Preparation (or lack thereof)
With a big Kimberley Trip last year, and everyone doing their own thing in terms of short fishing get-aways, there hadn’t been any proper fishing trips for quite sometime. The greatest mulloway trip almost never happened.
The wheels were put in motion for this trip when a few months earlier, Will & Kym made some loose plans around getting over to SA’s far west coast for Mully season. I wasn’t planning to tag along, and then some opportunities came up at work that further put my ability to attend in doubt. So, less than a month ago, I didn’t think I was coming – but a bit of last minute fear of missing out saw me put in an application for leave at work, and one week prior to the departure date, it was approved. Unfortunately, just a day later, Will was struck down by illness and by doctors orders had to stay in bed for a few weeks. This put both him, and his mate who was hitching a ride, out of action.
Kym was heavily advanced in his preparation by then, so for me it was just a case of get my gear out the shed and throw it in his 4WD. We decided to go ahead with the trip with just the two of us anyway, and boy am I glad we did.
Bait Collection
We pulled onto Scott’s Beach around 2pm Wednesday afternoon, and cracked a beer and watched a school of salmon out the back of the breakers – way too far out to reach with lures. Beer consumed, and school no closer, we headed around to the point for a bit of lazy fishing. Pilchard under a float, sit back, and wait.
We didn’t have to wait long, as our first baits delivered a salmon each. Things were looking good, but soon joyfulness turned to concern as the sunset loomed and we had just 3 small salmon in our fresh bait supply. A big thunderstorm passed to the north of us, missing us, but providing a fantastic lightning show from our camp location.
The next day, we tried for more salmon, but it was very slow going. As the morning went on, the next storm rolled through, and this time didn’t miss us. With the fish not biting, we took shelter under a small overhang in the cliff as the rain poured down for a few hours. One lightning bolt cracked right over our heads in an extremely loud fashion.
We caught a few more fish, and I was thinking this would have to do if we were to make it out to the Dog Fence by mid afternoon as I assumed the plan was. However, Kym had no plans to go to the Dog Fence Beach that day. We must gather more bait was the cool. Still, with the opened pilchard bag running low, things were looking pretty bleak.
We decided to finish the bag off, and if nothing happened, we’d try out a different location. With the very last half a pilchard in that bag, Kym’s float ducked under the water, and a salmon came flying out the water soon after. That would buy us at least another hour of fishing here. It was a huge turning point, because for the rest of the afternoon we’d have the odd salmon swim by with a few mates, and we’d be able to grab a couple at a time. By the end of the day, we had about 18 salmon landed. Since there were just the two of us, this was going to be an ample amount of bait for a few days at least.
Some of the fish were filleted, and others kept whole. The whole fish kept fresher much longer, but do take up way more space in the ice box. It was getting dark, so we rolled the swags out again, with a plan to head off in the morning.
Surprise Catch
As the sun rose on day three, we rolled up the swags and was about to pack up the fishing rods for travelling when we noted a few left over pilchards from the day before and decided to use them up before heading off. I cast one out under a float, and headed back to the car to grab some things. Soon after, Kym yelled out that that I was on!. Excellent, I thought, another salmon for the bait stocks!
“It looks like a kingfish!”. That got me moving. I grabbed the camera and crab net (for landing the fish) and raced back down. Kym had it in at the edge of the rocks, and handed it over to me. It took off again, taking a bit more line, but I wrestled it back towards the shore and we guided into the crab net and up on the deck for a few quick photos. It wasn’t huge, being what we estimated to be around 75cm, but it was my first ever kingfish, so I was pretty stoked. An unexpected catch to be sure! Unsure of the size limit, we sent it back on its way.
Seeking Mulloway
A quick stop off in Fowlers Bay to stock up on ice (they had block ice too, awesome!), we headed further west and following a bumpy ride, pulled up onto the beach an hour or two later. Now, Kym & I aren’t the most decisive gutter selection pair, but we didn’t get too far up the beach before seeing a gutter and saying that looks pretty damn good! Even so, the prospect of something even better (which really is unlikely when you see the pictures) lured us into searching further up the beach. We drove many kilometres. Got bogged. Got unbogged. We turned around and went back to our initial find an hour later. Luckily no one else came along in the mean time.
We set up in haste, as more rain was about to bucket down – so getting a shelter up with relief from the wind as well was a priority. Then, we soon eased in to a late afternoon fish and one or two beers.
Kym landed a huge Salmon which we cut up for bait straight away – fresher the better as they say!
As the sun set, Kym noticed a slight knock on my line – I looked and saw another. A definite bite but didn’t seem like anything huge. I ran and grabbed the rod, and then the fish took off like a freight train… it was definitely something huge and I was calling mully!
This was unexpected, as we figured that Friday might be a bit early around the moon phase to get on to anything decent, but after a 10 minute fight I used a good wave to slide a huge Mulloway up onto the sand. I wanted to release it, so we quickly snapped off a few photos and took measurement against the Gaff (which wasn’t used). It was conveniently the exact same length, 140cm! My previous PB mulloway was 132cm and weighed 52lb – so this was an estimated 60lb’er! I got seriously wet in trying to give him or her a good release, which no doubt looked clumsy as trying to hold on to such a huge fish. Although it swam off slowly, it looked to be fine. High fives were had, and back up to camp for a celebratory beer, and to re-bait.
Not 10 minutes after I had a new bait in the water, my line has again got a huge bite. I struck the fish and it ran hard. It didn’t feel as big of the previous run, but it still had plenty of go. I couldn’t believe my luck…. until the line went slack and I pulled in nothing at all, not even a swivel. I suspect that my main line got damaged during the tussle with the previous fish and in my excitement, I hadn’t checked anything before recasting. Disappointing, but at the same time confidence was high that we were on a good patch here. Though no more mullies were landed that evening, Kym did follow up his initial huge Salmon capture with two more that got increasingly larger. The final one was about 5.85kgs on the scales – easily the biggest I’ve ever seen.
Although we were blessed with no crabs destroying our baits, and barely any seaweed, we fished only half-heartedly through the morning period. Our strategy was to preserve the bait supply until the peak times around the afternoon high tide. I didn’t have to wait too long though, as around 11:30am I had another run and pulled in a 98cm Mulloway. This would be a good keeping size, but being Saturday, and us not expected to return until Wednesday, felt it wouldn’t last that long in the fridge. It was released as well.
Only half an hour later, another bite! A heap of line was being pulled out to sea, worrying me considerably about my lack of preparation. This hookup was on my secondary rod, which had a Penn SSM950 on it, but in my haste before departing, I simply topped up the spool with some new line as I didn’t have enough to fill a spool. I suspected I had about 200 metres of line before the joining knot. Although it got low, I didn’t see any knot, and the fish started to come in. Soon after, another awesome looking fish was on the beach. This time 130cm, and estimated around the 50lb mark.
With three Mulloway on the board to Kym’s zero, I suspect he was getting slightly concerned. However, as the tide ran out, he too got a good bite, and thought it to be his turn finally. The lack of head shakes didn’t raise confidence though, and after a long battle, a massive black ray was beached.
Hopes were high for another sunset session, but it was a quiet evening.
Kym’s time to level up
Come Sunday, the salmon that were previously filleted were on the edge of being useable or not. We used a couple up through the quiet morning session, then once again got serious on the approaching high tide. This was a system working well for us, as the bait esky remained relatively unopened and full of good ice. It also produced another mulloway!
Right on lunch time, Kym got a good bite, and finally got on the board. A 102cm fish which we decided we’d be able to keep in the base of the fridge (which tends to freeze things a bit). It was Kym’s first Mulloway over 1 metre.
The high tides continued to provide, as an hour later, I hooked onto another solid fish – this one going 133cm.
He was let go for some extra good Mully karma.
Back at camp, Kym worked on extracting the ‘jewels’ from his caught mulloway, and sunset came and went without any more action.
It was intended that Monday would be our last full day out on the beach. The intention was to head back towards Fowlers on Tuesday to get a bit closer to home before Wednesdays long drive. We would have loved some fresh baits at this point, but it didn’t seem to matter, as the afternoon high tide delivered again!
After a massive fight that took him a couple of hundred metres down the beach, passed the nearby lone fisherman, Kym landed a 144cm stonker!
After releasing, that fisherman said he’d caught a 142cm the night before that weighed in at 65lb. We expect that this one would have been 65+ and perhaps closing in on 70- a mammoth fish!
One Last Cast
On the Tuesday, we figured we’d wait around until the high tide again, to see if we could get another fridge size mully to take home. Unfortunately, the daily high tide was getting much later in the afternoon by Tuesday. With all the waiting around proving to be a bit boring, we decided to have a few beers and depart direct from the beach the next morning instead.
Our bait supply was now poor though, with most of it unusable. I managed to hook a salmon and then drop it off in the wash and nearly cried as it swam away. Kym made up for that however, by catching two in quick succession at the peak of the tide. It didn’t help though, as for the first time since we hit the beach, high tide failed to deliver.
As sunset approached, we made some mediocre efforts to pack up camp. Kym got a bite right on sunset which had us both pretty excited, but it turned out to be another ray. I pulled the pin on fishing as it got dark, and Kym fished on for a few hours, rounding out the trip with a nice little Gummy Shark. That was the last of the fishing efforts in what turned out to be one of the greatest Mulloway Trips. Pretty happy I changed my mind on that silly idea of not attending!
If you liked this story – you might also like another Far West Coast Mulloway tale – back from when we first cracked the code on catching these elusive fish
