Got a late call up to tag along with a few diehard DHI landbased fisho's, spent 10 days at the Withnell Point shack.

The drive up the island

The shack

It was my 3rd trip and the 8th for the others. The other guys were flat out bait fisho's and laughed at the amount of lures I brought along. "You might as well just walk up to the waters edge and empty your wallet, they wont do any good here".  We will see

The swell was pumping on the first few days but we made do fishing their secret bream hole. Was a bream a cast, with the majority being 40cm plus. Great fun on the light gear. The most frustrating thing was that I threw every bream lure I had, hard bodies and plastics only managed a few runts. Was not a good start for the lures. I gave up and converted to the prawns.

Bastards loved the prawns

Ventured up around the turtle bay area and had a blast on medium sized spango's, pinkies, baldchin and trevs on the shallow reefs. Pinkies on richter plug a highlight, sp's were doing well on the spango's. Also found a new reef system that was holding thumping stripeys, pulled in some that would have gone close to the 2.4kg state record.

Both quite hungry

Light tackle fun

A regular session catch

The swell finally dropped and we hit the west side, the guys promising 80cm plus tailor. The three sessions we had on the reef were by far the most productive with some solid spango's & baldchin landed. The tailor were on aswell, I spent the majority of the time chasing that trophy tailor. My biggest was 65cm, Rowan landed a solid 84cm monster. Had plenty of follows, dozens of missed strikes and landed 6.  With the platform only being 2m high and the water depth knee deep you could see all the action. The oyster stacks took a hefty toll on the tackle supplies.

I watched a jumbo tailor smash my popper, bust off on a oyster stack, only to continue chasing bait fish for the next 5 minutes, all with the popper still connected.

Some of the best tailor wash in the state. Was definately a few metre long tailor in there.

The pure variety of land based fishing options on the island would be enough to please anyone. The scenery isn't too bad either.

Will be back next year.