Hi Ya, 

The alarm went off at 3:15am on the morning of Monday 13 April. Not a good time of day to be woken, especially as I had only gotten to bed at 11:00pm the night before. But big salmon were the reason so I got moving.

Almost 4 hours to the minute saw me parked in the front yard of my friends house at Augusta. A short time later and we were on he beach at Hamelin Bay.

Nothing.  

That's right, absolutely nothing.  A walk north along the beach revealed the same. "Well," Ed said, "Saturday afternoon they were pulling out huge salmon all along the beach by the dozen. They must have been at least 8 kilos." Just what I wanted to hear with not a thing in sight.  Out with the binoculars to watch people a couple of kilometres along the beach to see what they were catching. With nothing in the township (if you can call Hamelin Bay setlement a 'township') we decided to try further up.

So we drove up Caves Road to some rough track and across 7 kms of real 4x4 country to the beach.

Nothing.   

That's right, absolutely nothing. Into the car and further up the beach to the rocky headland at the extreme northern end of the bay. Nothing.

Well, not quite true as the surf was up and there must have been 40 or more vehicles parked on the beach with most attended by lovely young, bikini clad ladies.  Well at least tha's what it seems to be, but no fish. Back south and we spied some activity. Half a dozen guys concentrated in the same spot and it seemed they were casting for the sake of their lives. Turned out to be a small school of fish no more than 3 or maybe 4 metres across but they didn't want to play the game. They simply weren't interested in lures. One guy then decided to try a large blob with a mulie suspended under it and he was immediately successful. Off with the metal lure and on with a 6" plastic paddle tail. Damn, the school was just out of reach.  Slowly the school moved a bit closer and I was able to lob the softie about 2 metres short of the school, but as soon as I started to retrieve it was hit big and I was on.

Not a big fish, but my only one for the day.

By the time 5:00pm came around I was well and truely feeling the effect of a late night and a very early morning so back to Augusta and eventaully a nice comfortable bed.

Tuesday unfortunately was no different. No more than 5 or 6 very small uninterested schools for the enire day but I did manage to land one more salmon. Oh, I did manage to hook and lose two others, one on the softie and one a metal slice but that was it. The two I landed were around the 4 - 5 kilo mark and didn't really put up that much of a fight. The two I lost however, were much bigger fish and both were peeling line off the reel quick. One I lost about 30 or 40 metres from shore the other inside the break.   Both were jumping when they threw the hooks.

So Tuesday at approximately 4:00pm I started the trip home again.

The long and short of it was:
9 hours driving;
2 days fishing;
2 salmon landed;
2 salmon lost;
a hell of a lot of fun;
686 kilometres travelled;
less than $50 of fuel.     

Not too bad really, and the little Charade performed faultlessly which made me very happy.

No pictures unfortunately as there really wasn't anything worth taking a picture of.

From what I have read elsewhere in the reports though it looks like I should have followed my original plan and dropped into Canal Rocks on the way home  

Cheers.