First off, sorry for the lousy lack of pics, its just we didn't really get any seriously cracker fish. Punchline in the first sentance, nice work there!

Went down to Dunsborough, mostly to meet a few people involved with an oral history project about fishing the capes. At the BBQ I met Ray Walker who contributed to the project and is a frequent wangler poster as well as other contributors (local abalone divers, longliners, local fishers and caravan park owners) as well as people involved with commissioning and writing up the report.

Mostly my brother Cameron, friend Mark and myself dived for abalone off Shelley Beach, and around the corner to the cape over a couple of days. There seemed to only be roe's there, no brown or greens, but there were some +100mm in the mix. The best spot seemed to be right inshore, at the base of the cliffs, well away from the seal colony!

We saw a couple of crays, but they didn't want to play along!

I could also see a big whale well into the bay broaching, it got right out of the water several times.

In an attempt to give everyone a go on the boat, we came into Bunker Bay and while waiting for Debra to drive over, we had a few drifts for squid. I got quite a good sized one, but then it was the first thing caught on the boat, so over it went!

Next we had a visit from the Marine Police, they wanted to see all of our safety gear and let us off for not having our tickets on us.

We swapped Debra on and my brother off at the beach, then went out to berley up some fish for Debra, she got a bunch of wrasse, skippy and a few huge trumpters. I livebaited one, but no takers.

We then trolled back to the old dunsborough boat ramp, but with no takers. We also saw another whale between us and pt piquet, just a little one.

The next day my brother and I (attempted) to get up early to fish wright's bank. It was a very slow ride out there, the wind and wave directions were at 90 degrees to each other, so it was either water over one side or the other and barely better than 10kn. The seas were pretty big once we got out past the cape and we saw a few bait schools and flying fish. The sounder looked really fishy, but its new and I don't really know what I'm looking at all the time. We hooked a bunch of blackarse and my brother got a good keeper, and a blue snapper, lots of wrasse, sgt baker and blackarse when back over the side.

We really took the wrong bait, there were simply too many pickers on that reef for mulies and prawns, even the side off a fresh wrasse was gone in under 1min. I recommend live baiting or occy, even a fist sized limpet was destroyed, and it was harder than workboots, I had to cut it's foot off to get the hook thru it.

We called it a day there and headed back to the protection of the cape and just as well, some rain came in and I could barely see 50m in it!

Oh well, better luck and better weather next time!

Laters,

till