Dunsborough Fishing
Hey guys,
Been down at Dunsborough on a family holiday for the past two weeks and tried to get out fishing as much as I could with a few limiting factors of the wind, not having a fishing orientated boat and family committments! Still managed to get out a few times though and had better fishing than i've enjoyed over the last couple of years.
The first interesting catch of the holiday was when I was just throwing a standard paternoster rig with prawns around the moorings near Toby's inlet and after catching a few sand whiting something took my bait with quite a flurry and I new straight away that I wasnt onto a whiting, then it started peeling my 4lb braid off at quite a pace and then it jumped and I thought that it was small Salmon which was lost. But when I got it close to shore and standard walking backwards on the beach to land it I realised that it was a Giant Herring, but i thought that this was as close as i was going to get to it because it spat the hook when it was right on the shoreline in about 2cm of water, but my Dad who was fishing about 15m down the beach sprinted over and grabbed it out of the white wash and we measured it in at a healthy 59cm. Was quite a surprise to catch one because I had never seen one before let alone caught one, but i was stoked!
A few days later we decided to head out on the boat, which again is more a day/ski boat so we are restricted to flat days with small swell etc (however we are selling ASAP and getting a fishing boat). We headed to about the 18-25m depth off Meelup, Eagle Bay and Bunkers and trolled 3m divers and the water looked very fishy, and this feeling was right, we regularly caught Bonito which put up a very good fight on 15lb braid in about the 40-55cm range. The most intriguing catch whilst trolling these areas was a Sambo when we were in ab out 25m of water, it is quite odd to catch Sambo's whilst trolling? However on the lighter gear this 10kg-ish Sambo put up an excellent fight.
Mixed in with this was a variety of all your bread and butter species! But the fishing was almost over shadowed by the amazing numbers of baitfish that we could not only see on the sounder, but we could actually see from the boat, there were hundreds of thousands of baitfish off Rocky Point and I was annoyed when i didnt have my bottom bouncing gear when we drove over schools of big fish on the bottom according to the sounder!!
Hope this helps some people going down south soon....
Lamby
Posts: 3145
Date Joined: 04/08/09
Not odd at all mate,
Not odd at all mate, especially on that stretch of water.
Cool little rat sambo & well done on the giant herring
carnarvonite
Posts: 8671
Date Joined: 24/07/07
Mulies
All those baitfish you saw on the sounder were mulies, they usually show up a month or so before the salmon make an appearance depending on water temperature.
If you want to flick lures about after salmon trout or possibly a resident mature one try around Rocky point on the southern end of Bunker bay or over the middle reef half way up the bay, they sit on the reef patches schooling up before heading south, crossing paths with the upcoming mature fish.