. Could you please send the lady whom I was speaking to, a big vote of thanks from me.
On the fishing side, we had great fun!! A couple of baldies, 5 pink snapper, a smallish 4kg dhuie, an assorted other reefies like norwest snapper. Whilst the fishing wasn’t fast and furious, both Craig and myself appreciate the efforts you went to, to put us on the right spots to catch a few.
Once again thanks heaps to yourselves and KVMR!!!
Some photos of the fish attached.
Best wishes
Mal Brown”

Mal’s snapper.


Kalbarri Offshore & Angling Club, Local Competition August 20th

I was out fishing the comp the two kids, Rebecca and Jared and another junior Lee Ivey. The kids did not do very well, Jared was seasick, Rebecca couldn’t get a bite and Lee kept snapping off on big fish. I managed 2 baldies a small sambo and a snapper to win the comp! I also let go two undersize dhuies one of which had a tag in it, caught almost on the same spot just over a year before and only growing 2cm.
Cheryl Eley had a near 1kg bream from the river. (Tagged and released)
Simon’s 2.95kg bonefish.
The beach guys had a good time, fishing somewhere south of the river, Simon Tarasek brought this bonefish in, caught on bait, while his mate Steve Westropp released two bonefish. They also weighed in snapper and baldchin from the beach!

Lou Parker with a 14kg early August dhuie, caught from his dinghy just before the Sand Patch
in 17m of water.

It made his good-sized snapper seem tiny.

These pics emailed to me from a mate in South Africa shows a massive trevally caught by Barry Dodds. They were caught on bait from a beach island in Mozambique. They call them kingfish there but looking at the website photos of the island resort where it was caught it is probably what we call a brassy trevally or might even be a slightly different coloured giant trevally. The island resort website is http://www.linene-island.com/ There are also pics of some massive giant herring on the website!

Now on the opposite side of the continent, an Angolan Beach and the catch: white steenbass,
A cold current sweeps the coast and black volcanic rocks make up the beach. The background country looks worse than Western Australia’s northwest! Info: http://www.aasafaris.com/
Remember if you rent our accommodation you get big discounts on our boats. Have a look on my website for the details, and check out the savings.


Check out http://www.oceanoutlook.com.au/ and go to the Geraldton weather for local

5-day weather forecasts, or http://www.buoyweather.com/ and go to virtual buoys, is not a bad one!

Laurie

July 2005

PO Box 63 KALBARRI WA 6536 PH/FAX (08) 9937 2043
http://www.murchisonboathire.com.au/

MURCHISON BOAT HIRE JULY 2005 NEWS LETTER

I have just got back from a short fishing trip with 3 mates up north. We went to fish the small creeks around the Point Samson area. Between Karratha and Port Hedland.
The fishing was quite awesome after we figured it all out. We are not used to big tidal movements but got into some good threadfin salmon up to 5kg before the tides turned bad again. Full report on the trip in next month’s Eletter.

Chris Clare featured in last May’s newsletter catching mackerel and was up again for another shot. He phoned up just as I was looking for some muscles to pull my FAD in for the season. So I invited him and his family, son Kevin, daughter Kirsten and wife Jac out for a fish and “FAD pull”. We went for a fish first catching a lot of blue-lined emperor with Chris picking up the catch of the day, a 7kg dhuie. While Kevin was busy with double headers of blue-lined emperor Kirsten hooked up and dropped two very good fish, probably dhuies like Chris’s below. Before the wind kicked in we went to pull the FAD. Real hard job, glad Chris and Kevin were there. The FAD has been there since January in 47m of water and the rope was covered with slime, weed, barnacles etc and cute scallop shaped, multi coloured shells like shown below. I will be cleaning the FAD up renewing the worn shackles and redeploying it again in January ready for the game season. If you want the GPS coordination just ask when you hire a boat.
Chris Clare with his 7kg dhuie
Colourful scallops from the FAD rope, among seaweed, sponges, barnacles and squirts

Sandy Sanderson dropped in during the school holidays, wanting the 6.1m boat and luckily it was available. Heading out with his family and friends fished spots north of the river mouth. After trying several of my GPS logged spots with no luck went on to another that I had recommended. It then went off for the group, landing skippy, snapper, cods, baldies etc and this huge estuary cod for Sandy. It was not weighed but would have been around the 18-20kg mark. They ended up with 22 odd fish for the day, and called it one of their best ever!
Sandy Sanderson very pleased with his biggest fish to date – estuary cod

Second time hirer James Scovell brought his usual group of 5 guys up, booked our cottage and got $75.00 off the two day hire of the 6.1m. You get this discount if you stay in our accommodation. Garry again got into a huge baldie the first day while James got stuck into a sambo. They ended up with a good bag of reef fish. The second day venturing a bit further they all got stuck into fish of all sorts and it only got better as the day progressed. Someone was lagging behind in the fish tally so took the initiative and loaded up with a big bait. Half a sergeant baker went to the bottom and within a minute pulled up a dhuie. James followed with a big bait also and within minutes was on to a fish of a lifetime. They called it for a sambo, a big cod, then a shark but eventually it came up, this big 12kg dhuie, the biggest from my boats to date!

The group with some of their 2nd days catch

James with his 12kg dhuie
James’s tailor pictured above came from a late evening session at Black Rock, casting poppers over the reef. The only fish to hit that evening! Went 3.9kgs.

John Barry phoned me one evening during the school holidays saying that the fishing charter he was booked on had cancelled and the reason he was in Kalbarri was to fish so needed a boat to get out. Luckily we had the 5.3m boat free and the following days weather was to die for. After a late start John and son Sean got down to the Natural Bridge area south of the river mouth. They got onto a spot catching a couple of nice sized pink snapper and 6 thumping hard fighting sweetlip from another spot. Better than a charter they agreed!
John & Sean with some of the 8 fish they caught

Why does the big fish always take the lightest rod?

Andrew Chan up from Perth for the school holidays hired our 4.3m boat and Locklan Bailey the 5.3m. I was going out in the 6.1m to take my daughter and son for a fish and they both followed me out. We dropped Andrew at the Sand Patch and Locklan and myself headed up beyond Baldface. We drifted in close for snapper picking up 6 nice pinkies while Locklan and crew though doing exactly the same as us in the 5.3m failed to get a fish? As the day glassed off we went deeper to try for dhuies but only picked up a few skippy, baldchin and nor’ west snapper as did Locklan. I would have expected better but some days it just does not happen. On the way back late in the afternoon Andrew was still at the Sand Patch! He was hooked up to a fish that had been on for ½ an hour. Hooked on the lightest rod on the boat Andrew eventually broke the rod in his efforts to lift it, and the fish broke off. He said he had a great day and was happy with the few fish that he did land.


I am sure most of you are aware that it is bad luck to bring bananas aboard a boat. It has been proven time and time again, catches are reduced to near on 0 when bananas are on board, and that includes lolly bananas, banana cakes, muffins etc. Don’t even try to smuggle one aboard in your stomach, don’t even eat one the day before to be safe!

Kalbarri Offshore & Angling Club, Local Competition July 23rd

My sambo, one of a pair, 14.9kgs. Lee Ivey’s four fish for the day

Our local comp this month fell on quite a nice day and went searching for new ground out wide looking for those red emperor spots to no avail. We ended up fishing our normal spots after wasting the whole morning searching, picking up a few fish to save the day. I boated a 14.9kg sambo and on the very next drop picked up its twin, which had to be released as only one sambo can be weighed in. Wife, Sue, had a great day picking up her 8 fish one being a nice dhuie. Junior Lee Ivey landed 4 fish and broke off two very good fish (get that drag serviced, Lee!) but still ended up winning his division. My youngest son Jared must have eaten something bad because he spent the day throwing up over the side!

Last year in August we caught some of the biggest and most dhuies of the year and by the way catches are going it should repeat itself. You don’t have to go far as most are picking up dhuies within 10km of the river mouth. They should be around until the middle of September when they finish spawning and disperse into deeper water.
Snapper are always around and can be caught in shallow water on the edge of the reef.
We are now coming into the time when the big tailor start to show up. From now to December big greenbacks savage the reef holes for any unsuspecting bait or reef fish. Poppers and large gardies cast into the white water on a rising tide and moon just on dusk almost guarantees a fish.

Have a look at http://www.earth.google.com/ you will need at least Windows XP and have to download some software. It gives you a satellite image of anywhere in the world and you can zoom into the area. I don’t have XP but have been told it is really good. Gives me a reason to upgrade!

Remember if you rent our accommodation you get big discounts on our boats. Have a look on my website for the details, and check out the savings.



Laurie