All. I've just joined this forum recently. I live in Sydney, but am going to travel to Pt Smith Lagoon and Cape  Leveque in late May so have been reading and asking some questions trying to get some tips. I normally fish finesse v light sportsfishing tackle here in Sydney, so the whole pelagic / northern scene is pretty unfamilair to me, as are a few of the species. The forum has been very helpful.

Since I live on the east coast I don't have too much to offer a west coast forum for fishing posts.  However I did make a trip to Kalbarri last year, so I thought I'd share some of my experiences there, hopefully as some form of payback for the help I've been getting! Hope this helps - and feel free to PM me if you're thinking of hitting Sydney or surrounds

I was in Kalbarri in Jan. The town is set on the Murchison river. When I was there the westerlies were pretty fierce for the first few days, there's a bar crossing to get outside, but the westerlies didnt seem to make the bar crossing much harder. Reason being the bar crossing runs north south, and on the outside there is a rock bar which also runs north south and provides some protection from the open water when you run the bar. At low tide the bar can be quite shallow, and I was watching the cray boats come in and I was sure they'd bottom out. Potentially others can give advice on the bar crossing there as I've only done it during this time of year over a period of a week - but it seems pretty reasonable as far as bar crossings go. Just as an example there were 4m tinnys towing skiers through the bar crossing on several days.

This is the Murchison looking towards the town jetty where the cray boats pull up

The mouth of the river is a popular spot to fish. I saw a few tailor get spun up there. Also the town jetty and the beach at red bluff are popular tailoring spots. I went for a snorkel at red bluff beach and the sea bed there is a terminal tackle graveyard. A lot of weed and rocky terrain down there - but they say a lot of big tailor are caught there.

Anywhere inside the mouth of the river is good for blue manna crabs and we caught a stack. A lot of throwbacks due to size but fun for the kids. Further upstream the river is known to produce school jew, but I never fished further up.

Outside the 2 most popular locations are the sand patch and bald face. We didnt get a lot of info from the tackle shop about where to fish but we were able to work out where those locations were. I've included a shot of the sand patch - the landmark is basically where the scrub on the coastline disappears and there are large dunes.

This is the sandpatch

Actually now I remember I can't say my tackle shop experience was good at Kalbarri. Just about in all fishing mags and articles about locations the advice is to talk to the local tackle shop owners for basic location information. But really the info and help we got from there was nothing compared to reading online. I'm far from the greatest fisho, but I'm not a complete novice either so I understand basic etiquette, but in the tackle shop I was made to feel like a bit of a nob. The shame about the situation is that I am someone who will drop cash in a tackle shop at the slightest drop of a hat. But after my experiences there (and it wasnt just a single random time it happenned) I wasn't the slightest bit inclined to spend any more money than I had to. </rant>

There were a few spanish macks about which were fun to get into.

The local swimming beach inside the mouth of the murchison is Chinamen's Beach. Has some good snorkelling and reefy areas, and it's near the boat lauching ramp and jetty also..

This is Chinamen's beach

 Of course quite close by there's the national park and Nature's window and the scenery is magnificent. Was my first WA experience and I totally loved it. Looking forward to getting to Broome / Pt Smith Lagoon and Cape Leveque next month and experience more of the west!

J