August 2006

www.murchisonboathire.com.au

MURCHISON BOAT HIRE AUGUST 2006 ELETTER

Just coming to the end of the best of the dhuies. Between June and August they school up close in and are easy to catch. The Murchison River is alive with undersize mulloway at the moment. They are all about 200mm – 300mm long. One local, Jamie Waite, tagged 27 undersize mulloway on Wednesday night 23rd August from the wooden service jetty, while the Monday before Steve Wiseman and Steve Guilders tagged 18 fish in an hour, fishing by the dredge outlet where the Sand Spit use to be. Hirers have been reporting catching and releasing 10 – 20 fish each evening with the kids from the jetties. There has also been a lot of people keeping and killing them as well, what a waste when you know what they grow up to be. We think that there has been an unusually high amount of spawning in the river or high survival rate this year because of the flood. The mulloway are all the way up the river as well

Lou Parker is a local here in Kalbarri and when his brother Matt and mate Bevan dropped in for a visit he couldn’t resist the temptation to take them out and show them how to catch fish. Lou has been fishing these waters for many years now and often comes out with me so you would expect him to catch some decent fish. With time pressing as the crew had to be back in Perth that day they slipped out early in my 6.1m and were back with fish like this by lunchtime.

Lou and Matt Parker show off their catch.
Lou fished his spots, which are close in, and only just past the Sand Patch picking up this very nice baldchin and a double header of dhuies for Matt amongst their bag of skippy, breaksea and snapper.

Big baldchin were the flavour of this month. Darren Lamont was up with 4 mates, Wes Godridge, Rooboy, Mala and Scotty. They hired the 5.3m boat as I had the 6.1 for the day and followed me up north just past Baldface.

Rooboy’s double-header

and the gang with their fish.
It must have been a bit crowded on the 5.3m boat with 5 on board but they did well landing snapper, skippy, baldchin rankin cod, red-throat emperor and a dhuie.
Bite of the day was Rooboy’s double-header of this 6kg baldchin and 4kg rankin cod. You made “Bite of the Month” Rooboy! On the way back to the boat ramp they came across some dolphins and birds crashing a big ball of baitfish. They decided to put a couple of lures out even though there was little chance of any pelagics around as it is now late in the season. However the lures got smashed by something that destroyed them on their 80lb braid and Penn Internationals. They got one of the fish to the boat but still could not sight it and ended up busting them off??? Could only have been very big tuna!?

The big one went 8.5kgs
They couldn’t wait to get out again but had to wait 4 days for the swell and wind to go down again before heading out for a 2 day fish in the 6.1m boat. Blanking out on the first day with only a couple of snapper they made up for it the second day landing three dhuies and a good baldchin. They trolled for a bit but could not replicate the first day’s bust-offs.

Some of you may get the TV channel Access 31. We don’t get it up here so have not seen the fishing show filmed by Cam Munro, Peter Ryan, Artie, Paws and crew, but they were in Kalbarri having a look see as to what the fishing was about.

Artie with a 4.2kg skippy, the biggest from the boat to date.

Cam and Artie show off their dhuies. Cam’s fish was caught on soft plastics.
I took them to a couple of spots just north of Baldface in about 25m of water, as they wanted to use soft plastics. Well from the moment we held anchor it went off. As soon as the soft plastic got near the bottom it was snatched by a skippy, and the soft plastics were out fishing bait! There was no real difference as to the colour or type, as everything presented got munched. For the record, paddle tail shapes took a lot longer to get down than the straight tails, other than that there was not much difference. The first day was nearly all skippy and we struggled to find other species, but on the second day

Artie with a beautiful spangled emperor caught on soft plastics

and Cam with his biggest dhuie, a 9kg specimen taken on bait.
fishing the same spots we struggled to get anything other than dhuies! It was mainly undersized dhuies on soft plastics and bait to start and then later in the day the bigger ones turned it on. We ended up with 5 good dhuies and an assortment of other fish.

The days catch of dhuies and one mulloway.

Peter Ryan’s soft plastic caught Murchison River bream.
The last day was a bitch of a weather day so we explored up the Murchison River fishing the snags on a rising tide. We did not have much time and the tide was dropping by 8am, but we had an early start and managed to land a few respectable bream before they turned off with the dropping tide. It is quite critical to fish the rising tide in the Murchison for two reasons. One the fish only seem to bite during the incoming and the river is so shallow that any boat will be left stranded at low tide.

One of the soft plastics caught dhuies, the softy well down its throat.
These guys were using Rapala Squidgy Braid, Shamano Twin Power 4000FBs on “T” Curve rods. Very nice outfits, and I had a bit of a fish with the gear myself. I have to admit I was very impressed with the feel and performance of the Rapala Squidgy Braid and especially the “T” Curve rods. They had the rods in different line classes and the feel and performance was spectacular! Expensive gear but, hey, if you fish a lot, enjoy it!

You might have heard that the river is silting up again. This is true and the usual route out is no longer possible, however you can still get out by going around the Three Sisters (The three rocks in the middle or the channel) There are some orange markers on the rocks showing a safe passage through. The dredge is here now and currently cutting a channel through the sand and reclaiming the beaches and the Sand Spit. By the end of August it will have cut through and access will be easy again.


These pics were sent to my by Geoff Bradbury who hires my boats each year around April. He was holidaying in England and snapped these pics of a fishing trip poster in Plymouth where they brag about catching rare “Spanish mackerel” I know it is probably a different species but makes you laugh considering some of the “prize fish” shown in the photos!



Kalbarri Offshore & Angling Club, Local comp 19th August
Our local comp this month fell on pretty ordinary day weather wise but with a NNE wind and low swell early in the morning it was not too bad until about midday. As we got to Baldface we encountered baitfish and birds so we dragged a couple of lures but nothing happened! A bit further north on a spot I know to be pretty reliable as a mackerel spot we found more birds and bait, again the lures went out only to hook up immediately on nor west blowies! But the second sweep of the area resulted in a solid hook-up for Sue on her 3kg outfit landing an 8.2kg mackerel. We dropped a few more and bust off something big and later on I picked up this 8.5kg yellow-fin from a mulie under a balloon out the back of the boat.

My yellow-fin on 6kg line

and Sue’s very late season game section winning mackerel
This is very late in the season for game fish. Mostly the macs and tuna are gone by mid July at the latest, but it has been a very strange year, very little rain and a very big river flood.

Daniel Tarasek won the land based section with this 19.9kg amberjack from the cliffs

Ian Lecke’s about 12kgs (released)

Lou Parker’s about 9-10kgs (released)
Look at these fish, not the sort you would associate with Kalbarri! Lou Parker and mate Ian Lecke went north in just past the Sand Patch to one of Lou’s spots mid August, in Lou’s dinghy, on what looks like a good day. These two species of trevally made their day for them and big ones of the species also. We recon the one Ian is holding a brassy trevally and would be as big as the species goes, while Lou holds up a very respectable golden trevally. It has been a very strange year!

Remember if you rent our accommodation you get big discounts on our boats. Have a look on my website for the details, and check out the savings.

5-day weather forecasts, http://www.buoyweather.com/ go to virtual buoys, pick the location you want. This is the one I go by!

Big bait – big fish
Laurie

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