Hey everyone,

Here's a report on our Kalbarri trip (1-4 Jan 09)

A few of us headed to Kalbarri for the start of the New Year. We left Perth at 4am New Years Day after maybe 3 hours sleep (had to see the New Year in and have a few beers!). Got to Kalbarri after 12 some time, set up camp at Big River Ranch (2 kms out of town on Kalbarri Rd). Cheap place to camp, just a bit out of the way though.

We just chilled that arvo, we were all tired so we took it easy. The next night, however, tried the Blue Holes/Siphon recommended to me by Mr Colin Hay (cheers Colin). A big hole in the reef right in front of the carpark. I had never caught a mulloway before and my hopes were high. I've seen some pics of monster mullas caught from Kalbarri.

Casting into the hole with mulies and some weight, the water was choppy and there was a strong southerly blowing, it was hard to gauge the sucking bite of the mulloway from the movement of the water. I had my drag set pretty loose and soon I had worked out what the water was doing. About half an hour into the sesh, a bit more line than usual was peeling off the reel. I let it go, it stopped. Then it started again. I struck, and I knew I had a fish. There wasn't much of a fight, so I knew it wasn't big, but I was still hoping for mulloway, as I'd never caught one.

Landing the fish was dead easy, and it was a mulloway of 46cm. Not a keeper, I threw him back after a quick snap from a mate's phone.

Now I know it's tiny for a mulla, but who cares. I was stoked that I caught one.

Mates were getting impatient, because there's not enough room for 6 to fish at this place, so we packed up and headed down the road to Red Bluff Beach. This ended up being more of a scouting expedition, as there was nothing on the bite there for the whole night. Me and a mate pulled an all nighter there while the others went back to camp for some shuteye. We stayed till dawn, only catching a cod of some sort for the whole night.

Just before dawn, a convoy of cars pulled up at the carpark ,and within 10 minutes we were joined by about 20 other fishos. We had run out of bait, were waiting on someone to pick us up, and were watching the other guys pull in tailor after tailor after tailor. We were spewing (should have saved our bait for dawn).

Oh well, like i said, it ended up being a scouting mission.

We were buggered the next day (Saturday) from the all nighter, and we could'nt sleep during the day, our tents were in full sun and must have been 50+ degrees inside. So we took it easy that night and went to bed early.

Now we had to leave on Sunday at 9am. We decided to go down and try for some tailor that morning before we packed up and headed home.

That morning the wind had changed to offshore and Red Bluff beach had barrelling 6 footers. There was even a surfer out amongst the tailor fishing (crazy bastard).
Caught a couple of good size tailor, biggest going 46cm.

There werent as many about as we had seen the previous morning, but at least we got a couple of good uns.

After they stopped biting, we packed up and went home.

All in all, learnt a bit for next time we go up, Kalbarri is a magical place. Next time I want to also try for some bream in the Murchison!

Mike