No Fish Today; the fish have gone away!

Our camp at Barred Creek, above Broome WA

Many lines in the water does not mean many fish being caught!

View to left of our camp

View to right of our camp

This is the busiest we have ever seen Barred Creek.  In past years we have camped here for months on end and only seen a few day-trip 4 wheel drivers, and occasional weekend camper.  Now there is a continual line of tourist sight-seeing, driving in taking photos, some having a quick fish or swim before heading off again.  There are 8 other camps set up here, someone leaves, another 4x4 pulls into there spot.  Our dogs have to stay in there leads most of the time, due to the amount of people on the beach.  Our last neighbour was a friendly pregnant lady who was missing her dogs, so she liked visits from our dogs.  When we first got here a couple came to visit us JUST to see the dogs!  They brought Steak, for the DOGS!!!  Spoilt or what!!  But most people get scared by big dogs running up to them, wanting to 'rescue' them if they are swimming, kiss them if they are sunbathing, or worse, steal their fish if they ever caught one!

Pup watching people get picked up.

Charlie not looking; too much temptation to bark!

However all these fisherman aren’t catching many fish between them.  Yesterday we got NO FISH ALL DAY!!!  When we first got here we were catching enough Queenfish and Trevally for the dogs breakfast, and a few days in a row we got Mackerel for our lunch.  But all fish and bird action  seems to have stopped suddenly over the last few days.  Talking to other fisherman, there are the usual reasoning's: Full moon, Big Tides, The water is too clear, Too much sand moved in front of the rocks, and the latest ‘the deep ocean water has been washed in, pushing all the usual water, and fish, further out’.

Johnno 'practising' his fly casting

Fly's tied while waiting for the fish to come back

It’s not that big a deal for us, who plan to stay here for a month, a couple of days slack fishing we just do other stuff…sort tackle, clean tackle, order more tackle, or just go fishing anyway (Johnno just looked up from his book and said it looks like fishing time).  The holiday makers who are on more of a time schedule, are still fishing all day.  I sit on my double seater in the sun, reading FlyLife, watching them get excited when one person catches one Whiting or Long Tom.

Tommy; our cutest visitor so far!

I usual keep myself busy with photo sorting, movie making or Blog writing (fixing my blog took two days!).  Weekend visitors kept us entertained, and well fed.  I'm sure they hoped to catch fish as well, but hay, that's fishing :( sorry guys.

High tide at our Barred Creek camp site

Low tide at Barred Creek

Freezing cold mornings (as low as 10 degrees!) have kept us from get up early to fish the big low tides. Winds have been strong, but not enough to stop Johnno from fly fishing, all good practice he tells me…I’m still being too lazy to start again.  But I did say after a couple of beers the other night, ‘get my fly rod out, I’m ready to start’, but that still hasn’t happened.  Then this morning was over cast and hard to see into the water.

Now however, the wind is low, the sky is clearing, and it’s not to cold, or too hot;  I count 15 people on the beach fishing, so I think I might go join them!