Went on holiday to Kalbarri over the Xmas break for 9 days and decided to take the boat up and face Kalbarris windy conditions to see if we could catch some fish. When we got there it must have been blowing 35knots and with the cyclone coming down we didn't hold much hope of doing anything other than crabbing in the river. Luckily as is with Kalbarri, the mornings aren't too bad. There's this window of opportunity that lasts about 2 - 5 hours if your lucky so we got to head out 6 of the days we were there.

First day we landed a 65cm snapper, 70cm rankin, 51cm dhui and a cobia.

The following day we headed out and it was horrible, talk about getting smashed though the boat handled it pretty well. We did a few drifts before it was too windy and ended up with a small mulloway and a 62cm snapper. We decided to troll back to the mouth and just before we headed in we spotted some dolphins so decided to do a troll pas them. My rod buckled over and the line went screaming off, I looked at the line and it was in the centre of the dolphin pod so I figured I had jagged one of them. Luckily it was a nice Longtail Tuna and with some great driving in some crappy conditions we had got it aboard.

Next day was a waste of time, went out and checked the pots, and came back in for some crabbing - Bugger all crabs by the way, caught one legal muddy.

New day, new hopes. We decided to head just North of the sand patch to look for some new ground. We found some but couldn't stop any of the fish that were hitting us in 14m of water. Wind started to increase so we decided to troll back. Quarter of the way back and my mates rod went off and he got a nice Cobia.

I had marked a bit of a lump whilst trolling back in a couple days earlier and decided to check it out (yes I know it shows the GPS location - merry Christmas). When we got to the spot this thing was covered in fish so we sent down some soft plastics and my mate got smashed. We had to up everthing and give chase.

After a nice fight, up comes another nice longtail tuna.

Back we went to fishing this spot but my soft plastics kept getting a beating so I decided to send down a jig. It got nailed! I think we chased this thing for 2kms before getting it on board.

The next day we headed back to our lump, the great thing about this spot is it held bait fish so every day we had live baits which is a killer bait indeed. We did quite a bit of drifting with live baits and boy did they get smashed, most of which we couldn't stop or they were the boys in grey and bit us off. Caught a nice 64cm rock cod on a live slimey which was a pleasant addition to the freezer. Other than this and another snapper, not much caught.

Following day back to our live bait spot (now your live bait spot :-)). After filling our live bait tank we decided to head to the 14m mark just north of the sand patch again and see if we could stop whatever it was that was bricking us a couple days earlier. We got smashed again and lost a lot of fish until I got this up which seemed like the smallest of whatever was down there. I thought we may have been toying with some large GT's but I didn't think they were this far down but the next day another boat we were up there with landed a nice 16kg one so there you go.

All up it was an enjoyable fishing trip which would have been even better if the wind had pissed off so we could have had more time out on the water.

If anyone goes to 'The spot', let me know how you go :-)

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