Hello knowledgeable Fishwrecked Members,

For some time now I have watched this site with interest and am constantly amazed by the quality of the content posted by members.  The information provided, and the search engine, has helped me no end with the unfamiliar waters of Perth Metro and I wanted to introduce myself to Fishwrecked, detail my novice experiences and seek any further advice that members may be able to provide.

For 8 months last year I had the "wonderful" experience of commuting to Perth from Brisbane on a weekly basis (there is nothing like 15 hours of travel each week).  The ASX-200 company that I work for requested that I come to "fix" a business, and in the end it is not a short term proposition and the option of relocating to Perth with my family was put.  It is a long story that I won't go into however my wife is from Perth and her very extended family is here so needless to say we moved in December 2013.

I have fished all my life, although not as often as I would have liked at times.  Throughout my children’s upbringing we would on regular occasions head north from Brisbane to Cooloola Beach, north of Noosa, where you could camp in the dunes and fish the magnificent waters of the 40 mile beach.  Through a project I did on the Noosa North Shore, I became good friends with "The Bear", who is a local tailor fishing legend in his own lifetime, and through the many hours of enjoyable times (and lots of Bundys) with him I learned a lot about reading water, rigs, baits and strategy and would constantly annoy my friends with images of successful trips.  I have used the image of my daughter with a couple of nice tailor from the Noosa River mouth, taken from The Bear's front yard, as my "ID Image" to remind me of the good times we had.  Similarly, I attach an image of one trip with the boys.

I have spent a lot of time administering a district cricket club and a junior footy club, where I have been President and am a Life Member of both, however with the pending relocation to Perth I decided that it was time to focus on myself and the family and peruse my fishing passion.  There was no doubt that we were to live on the Perth northern beaches (all my wife’s family live around there), and with Hillarys, Ocean Reef and Mindarie boat ramps in close proximity, a boat was a must.  I searched long and hard for a true near shore fishing vessel and in the end purchased PilberaBrad’s Trophy Hornet and shipped it down from Karratha (see image).

Now, I have copped a heap of flack for buying a vessel like this given the ocean conditions of the northern beaches but I have been a long believer of fishing the conditions, hence am writing this post and not out on the water given the wind conditions today.  I must say that Brad is a really nice guy, obviously a fishing legend and had set the boat up perfectly – you only have to look at his photo gallery on the site to see what he has achieved.  It was a hassle free transaction and I received a “custom” boat that had been set up by someone who really knew what they were doing that had the things you needed to help catch the fish.  I named the boat as “The Incentive”, as you need something to pick up your life and move it 4,500km and Brad’s boat certainly did that.

As I am sure all are aware, successful fishing is all about local knowledge and experience.  Unfortunately, I have absolutely none so with the impending move it was to the keyboard to try and gain as much as I could from reading the experiences of members that posted about the local area.  I am indebted to “Tim-o” and “Ninety Mile” for responding to my questions with helpful advice and wish to thank them for that.  But in the end you have to get out there and do the hard yards as there is no substitute for experience.  I found a house in Sorrento – 3 minutes drive from Hillarys, a walk to the MAAC and with views of the ocean and yes, house selection was all about the fishing.  So, with all in place I started my Perth Metro journey armed with absolutely no local knowledge and experience – good luck.

And that is how it started.  I got to go out a couple of times, after transporting the boat and before my family arrived, and became quite skilled at catching wrass and parrot in the waters north of Hillarys.  It is a big ocean and I was randomly chucking baits into it so it was not a surprise that I routinely returned with nothing to show except the experience.  I did learn that patanosta rigs are the best and squid and pilchard (mulies) are fairly good baits.

I had to stay in Perth one weekend before the family arrived and was lucky enough that it was the MACC monthly competition weekend and I could go down for the weigh in and presentation.  Just being there opened my eyes to what was available in the Perth Metro area.  What a great bunch of guys participate in the MAAC competitions and judging by what was presented there is an absolute truckload of local knowledge and experience.  One very helpful member gave me a tip about catching sand whiting off Scarborough so at least I could now target something that I didn’t have to throw back.  A trip the next morning by myself, albeit a little hung over, showed that he was right and I could finally deliver some (well not many) fillets to Nana.  I also got to “meet” the NW Blowfish and the Banjo Sharks that inhabit those waters – what is with those blowies, toads on steroids that can bite through hooks?  Good fun on light gear however.

The family arrived and with my fishing mad son and his fishing mad cousin from Busselton we headed to the only spot we knew produced an edible outcome.  We thought drifting was the go but through much trial and error finally determined that the whiting had a favoured location that was between 10m and 11m depth of water.  This was a “lightbulb” moment and I don’t mind telling members about this as there are so many fish we have never not come home with plenty.  The best results are with a size 6 long shank using squid and a small piece of peeled coral prawn just covering the hook point.  Happily, we could go to the spot and get a really good feed which we did before Christmas (see attached).

Needless to say, everywhere else we tried produced the inevitable wrass and parrot.  The one thing that became apparent was that the Perth Metro area holds so many fish that it is no wonder that there are so many sharks.

When conditions allowed we ventured to the reefs of Hillarys, beyond the reef break, but with no idea where to go it is not surprising that there was nothing to show the wife who was expecting large slabs of reef fish, or pelagic species, fillets and was constantly mocking my fishing ability when we inevitably we returned with nothing to show – except more stories of wrass and parrot, and other reefy things that were too small to keep.  I did figure out that 3 Mile is actually the 10m – 20m depth reef beyond the break and that you can never drop your guard in relation to looking out for cray pots.  The other thing that became apparent is that the ocean is really huge and the possibility of “stumbling” on a spot that holds quality fish is very remote indeed.

We are lucky to have my wife’s brother that lives in Busselton and were invited to spend a few days down there just after Christmas.  My fishing memory of Busselton is good as a trip there more than a decade ago I could go out with my sister in law’s father who had tons of local knowledge and experience and he took me out in his small tinny and we bagged out on King George whiting in about 90 minutes (and that was when the limit was 20 each).  The “trick” was to find a large sand patch amongst the sea grass, lightly burly the edges of it and fish very light prawn and squid baits on the interface of the sand and weed.  Unfortunately, now days “Charlie” is past boat trips and fishing the jetty (he never failed to come home from the Jetty with a big feed of gar caught on carefully cultivated live maggots) so we could not call on his vast experience.  Again, it is a big ocean and us with no local knowledge and experience.

We arrived full of excitement and were keen to get after it as soon as possible.  The old “fish the conditions” went out the window as we immediately headed off to a reef my nephew knew about in a trailing wind of a strength where the boat should have really stayed on the trailer.  Needless to say, we couldn’t hold the boat on the reef in the swell and the wind and the trip home was a cold, rough, spray filled experience that nearly turned my daughter from ever coming out again.  We ended up hiding from the wind off the Port Geographe breakwater on dusk and did catch a few undersized tailor on floating pillies for our trouble.  Happily that was the end of the wind for the weekend and we could venture anywhere over the next couple of days.

When pondering where the hell we would go when at the boat ramp the next morning my nephew mentioned the existence of “4 Mile Reef” so we just headed offshore without much of a clue.  PilbaraBrad (sponsored by Lowrance) had of course installed the latest navigation and sonar gear to The Incentive so we had a chance of picking up some structure.  We used the Navtronics information to estimate 4 miles out with the depth contour information to suggest reefy areas.  We found a spot in about 15 metres of water with some structure and proceeded to drift around picking up our old favourite wrass and parrot.  After an hour or two of this, we headed out to 20 metres with the same result and ultimately decided to go back to the 15m depth spot as at least we got a few fish previously.  When we got back it was a surprise to see another boat right on top of the “structure” and quite disheartening to see them landing quite a few nice skippy, when we were getting none from adjacent fishing.  When they drifted off we went back to "our" spot and used the Minn Kota i-Pilot “spot lock” option to hold us there – how good is the Minn Kota (I would highly recommend it for light Aluminium boats where it can be attached).

We had basically used up all of our squid and prawns feeding the non-edible reefies so didn’t have a lot of bait options other than wrass flesh or pillies.  It was the next “lightbulb” moment that ultimately changed our fortune and at least provided some WA credibility to my increasingly sceptical relatives.  I ripped a few fillets off the pillies and placed a “half” on a size 1 long shank with immediate results.  Over the next hour or 2 we “smashed” the 400mm – 450mm King George, caught lots of good sized skippy and had some challenging experiences with Port Jackson and Banjo sharks and other things that just could not be held (see attached images).

I think that if I hadn’t filleted the pillies we would have gone home empty handed again, and this is something I wanted to tell the Fishwrecked members as it is a tip I can “put back” to compensate for all I have received from the site.  At last I had some “quality” images that I could send back east to my eagerly waiting mates for news of what the fishing is like in WA.  Needless to say, I copped jealously abusive emails and texts about the size of the whiting that can be caught here.

Fresh from the success of the previous day, my son and I launching from a different boat ramp decided that we would use the same technique and try again – head about 4 miles out, look for likely structure on the map, hunt around for something that looked interesting on the sounder, use the i-Pilot to “hover”, burley up a bit but not too much, fish with pillies (both whole and filleted) and use the squid-prawn cocktail on light gear.  Much to our surprise being absolute novices, it worked again.  The first catch was a 540mm Harlequin (which I stupidly thought was a coral trout and wondered how it could exist where no coral did) – see attached.

We then got our first WA dhufish (undersized and thrown back but at least we got one) and followed up with more King George, an undersized snapper (420mm) and a variety of other things. 

We got absolutely smoked by probably Sampson (we saw a few under the boat) or other things that would have been really nice to land.  We headed home from Busso with lots of quality fillets for the extended family and a somewhat salvaged reputation, eagerly awaiting the next weekend invitation by the “rellies”.

As mentioned previously, the MAAC is a walk from my house and a “local” in close proximity that has angling in its name – I thought this is a dream come true.  I noticed the “memberships are not open” on the sign out the front and when I rang the club to enquire I was told the waiting list was very long indeed.  I have however put together and lodged a membership application so hopefully sometime in the next 5 years I get accepted.  A “little birdie” did tell me however that getting involved with the Club and its fishing members (it seems that the fishing members have been well and truly overtaken by the social members after a nice spot with cheap drinks and food) would potentially help my seemingly futile and very long wait list application.  Given my fishing passion, getting involved and meeting people that really know what they are doing doesn’t seem like an onerous or “false” task.  So, it was with genuine interest that I asked if I could fish the monthly competition as a visitor.  This request was accepted however I do recall thinking about the potential ridicule and embarrassing weigh in performance and wondering if indeed I had done the right thing given my complete lack of local knowledge and experience, and the “guru” status of the people that fish the competition.

In the week prior, my boy had been hassling me to go fishing when I got home from work – the summer afternoon wind makes the boat a hazardous exercise though.  I had had a couple of visits to the beach down the end of the road and being an old tailor fisherman I did see water that looked like it should hold fish.  So one afternoon, just as the sun was going down and the wind was not too strong, we rigged up the trusty surf gear and headed the 200m down to the beach.  At least this was a style of fishing that I had experience with and summing up the local conditions we picked our spot and rigs.  Unbelievable, the tailor were on and we got a 500mm one first cast.  In the half hour to dark we got a couple more, lost one in the shore break and pondered the fact that we used to do 300km round trips to catch fish like this.  We went to the MAAC where there was enough light to photograph our catch (to send back to my tailor fishing mates over east – same abusive texts and emails) and it so happened that the Club Captain was there and got to see some nice fish caught on the “doorstep” by someone with a pending membership application.  This did make me feel a bit better about the looming competition, particularly as we picked up some Tarwine off the beach in the subsequent days (even though the floating weed made meaningful fishing nearly impossible).

So competition day arrived.  Sleeping in due to a late night contemplating strategy was not a good start but we did get on the water not long after start time and did the only thing we knew would produce results – no good going out to random water with false hope – and headed to our whiting spot off Scarborough.  No problems, plenty there and we did load up the kill tank with >200mm specimens and the live bait tank with things that surely the “desirable” reef fish would like.  Of course this was false hope as a mid-morning journey to 3 Mile with freshly caught live whiting produced nothing other than “we have no idea about spots” confirmation.  We headed back to “old trusty” and continued the carnage on the poor whiting but at least picked up herring, skippy, flounder and flathead as the MAAC competition is all about the number of species you catch.  Our boat score was 22.4 and whilst nowhere near winning anything at least we got some and finished middle of the road.  This was the first weigh in where the demersal ban was over and the legend status of the “gurus” was on full display – see attached.  The jumbo cray hooked on bait and the massive dhufish were certainly the highlight.  The lowlight was the following half day of filleting, skinning and boning the 6.4kg of “midgets” we collected amongst the “when are you going to catch something big off Perth” torments.

Another recent highlight was a family fishing trip to “old trusty” (see attached) however this produced a barrage of “there is no shade:, “we might fall off” and why didn’t you buy a bigger boat so we can go farther where there may be some “real” fish sledging.  The only positive was the “approval” for a new boat sometime in the future although I am nowhere near ready to sacrifice the fishing positives of The Incentive for quite a while yet.

We started to meet people and a really nice young man agreed to come fishing with us the following weekend.  We were not allowed to disclose this spot or really ever go there again but he took us somewhere that was a proven producer.  It was on this trip that we got our first boat Sampson (see attached) and of course it was caught by him. 

The “explosion” of fish on the sounder at times did prove that such spots exist and valuable lessons about rigs and techniques were learned.  With renewed enthusiasm we headed out off Mindarie to Steggies to try our new found “experience”.  Same old “favourites” although a big Sampson did follow the baits up once.  This was another confirmation that local knowledge and experience is everything.

Finally, the recent conditions allowed us to take out The Incentive at night to see how we fared.  This trip was all about evaluating the local night conditions as being from the east, my experience is that pre-dawn and early morning, and dusk and early night is the optimum time.  There is really something about getting home from work on late afternoons, when the wind is not up, and heading out chasing snapper for a few hours in the “feeding time”.  This was a hassle free experience and we look forward to future ventures, albeit many are likely to be unproductive.

As if you haven’t guessed, I write for a living.  I have really appreciated this site and the advice and tips provided.  I have written this story for publication of the difficulties in trying to find fishing success in a place you have never fished before.  I have learned a few things and at least wanted to share these with others.  I have no doubt that many are having the same issues as me, and I want to reinforce that you are not alone in the effort it takes to become proficient, and the constant “sledging” from family members is just part of the journey.  The only way to learn is to do, but any information you can get will help the experience.

It is on that note that I conclude with a request for help that anyone can provide to improve my WA journey.  This is my first post (well sort of after the partially completed stuff up with thinking save didn’t mean post and listing some very premature unedited thing without photos – quite embarrassing really) and I do hope to become an active member of the Fishwrecked community.  I will never write anything as long again and will reserve future posts to things I have learned that will benefit others.  Please feel free to PM me at any time as I am more than willing to share any experience and learn from the experts.

Happy Australia Day to all.

Mick

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