Perch nirvana

For the past year I’ve been dying to have a flick in this particular little creek in one of the more remote parts of Victoria, and on the weekend I finally did it. My mate Ash picked me up Saturday morning and after a longgg drive, we were ready to begin the 20km hike to our spot:



We thought the walk would be quite picturesque, but it was pretty much 20km of this:



Luckily there was some cute wildlife to break the monotony:





After a gruelling hike we finally came to this beautiful beach:



And after a couple more km’s, we finally arrived at our creek:



Initially we weren’t filled with confidence – it was extremely shallow and didn’t feel all that fishy, and we were wondering if we’d just hiked 20km for nothing. But as we made our way further upstream, it started looking tasty:



We were hangin to flick a lure, but first we had to set up camp. So after finding a place to pitch the tent:



We started looking for water, but after an hour of searching the best we could find was this pathetic trickle:



Luckily it was enough to fill our bottles – mmm pond water:



With the camp organized we quickly rigged up the rods and made our way to a lovely section of the creek, and first cast my double clutch was belted, only for the hooks to pull. Good signs! Second cast it was smashed again, and after a short but brutal fight my line went slack again. This probably had something to do with it (old trebles - idiot!):



Goddamit! Ash chucked a cast in the same spot and sure enough his lure was whacked too, but his hooks held true:



Big perch - how bloody good! This pool quickly went quiet so we started making our way upstream, flicking at snags along the way, and it didn’t take long before I was on the board too:



Only a little fella, but it was a start. We caught a steady stream of fish for the next hour or so:




Including lots of pesky little tailor:



But when the light started to fade and nothing more substantial hit the banks, we decided to head back to the lair of the beast. And it didn’t take long before Ash had another solid fish on the bank:



I followed this up with the two smallest fish of the trip:




But eventually I managed a couple more solid perch:




By this stage we were catching almost a fish a cast, but when the mozzies became unbearable, we decided to call it a night. It had been an amazing day, in a beautiful place:



And we had a dinner to match it (ha):



A few of these land yabbies might have improved it a bit:



The next morning we were up before the sun and after saying hello to our campmates:




We were back at our perch spot. We whacked on a couple of surface lures and first cast, they were annihilated:



Not a bad double hook up (and first cast to boot)!




The surface bite quickly shut down and we managed a couple more small perch on shallow minnows:




Including this greedy guy:



Until the sun came up and shut the fish down completely. By this stage the tide was gushing in, pushing a heap of blue ocean water up the creek:



Check all the mullet that followed it in:



This probably pushed the perch upstream and although we would have loved to go and find them, we had a grueling 20km walk ahead of us, so we reluctantly made the call to pack up and head home. On the way we spotted a few schools of fish cruising in the breakers as we walked along the beach, and we just couldn’t help ourselves:




I’m sure we would have snagged some better fish if we had some proper beach spinning gear, but these little fellas still gave us a bit of stick on bream gear in the surf. The greater crested terns seemed to enjoy our work anyway:



We spent way too long flicking at these little fellas and it was almost dark when we finally trudged back to the car, but it meant we got to enjoy a ripper sunset on the walk home:



And that brings me to the end of a pretty epic trip - we're already planning the next.

Cheers!


(Photo: Ashley Olson)

Borneo roadtrip

My Dad, bro and I weren't quite ready to go home after our family trip to Sri Lanka, so we decided to pop in to Borneo on the way home. I booked some cheap accommodation in Kota Kinabalu (the capital of Malaysian Borneo) and after a short flight, we were wandering around the local markets:





I was keen to get out of the city asap, so first thing the next morning we hired a car and started driving. The plan was to head north along the eastern coast, cut through the central highlands to the west coast and explore a couple of national parks, then make our way back to Kota Kinabalu along the northern coast. But first I wanted to check out a couple of beaches/river mouths near Kota Kinabalu that looked pretty fishy:



This beach was pretty gnarly - half the surrounding forest had been washed away:



We made our way to a river mouth a few kilometres along the beach, but when we got there we were greeted with this:



A huge mining operation, which had no doubt trashed the ecosystem and would make fishing a waste of time – goddamit. So we made the long trek back to the car and after a short drive and another long walk, made our way to this spot - looks pretty fishy right?



Wrong. After 2 hours all we had to show for our efforts was this tiny cod:



And a mudskipper that I caught with my hat:



At the end of the sesh my old man tied on a big stickbait and had three massive explosions behind his lure for no hookup - it just wasn’t our day. So when the sun started to set and these creepy cows started giving us some dirty looks:



We decided to call it quits. I would have liked another crack at this spot, but we had lots of Borneo to explore and only a week to do it, so the next morning we started making our way inland towards south-east Asia’s largest peak – Mount Kinabalu. The drive through the mountains was insane:




I was super keen to explore some of the freshwater streams and rivers in this area as Borneo is home to some pretty sweet freshwater fish (golden mahseer, giant snakehead, etc), but unfortunately heavy recent rain had turned all the larger rivers into brown deluges:



And all the smaller rainforest streams into raging torrents:



With freshwater fishing off the cards, we decided to make our way to a little hostel at the base of Mount Kinabalu:



It was pretty grim:



But the views from our balcony were unreal (especially when the mist cleared):



And the fresh local produce was a tasty treat:



The cool temperate rainforest at these higher elevations was a nice change from the heat and humidity of the lowlands, and it was home to some wicked invertebrates (that snail was the size of my palm):




And these cheeky little buggers - silvery langurs:




After exploring Mount Kinabalu we continued on our way west to a coastal city called Sandakan, which is most well known for its floating shanty towns in the local bay:




We based ourselves in Sandakan for a few days while we explored some of the national parks and wildlife sanctuaries nearby. The main reason I wanted to visit Borneo was to see orangutans, which might not be here much longer if the palm oil industry is left to run amok. You can see it's devastating effects everywhere (this is a recently cleared patch of rainforest - pretty grim):



Luckily there are still a few patches of pristine rainforest:



And we were lucky enough to see both orangutans and the endemic proboscis monkey:




We managed to get really close to a group of proboscis monkeys – they’re so weird:




From Sandakan we went north to Borneo’s most northern tip. We checked into a little bungalow on this beaut little beach:



And it didn’t take long before we found this very fishy rock ledge:



We started flicking around little hards on the bream gear and it didn’t take long before I came up solid:



A nice little grassy sweetlip – not a bad start. Over the next hour we pulled in a few nice little reefies:





But when the heavens opened and I got drenched by a couple of massive waves, we decided to call it quits. The next morning was our penultimate day and I was keen to head to another river mouth that I’d found on google earth. So after a typical Malaysian breakfast:



We made our way to this little ripper:



Pretty nice. And some heavy rain over night meant there was a tasty dirty water line forming:



I knew there would be predators lurking around this dirty water line, but it was just out of casting range (dang!). We waited for the incoming tide to push it closer and as soon as we were able to work our lures between the dirty and fresh water, my dad had a hit:



Only tiny, but it was a start. And it didn’t take long before I came up solid too:



What the hell is this?! I’ve never seen anything like it before - it looked like a furry stone fish that could walk. Bizarre. Anyway, while I was trying to get him back into the water without spiking myself, dad yelled out that he was finally on to a decent fish:



Well decent might be a stretch, but a jack is a jack - and a Bornean jack to boot. Things were finally starting to happen so I tied on a slightly larger lure in case there was something bigger lurking, and after a few casts it was hammered. This was a good fish and it was making my little 2500 stradic sing, and when I saw a big silver flank in the shallows I though I might have hooked something pretty special. But I was a little disappointed to see this dirty bastard pop up:




A big barracuda – still a kewl fish, but not the barra or black bass I was hoping for. Unfortunately by the time we had released this guy, the dirty water line was out of casting range again, so we decided to head home on a relative high. We didn’t land any trophies, but it had been a ripper day, and the sunset back at our beach bungalow was spectactular:



The next morning we started the long trip back to Kota Kinabalu, where we were catching a flight home. We explored a couple of lovely beaches on the way:




Drove through some pretty wild weather:



And dropped off our faithful steed (this car was actually the biggest piece of shit, I can't believe it survived the trip):



And all too soon we were in a cab on the way to the airport. It was a killer trip, and I’d love to head back there with a bit more time to explore properly...just not in the wet season next time ha.

Cheers!