Great weather, Stupid fish

A new day arrives, and we surface just before 7am without too much of a hangover. The wind was mostly gone and the clouds were looking a bit threatening, but weren't producing any rain, so we packed our gear and headed off to see if these Kingfish really did exist.

We stopped in the shallows where we got a heap of salmon trout yesterday, but no luck this time. Who would have thought they would actually move on from this spot in the last 15 hours.... An hour had now passed, so we headed off past the power station to the squid grounds and spent the next 45 minutes stocking up the live bait tank.

The next 5 hours was spent dragging these poor squid around 20 metres below the surface, or letting them fight against the balloon bouncing in the wind along the surface, however, we still ended up with the same result we would have got if we were back in the local pub.... nothing caught...however, as they say, a bad day fishing is a better option than being at work...... apparently. We decided that we were just not going to get any of these elusive Kingfish today, so we grabbed our tackle and headed off to the shallows for a bit of fun.

At least we were successful with this. Salmon Trout by the hundreds. Once we had enough for a feed, and with rain clouds bearing down on us, we headed back to the upper reaches of the river to see if these bloody fish actually existed and were just hiding from us.

Another hour or more passed by with us dangling our tackle in seemingly empty waters, and the day was closing in fast, so the Trout were filleted, the squid were decapitated and the boat was cleaned.

Another year has passed without any Kingfish to be seen. It was mutually agreed that this was probably the last time we were going to come here and target these fish... time to start looking for snapper methinks.

I spent the first hour after getting back to the cabin re-hydrating with a half a bottle of Bacardi whilst skinning the fish and wrapping up to put in the freezer. A follow up with a quick shower and getting dressed up in our best Sneens outfit, then meant we were then ready to visit the local establishment for a brew or two, washed down with some Pub Grub for dinner.

There was a reasonable amount of tap beers to try, but on closer inspection., West End Draught, XXXX and a light beer just weren't going to cut it today, so I downed a few too many of my favourite Coopers Pale Ale, before retiring back to the cabin..... only to find The Rocky Horror Picture Show was playing on late night TV. Despite my body screaming at me to go to bed, I sat up finishing the bottle of Bacardi chuckling unnecessarily at a show that I am not even sure is funny and singing loudly to the handful of songs I knew the words to, and making up the words to the rest. Peter was lucky enough to have fallen asleep 2 minutes after laying down, so he didn't have to listen to me belting out multiple Aria worthy performances of songs that don't even begin to make sense... especially with the words I was making up. I ended up correcting this blog at least 3 times, such was the distraction of Frankenfurter - The Sweet Transvestite singing along with me

Home tomorrow.... no more fishing. Not here anyway.
Need to spend the next week or 2 piecing together the mountains of video and pictures I have taken in the hope of making my own short movie on how to spend 3 days boating, drinking and fishing, without catching our target fish.

Stupid Weather

After planning this trip for the last 6 weeks and then making the investment of getting here, paying for the cabin and basically running the fuel tank dry and having to limp our way into the closest fuel station in Pt Auguta, we were going fishing no matter what.
The boat was ready, the fishing rods were ready, we got here 4 hours earlier than expected and it was a mild 20 degrees. Everything was just as we planned it.

Except the wind. Bloody wind. Stupid wind.
You can put up with most elements in a boat, but not the stinking wind. So there was only one obvious alternate. Off to the pub. We did actually go down to the wharf first to check out if the wind  was any less gale force. It wasn't, but we got out our rods anyway and stuck them in the water for a bit to see if anything took a fancy and had a nibble. I did actually hook up to a Salmon Trout after a small while, but as i lifted it out of the water, Troutnado scooped it up and sent it into the wind God's handbag to deliver it to some poor unsuspecting grandma gardening on the other side of the peninsula.
That was enough for me, so we went a bought a few essential supplies such as a couple of blocks of chocolate, some biscuits and a head of lettuce for Peter and then came back to get cleaned up for dinner at the pub.
On arrival, I couldn't help notice that my choice of dressing up in Sneens wasn't actually out of place here, and spent the next hour admiring the new fashion trend, even spotting a couple of pairs of black Ripples with black stretch denim jeans..... Looks like I am off to K-Mart to get me some!

We both got stuck into an average schnitzel, with a drink to wash it down with, before heading back to the cabin to watch Jason Bourne act out my life.
The weather forecast for the next 2 days, which happens to be the limit of our stay here, doesn't get any better. We decided that out of the 3 different smart phone apps we are using, one of them (SeaBreeze) shows the wind dying down at around 3pm Monday, so we would hang around until lunch and then head out.
Monday arrived. Bloody apps. Bloody weather. We got out after lunch and caught ourselves a bucket load of Salmon Trout for live bait and dinner, figuring it was too hard to attempt squidding, before heading over to the renowned Power Station wall to try our luck. Thankfully, Peter has a live bait tank on the boat, so the trout were destined to be alive and well until we chose to jam a razor sharp hook through its back with a balloon tied to the line preventing it from doing anything but getting distressed enough to attract a hungry kingfish, like a bourbon being placed in front of an alcoholic.

Pity the Kingfish didn't see our enticement the way we had intended. Either that or they were in another state sheltering from the galeforce winds that were swinging the boat 140 degrees every 20 seconds, wrapping our lines around each other with the trout not too happy with the party balloons restricting their every movement.

Our plans to sit it out till nightfall were canned as the wind was driving the light rain horizontally into the back of hour heads, despite having the extra canopy on the boat, so we gave up and headed back to the boat ramp. At least we caught something.... not quite the 1 metre plus Kingfish we were hoping for, but a dozen trout is still ok, considering the conditions.

The weather is looking just as crap tomorrow... but we are going out regardless. Cant catch them sitting back here.

The elusive Kingfish

I remember back a few years when  I went on this same fishing jaunt with Peter and a few of his mates and their boats. We stayed in a shack that would have been better described as 4 walls and a roof. It did have electricity, but didn't have   running water, which wasn't overly helpful during night 2 with a belly full of booze and 20 partially cooked crabs that decided to want to exit my body at 2am. 

Anyway, it is Sunday and Peter and I are heading off again on trip 3 to see if we can get ourselves a Kingfish or 2. It is a very plain boring drive which meant we could actually talk about life for 4 hours. But apart from discussing the strategies we would be trying to catch these buggers, the rest was just bloke dribble - which will be translated into heaps of stories when Tracy asks "what did you talk about?"  

The weather forecast is not too bad if we were only looking at temperatures. Unfortunately the wind will be pushing 40km/hr so we are hoping that is the forecast for the open water. 

It's 12:00 nearly as I write this, and we are about 100k short of Pt Augusta. This afternoon is going to be about setting up, research and the odd drink or 3. Depending on the consumption of the aforementioned drink, we could potentially head out towards dusk for a quick session, and maybe a fish as well. 

Bring on the Kingfish.