Woke up after a big night on the scotch to my partner randomly asking me if I wanted to head up to Cervantes for a night or two of fishing. A quick call to the caravan park to secure a camp spot first followed by me loading every bit of fishing gear I own into the car, having never been there before I thought I should bring it all just incase.

Had a few unexpected hold ups but finally got on the road to pick up some bait and make the trip north, finally arrived at the campsite with an hour or so of sun light left to set up the tent and get our gear organised. Made our way down to the main jetty around 9pm (took us forever to setup the tent even with the missus telling me I'm shit every few minutes for encouragement) where a few groups of people were catching quite a few small tailor plus a few larger models along with a large snook. Wasn't much action for us between nine and ten with the missus trying for herring and me soaking some big baits, eventually the herring switched on with her hooking up almost every cast and providing me with some live bait. Sent out a fresh dead herring on one rod and a livey on another which again went untouched for another hour or so. Finally got a slow steady run on the dead herring which I called for a big black ray but turned out to be a large eagle ray. Spent a bit of time getting the ray to the jetty where it kept diving straight down resulting in a fairly vertical fight on a 12ft rod, this was to much for my back to handle with two herniated discs so I locked the drag to try force it around the jetty to land resulting in my main line parting and the unfortunate ray swimming off with my trace. Straight away sent the live herring back out on the other rod which sat untouched for about another hour, just as the missus had said she'd had enough and wanted to leave the herring started darting around making the rod tip bounce around like crazy. This went on for about 5 minutes with something seriously freaking the herring out when all of a sudden the rod was buckled over with line flying off the reel, by the time I picked up the rod it was all over with the line having gone slack and a clean bite off above the 1m of 100lb wire.

The next day we decided to try the beach where it took a bit of walking to find a section which wasn't too weedy and the water was a bit deeper. The missus managed some XL herring and some nice size dart which gave a good account of themselves. The big baits went untouched with the exception of one massive run which unfortunately didn't connect, even more annoying is that it felt like it was definitely something other than a ray.

Went down to the jetty again that night and saw heaps of small tailor being caught by others plus some large herring. Similar to the previous night the herring seemed to switch on around 10pm with the missus catching quite a few and my big baits going untouched. A 30km southerly was making it quite uncomfortable so we ended it early in preparation for battling the take down of the tent in the morning.

Had a bit of fun in my impreza here on the way home, especially since we missed the exit and had to go round twice so tried to do it as quickly as possible.

- Brett