Happy Birthday Daddio xx

 Daddio:

50's version of what Dude is now.

Beautiful morning to be celebrating my Daddio's birthday!!

 Happy Birthday to my fun, entertaining father.  The man I grow up with, who gave me so many years of laughs.  The man who taught me not to be so Gullibly.  The man who prepared me for a life with my Joker life-partner John Marven!
Thank-you Dad and Johnno for your patience over the years of my life... it's been an amazing one so far.  Here is just one day:

Exmouth boat ramp

Sunrise at Exmouth boat ramp: ya just know it's going to be a good day!

Happy Birthday to David, first fish on boat early this morning.

Trolling past a school of bait, Johnno jumped up front, cast a silver slice at them and was on.  Long fight gave me plenty of time to get the other lure's in before he landed it.

Can't let the boys have all the fun. Happy Birthday Daddio. xx

Anchored at one of our favourite spots to watch the fish drift past.  Johnno spotted the black shape, a school of fish moving towards us.  We both started casting, Johnno on fly, and me with my favourite Exmouth Popper (used since my birthday holiday here 4 years ago).  I got hits straight away but they were all too crazy, couldn't stay connected.
Then there was a magical moment when I know I was going to be on.  My lure in front of the school, a few fish break off and start charging for it,  ya know when that happens one of them are going to inhale it, they are fighting for it!!  Then the big yellow lips come up in the middle of them and I started screaming even before it hit my lure 'It's a BIG Goldie' it's a big goldie'!! Then i was on and my 10b line was screaming as well!!
Johnno hooked up at the same time, it got intense as I screamed at him in my excitement to
Get the Net, oh you are on as well, well get yours off, I have a BIG Goldie!!
Turns out he had plenty of time to land and release his tervally, as this beast did another 5 laps around the boat before I  could get it anywhere near the net.
Thanks Johnno my bestie net boy!  Landed just as the hooks flow out, never to be seen again (no hooks on lure or fishes mouth??)
It's been a while since I have held up a big fish, mate it was heavy!!!  Still able to get a couple of good shots before Johnno jumped into the waist deep water to get photos of this beauty reviving and swimming off.  It was a beautiful sight!!

Trying out the under water setting.

YES That works!!

I hope you enjoyed your 

Birthday as much as we did Dad.

xxx

What a difference a year makes!

Camping this weekend: Exmouth style!

One year ago: first night camping on the beach

One year ago today we left Derby, for the first day of our beach camping holiday.
Even though I have been working again for the last 4 months, so not officially still on holiday, it feels like we are.  With such a wonderful relaxed lifestyle here in Exmouth, it's hard to believe we are not still on holiday!

After work boat or beach fishing trips, keeps us in constant holiday mode!
The boat ramp is a one minute drive from my work, I message Johnno when finishing and he pops down with tinny attached, so we can sink a couple of coldies while trolling around out the front of the marina.

After work drinks: Exmouth style! 

After work swim. 

Weekend family beach fishing day.

Early Easter weekend this year meant the winds were still up (people tell us it will drop off in a months time), but we were still able to get two wonderful days out on the boat.  We slept on Black Thing over night in a sheltered bay of the Muiron Islands.  The wind over night kept us awake, but thankful it eased off the next day so we could go looking for Sailfish...none to be seen!!  It's always the way isn't it?  When it is was too windy and we didn't have the right bait, we had sailfish coming up to the boat!!!  The day we are totally prepared and the sea is calm = none to be seen :(

Even though the Sail's were hiding we did find some other great fishing spots, and place's to snorkel.  We had half a dozen big sharks on our lines over the weekend, making us think twice about jumping in, (but of course we did several times), plus the current from the big tides made the water slightly murky.  Looking forward to getting over there on the neap tides!!

1st fish for Easter 2016, we caught lots of these during our two days out.

Playing one of the many sharks that stole our fish.

It was too good, I eat most of the fish before taking a photo!

Easter Sunday I spent gardening.  Planting bushes and moving garden beds, finally getting time to make the back yard more the way I want it.  Putting my own little touch on it, making it feel like home.

Easter Monday...I had to work.  So yes even though we are totally still in holiday mode, sometimes real life comes back to remind me we are not...well not totally anyway.

One year ago we drove out of Derby with NO plans at all, no idea were we would be today.  I love the way things always work out just the way they are meant too!! After a rather sudden decision to move here to Exmouth, we had the long haul of getting everything here, settling in, finding work...finding new fishing spots!  But it's all working out perfectly!  We truely are living the dream!  Loving life!!  Making the most of every moment!!! Loving every step along this amazing journey of life!

Full moon at Sunrise; Exmouth Gulf WA.

Getting my Fishing Fitness back!

Three times in one week I've thought 'I used to be able to do this', so its time to be able to do it again! 

Suffering the consequences of my year off fitness training!

For those who didn't know me before this blog, or our amazing 8 month fishing adventure, I used to be a Personal Trainer/Boot Camp instructor.  I say 'used to be' because I'm not feel very PT like at the moment.  After a year off exercise, and 8 months of sitting on the beach doing next to nothing, like really NOTHING!! I've lost all my hard earned muscle and fitness.  And it showed during the weekend of fishing!!

Black Thing before the wind picked up

First wake up call / slap in the face, was when we took Black Thing out on a slightly choppy day.  Last year I wouldn't have hesitated before jumping up the front of the boat, hanging on only to the bow rope, as we smashed through white cap waves to chase a school of fish.  This weekend my legs couldn't hold me!!  I got a bit of a shock when I had to race to the back of the boat in fear of falling over board!

Wake up call number 2 happened when I was playing my Queenfish on 10 pound line, my arms were shaking from excitement straight away, but unsure of how long the fight was going to take I wasn't confident in being able to hold the rod that long.  Fight took almost 5 mins, and of course I did hold on without even a thought of giving up, but I was surprised at how much my arms and shoulders ached afterwards!

Then number 3, the icing on the cake, Sunday out in Little Thing, our tinny, the wind picked up just as we were heading back.  Ten minutes of bouncing out of my seat as we broke through the choppy waves sent my unfit legs to jelly.  Last year I would have been standing up Rodeo Riding those waves!!

Lucky the Trevalley we were catching on Sunday didn't give me too much of a workout,
 but even these little fellas are great fun on 10 pound line!

I've been prolonging the holiday feel for as long as I can, but now it's time to get fit again.  Time to get fishing fit!!!  Bringing on the regular workouts to strengthen legs, core and arms again.  Neither the wind nor any fish is going to get the better of me!!!

I'm off now for an intense interval workout of leg work and skipping!  If anyone is interested in how I go with that, you can check out my FaceBook group: Our Positive Lives.

I've been published!!

Go camping Australia magazine

My Manari Road camping article and photos has been printed, and is now on sale at news-agents. 

I wrote the article before they renamed their magazine to include 'fishing', mate if only i'd known they were going to do that!!  The magazine is bigger, with lots more different sorts of articles than it was this time last year.  I enjoyed the whole thing, think I'll subscribe and even try to write some more articles for them.

I'm feeling a little proud at the moment.  Not just showing off, more like gracefully excepting the recognition!  They liked what I wrote enough to print it!!

School was a very long time ago for me now, I have to remind myself of this sometimes, i'm not 18 anymore.  I need to move on from my childhood memories of being that shy girl who couldn't read or write.  I'm an adult who can read, and reads a lot, who can write, and best of all now enjoys writing. Hence this on going blog, even though the holiday is over the good writing habits formed during our time on the beach shall continue.  I will continue writing, to continually improve, to grow and to learn.

Big Queen Fish in shallow waters = heaps of fun!

Karen with her Queen Fish

 What a wonderful unexpected morning! 
The plan had been to head out on our boat for 3rd day lucky with the Sailfish we had seen over the last couple of days, but the wind picked up, and with both or us already sunburnt, we decided against that.

By 10am we were both itching, well what are we going to do with our last day off together then...lets go for a walk on the flats, we can wear our buffs and not get burnt anymore.

Straight up, soon as we go there, Johnno saw MantaRays and started cast towards them. I'm a polite girlfriend (I am so!!!), I let him do his thing, waiting for them to swim past towards me. 
This is the result, my patients paying off; A Big Queenfish caught on lure, on 10b line, in the shallows of the shore.  
Oh what fun I had!

I was casting at the passing MantaRay, hoping it might have fish around it, when I saw a splash to the side of it.  I was trying to quickly reel in my lure, to recast where the splash had been, when I saw half a dozen big Queenie all charging for my lure.  Full on exciting stuff!

Queen Fish caught on lure from the beach

They didn't hesitate, first Queenie there grabbed it and was hooked.  Thankfully the flats around me where clear for it to run and jump as much as it wanted, I just had to wait it out until it tired, which also gave Johnno time to come over to take photos of me with the beautiful fish.
Arms are still shaking from the rush of it all!

Safely released Queen Fish swims off.

Notice the YouTube clip, the large dark shape in the water beside me as I try to get hold of the Queenie with boger grips?  I didn't notice it at the time, too worried about loosing my beautiful fish right at the last moment before being able to get the prized photo. When I did see it I point it out to Johnno who walks straight up to it to chase it off, not wanting it hanging around my recovering Queenie.

Shark was a Shovel nose ray which swam off as soon as Johnno spooked it.  Queen Fish was given time to recover and then safely released.

How many Melons/Mullet/Sailfish do I have?

I think I've lost my melons, 

but at least I still have Johnno's mullet!

Black Thing gets wet: at last the wind eased enough for us to get out!

After 3 days off work together we are starting to see things, weird wonderful things.  I got to see my first Sail Fish at the side of our boat Black Thing on Thursday.  It was all too exciting, and we so weren't ready.  We weren't even trolling any lure's, didn't have any Sail Fish gear ready.  We saw the birds working a school of bait so made our way over...nek minnit; 5 little sails hanging around us!! Johnno jumped up the front with his fly rod and started casting, I jumped around the boat trying to find some kind of lure that might be of interest to them.  It all happened so fast and was over before we could do anything constructive.  We spent the rest of Thursday setting up out riggers and teasers, while trolling the area, but never got a look at them again that day.

Friday night Drunkardness on the internet.  I've often banned myself from using the internet, specially  FaceBook after a few beers, but you know, you get talking, laughing, next minute you are distracted from your online friends and find an interesting Water Melon picture:

How many melons are there?

I posted this on Positive Fishing FaceBook page and got lots of Friday night giggles from the response's.  I don't have the answer, and I'm glad when I looked it up on other sites that many people have many different answers...but it lead me to another fun thought provoking chat: If you start with four mullet, you cut two in half and use 2 head ends as bait, how many Mullet do you have left?

I'm sharing this in my blog because well, I cut up my bait to make this photo.  Have you ever cut a Mullet in half? For such pretty creatures, they are disgusting when you cut into them!!  Stomach of brown mud, reminded me very much of Derby river banks on the out going tide!  

This beautiful Pelican followed us around while we hunted down the bait.

Saturday: We raised a Sail!!!  We headed straight out to where we had seen the little Sails on Thursday, this time we were ready.  Teasers in the water, out riggers set with extra lure.  They were there, I was beaming when I saw and recognised one straight away, no mistaking them!!  I turned the boat and headed in it's direction.  It came up and followed our lure's for a bit, but wouldn't take them. We kept circling.  I got to witness my first free jumper: Sail Fish jumping clean out of the water.  What a beautiful sight that was!!  But it did feel a little like 'Hello I'm over here, haha, try and catch me'!  We headed in that direction.  Another Sail Fish came up and tugged at my lure.  Clearly not impressed with what I was offering as we never saw that fish or any other again that afternoon.

Sunday:  That's tomorrow, and yes we will be out there again searching, hoping, circling, waiting...third time lucky!!

Black Thing trying to excite Sail Fish!

One Year Of Blogging

What an amazing year it has been!

My First Blog a year ago, set up this page ready for our long term camping/fishing holiday.  With no plans at that time, we had no idea where we would be now.

We left Derby with only one plan: to camp at Willie creek until Johnno caught a Permit On Fly.  That didn't take very long at all, so then we were free of any commitment, goals or plans.
Eight wonderful months camped on the beaches above Broome gave us plenty of time to think about our future, dream up new goals in life, and start planning for them.

Once we decided that we were moving to Exmouth to live, work, renovate and of course Fish, everything happened very quickly.  Now we are over 2,000km from where we were this time last year, in completely different jobs with another house to renovate and make our home.

Exmouth is everything we expected, we were catching fish as soon as we got here, and have had some fun after work fishing adventures.  How wonderful it is to be able to go fishing straight from work, either walking along the beach or putting the tinny in and catching Tuna close to shore.

Returning to a normal work/fitness routine has been harder than expected.  After 8 months relaxing on the beach, my body is bigger than it used to be, but the bank account is much skinnier, so we are working on reversing those again.

We are enjoying plenty of after work fishing the shallow close to home.

What Now?

Positive Fishing was always my fun little project, it was never to make a name for myself or to start an kind of business venture.  It's simply Fishing For the Fun of it (I love F words).  Those who know me personally know that I'm a Face Book addict anyway, so I will keep the Positive Fishing FaceBook page to show off some of the great fishing we encounter here in Exmouth.  This blog was started to share our holiday experience's with family and friends around the world, and hopefully encourage others to get out enjoy and explore this great country.   I've enjoyed writing and sharing my adventures, so plan to continue doing so, even though we are settled into 'normal' life, I'm sure I can still find interesting things to write about ;)

I have a closed FaceBook page where I am documenting my journey back to fitness, anyone interested in joining me on this much harder adventure is welcome to join the group: Our Positive Lives. It is only a closed group to stop clogging up your news feeds with all my running and healthy eating talk if you are not interested in such things.

My YouTube page has gained some popularity over the last year, maybe because I posted 52 clips while on holiday.  I love looking back on the 6 years of movie clips, I'm so glad I have it for my own record of my wonderful life, so will continue adding Fun Fishing and Fitness clips for years to come.  As an added bonus: Google just paid me $100 for the adds I have on my page, WOW!!!!  I might not be retiring on this income, but it's still a great buzz to know that people are enjoy my clips enough for google to recognise me!!

I've meet some wonderful people over the last year thanks to a this blog, my Facebook and YouTube page, I love the internets easy communication and look forward to hearing from you all!!

Most of my 2016 goals are about getting my fitness back, catching LOTS of Fish, and renovating our super cool Exmouth house; plenty to keep us busy and for me to keep writing about.

I love working towards fun goals; stay tuned to hear how I go with all of these.

Exploring our back yard during the weekend has been heaps of fun so far!

Getting my blond back on!

Living the dream: sea change to Exmouth off to a great start!

My 2016 Motto!

After eight months living on the beach not talking to anyone else, just the two of us running around naked most the time, it was a little weird returning to normal life.  Simple things like dealing with traffic and talking to people at the shops made me realise just how long we had been living off the grid!  It took a few weeks just to be able to talk to people normally again.  I wouldn't go as far as saying we had become shy, we just seemed to have forgot how to talk to people.  Thats sorted now, with us both finding work straight away, we just had to start dealing with people, and normal life again.

We are starting to settle back into 'normal' life now, getting up for work in the mornings, starting a fitness routine before work, after work beers, shopping, bills paying, renovation plans...and fishing trips!!

Being able to pop down to the beach for a quick fish and snorkel is totally amazing!  Johnno has had a couple of weeks off work, so he drops me off and heads straight for the shallows for a little bit of fly fishing; shame I wasn't there to take a photo when he caught this beauty Queen fish on fly, GoPro never dose them enough justice, but you get the idea; it was a beautiful big fish landed on his 8wt fly rod that he has only just got back (remember he broke it on our holiday).

It's windy season here, so boat trips are limited.  We did last week get a little break in the wind and headed straight out in Little Thing (our tinny) to see what the birds were so excited about.  One hour trip before the wind picked up resulted in 3 little tuna. Not bad for an after work fish!





                                    

It's not all fun and games and fishing here, we are working...oh wait, I AM working!!  Johnno is still on christmas holidays!!!  Haha.  We have started planning some great adventures and goals for 2016, most of them mean we have to keep working...or win lotto.  Here's a little look at things we plan to get done in 2016:

Goals for 2016

More of what we have been doing after work and on days off:

I can not believe the amount of sharks here!

Out on bigger boat = bigger tuna.

My birthday fish

So many dolphins in Exmouth Gulf, I am in heaven!!

40th birthday snorkelling at Exmouth.

Three years ago we came to Exmouth to celebrate my 40th birthday, we decided then we were going to move here 'one day'.  Two years later we had brought our house here, but rented it out, with plans of moving in 'one day'.  During our latest extended camping holiday, with lots of time sitting on the beach contemplating our futures, we realised that 'one day' had arrived, and it was time to move to Exmouth.

It's my birthday week, and what a wonderful week it has been!  Relaxing and recovering from the week of long driving and unpacking.  We took the big boat Black Thing out for a couple of test runs, she's running sweet, but the wind kept us in close to shore.  We have done lots of walking the beaches.  Johnno's first Exmouth fish was a nice Trevally on fly...photo of follow once i've downloaded the GoPro.

Yesterday we took our tinny 'Little Thing' for a test run, while trolling some lures of course...

My first Exmouth fish!!!!

My birthday fish, and first fish in Exmouth (well a squid before that), Mackerel on a Barra Cherabin lure.  The wind picked up shortly after this so we headed back in, luckily because yes i'm a bit sun burnt!!!

Looking forward to a lot more of this!!

Possibly over indulged for last day of being 42 yesterday, was working on the 43 cocktails that I promised myself i'd be drinking this year, after 5 years of fitness challenges on my birthday.  We lost count...have to start again today!!

We have moved!

I've missed writing my Blog.  It's been a month since my last post, in that time I've covered thousands of kilometres, and everything has changed!

Many nights spent on the side of the road while moving everything from Derby to Exmouth.

I left Johnno camped at Quondong Point on his own for 10 days when I flow to SA to visit my sister and her family.  Although Johnno fished every day to keep busy, he didn't catch many fish...seems I really am his lucky charm :) or maybe it was the wind and rough dirty sea.   By the time I got back wet season build up had started, hot and humidity made it uncomfortable in the tent.  So we packed up and headed off on the new adventure.

With the new plan of moving into our Exmouth house, starting a new chapter there instead of planned travel to QLD, we sold the camper trailer and retrieved Black Thing from storage.

Its 1700km from Derby to Exmouth.  Towing the boat loaded with boxes, and two restless dogs in the car, made it slow going.  Knowing our house still wasn't ready, we took a few days to drive down.

Two nights in a caravan park before moving into our house resulted in meeting some wonderful interesting people.

Meta (pictured left in photo above) gave us a moving in present.
It's a Dutch tradition to give Bread and Salt when moving into a new house, so you will never go hungry there...we have never had that problem!!

We have arrived in Exmouth!
Unpacking our first load.

Almost as soon as we had unpacked this first load we decided to drive straight back with a hired trailer to get the rest of our gear.  To say that I am sick of driving after that is a total understatement!! After 3 days sitting in the car I was going crazy!!  Thankfully a mate said he would tow 'Little Thing' (our tinny) down, we only had to drive 200km out to the highway to meet him.  I felt sick sitting in the car driving out there, so thankfully it was only to the highway and back.  A jet lag feeling settled in the next day, making it hard to enjoy our first full day in our new house/home/town.

Thankfully all the driving is now over, and most of the unpacking has been done.  Johnno has put Black Thing back together.  A mouse had eaten some wire's, but everything else survived 8 months storage.

So what now??

It's my birthday on Sunday, I want to go Sail-fishing and drink cocktails on the beach!  We will see what happens after that, no plans or goals of any kind yet, totally open to see what life deals up next!

Bring on the new adventure!!