A long time between drinks

I haven’t been fishing anywhere near as much as I would’ve liked this summer, but over the weekend I finally got a chance to have a flick at a remote east coast estuary. I drove down Friday night and after a pleasant drive and a bit of bird watching:

And one minor hiccup (that’ll teach me to take a very inappropriate car on a dodgy dirt road):

I finally arrived. My mate's Jake and Nic soon joined me, and after setting up camp:

We hit the hay. We were up early the next morning and after a quick brekky we made our way straight to my favourite little hole to have a flick:

Second cast I nailed a little breambo:

Jake followed this up with one of his own:

And for the next couple of hours, the fish rolled in. We landed a heap of bream, flatties, and tailor:

The bream were so aggressive, that schools of these little fellas would be fighting over our lures at our feet:

But a few bigger fellas managed to beat the little guys to it:

The tailor were a pain - they were in almost plague proportions:

But there were also plenty of flatties in the 40-50cm range:

When hunger got the better of us we made our way back to camp for lunch, which we ate under the watchful gaze of the local food thief:

And a family of cute fairy wrens:

After a feed we unloaded our giant 3-man canoe, and went for a little paddle:

We flicked out a few lures and it took all of about 10 minutes for Jake to hook up – biggg flatty. She didn't fit in the net, so we decided to beach her:

She went 78cm and was thick! We wanted to get her back in the water as quickly as possible so I don’t have many pics, but she was a beaut fish. We took the yak back out and landed a couple of bigger tailor: 

Some very little fellas:

And an angry octopus:

Before some serious weather put a premature end to our fun:

The next day we wanted to explore a little creek a few km’s up the coast. This required crossing the estuary, so we crossed near the mouth and beached the canoe:

Made our way through the paper barks:

Bashed through some bush:

Passed plenty of wildlife (i.e., eastern spine bill and white's skink):

Scrambled over some rocks:

And braved the elements on the beach:

Before we finally made it:

It was lovely, and the fish were thick! Unfortunately, they were mostly small bream:

The biggest was only a bit over 30cm:

But can't complain:

Unfortunatley it pissed down pretty much all day:


So I didn’t take many snaps, but we would’ve landed 20+ bream in a little over an hour. By this stage the relentless rain and cold had gotten the best of us, so we decided to head back. On the way we collected a heap of mussels:

Fresh mussels and flatty tails for dins, can’t complain! The next day was our last, and we decided to head to the mouth of the estuary and flick some lures at the oyster encrusted rocks in hopes of a big breambo:

Here the duskies and black bream had been replaced by sand flathead and yellow fin bream:

The ubiquitous tailor still made their presence felt though:

But again, we caught nothing of any real size. We saw some seriously big bream though - pretty amazing spot:

Unfortunately the morning started slipping away, and we reluctantly headed back in to pack up. The warm weather had brought out these cheeky buggers:

And they’d made a mess of our campsite. So after picking up all the rubbish that they'd spread all over camp, we hit the road. We would've loved a few extra days as there is so much to explore here - guess it'll have to wait until next time. 

Cheers!