About
Gleeson’s Landing on the lower Yorke Peninsula is a council owned camping site. Permits are required and can be purchased from the Yorke Peninsula Council. Note that the location we’ve set up camp in this story, on the northern end of Gleesons has since been changed to a conservation area, and camping is no longer permitted. A real shame, as it was in my opinion, one of the best camping spots on Yorke Peninsula! Gleesons still has many good camping areas to the south – but unfortunately none with front of camping fishing like this. Whilst the fishing at Gleesons Landing hasn’t always provided, on this occasion one fish made up it all.
A plan is put in motion
One day, we checked the weather report and things were looking good for a quick getaway to Yorkes. 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 Yorke’s 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 skill tester and then we headed over to the western side of the foot to find some where to camp for the night.
Finding Camp
We settled upon a nice patch of beach, 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 walk 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’, and taking up his entire backseat rolled up.
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 undersized.
Beach Fishing
Fishing at Gleesons Landing can be hit and miss. 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 was using a new LED ‘glow stick’ which flashes red when the rod shakes. He saw this happen and 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. With no gaff to drag it any further, Kym cut the line off and the stingray slid back out in the wash.
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.
Snapper Success!
I was busy giving Andre stick for his wayward casting that was resulting in his line going across mine. He was blaming me in return, as he set 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. 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!
For a few of my other top Yorke Peninsula locations, see my post on The Best Camping Spots in Yorke Peninsula
