Salmon on the beach....finally!

Bait fishing for Salmon

Written: Wednesday 19th August

Foggy start to the morning: then the wind changed an blow the fog back again!

Every day when you live on the beach is amazing, beautiful and different.  Even if you do the same thing in the same spot, it’s a new day so it’s going to be different than the last.

Weather has a lot to do with how the day turns out and what we do.  Today started off with a beautiful thick fog.  Everything was moist and visibility was low when we opened up the tent this morning.  It took ages to clear due to the lack of breeze.  Calm seas and air = we had to go fishing!  In coming tide, over shallow oyster rocks had us grabbing for our little poppers (Johnno has a Popper Fly!!) and heading off to hunt for Mangrove Jacks.

The wind picked up as soon as Johnno reached for his fly rod.  I SWEAR!  It was a perfectly still day, nek minit windy and dirty rough seas!  We waded around the rocks for a little while, but not being able to see in the water made this dangerous and not much fun.  We called for Plan B: Smoko then bait fishing off the beach.

If you have read my previous blogs, you will know that on Monday I lost 3 Salmon and yesterday I caught a You-Beaut Bluebone off the beach right in front of camp.   So today with the wind picking up even more and the waves bigger than ever, Johnno hung up his new 8wt fly rod for the first day since he got it, and came bait fishing with me…
Friggin show off!  I knew I shouldn’t have let him fish in ‘my spot’!!  He was onto a great salmon stragith away.  It jumped out of the water show us how big it was before…He LOST IT!!  It broke through his 60lb leader!  I was like ‘well at least it’s not just me’. Johnno was like ‘I’ve never lost a salmon on 60lb before’
I’d only brought 40lb leader down to the beach, so Johnno re-rigged with a double leader.  Shortly after, I’d just taken my bait out of the water to move our gear from the crashing waves, turned my back for a second, you guessed it, Johnno was on to a beaut Salmon.  It almost had him around the rocks, and then I panicked he was going to lose it in the breaking waves, like I had 2 days ago.  But thankfully he landed it on the beach safely.

Johnno's salmon in front of camp

We were amazed at it’s very rough mouth, rough enough to rough up Johnno’s thumb!  We are convinced they have evolved; A new survival tactic against fisherman, rougher mouths….explains why I have lost so many recently!!

With the waves crashing around us, making it uncomfortable standing on the little rock, we decided one big fish was enough for this morning.  The eagles were circling before I even started filleting.  I cut the carcass into 3 bits; the first eagle was swooping as soon as I lay them on the beach, not at all worried about me and Pup still standing there.  Number 2 eagle took the head as soon as we were up the cliff out of the way.  Gulls and Brahmine fought over the tail.

We had KISS salmon curry for lunch.

Salmon Curry for dinner