Hi FWer's

Well our mid year Shark Bay family trip has been and gone for another year. This year we went into the Francois Peron National Park. We camped at Bottle Bay this year as all the campsites at our usual haunt (Sth Gregories) were taken. So had to find some new ground to fish, which isn't very hard up there.

So being a family trip, it was a pretty laid back approach to the fishing. Went a bit like this most days, get up have brekkie, slowly get the kids ready, hit the water at around 10am travel about a mile, anchor and fish for a few hours, come back to camp have some lunch and a couple of cold ones, then if I was still feeling keen go out for a solo arvo sesh. If I wasn't, just kick back and drink more beer. What a life.

My young fella absolutely killed it this year, ticking off new species nearly every day. He caught: Heaps of Black Snapper, heaps of undersize Pinkies, a small Coral Trout, Golden Trevs, School Macks, Undersize Blue bones, big Tarwhine, a 39cm Bream pictured and a few different types of small cods. He reckons the Macks were the best fun. Thought I was going to loose my rod and reel, when I gave it to Scott to fish with while I tied him another rig. Forgot to back the drag off and sure enough a just undersize Blue Bone grabbed it and went hard. He held on though much to my relief.

Its a great spot to take kids fishing, as the action is normally on straight away. Here is my 5 year old with her first BBone.

My fish of the week came on a solo arvo sesh. I was anchored up in 6 metres of water catching undersize Pinkies one after another. On a couple of occasions something was following up the hooked fish. It looked a bit like a Mulloway. About an hour before the sun set, I got a very solid hookup on a piece of mullet. I was thinking big Pinkie and the way it was fighting, taking line on a pretty hard drag setting and big head shakes. I was actually getting a bit worried because if it was a Pinkie, it was definately going to be over the max 70cm rule. Then I saw the flash of silver, and the adrenaline spiked! Upto this stage my biggest Mulloway was about 60cm. Luckily the gaff was close at hand and I got him. He was 116cm but pretty skinny I think, he only went 10kgs.

Anyway, it was another really good trip, had perfect weather until the day we were leaving as the wind really picked up, but that didn't bother us then. Will pencil in next years trip for sure.

Tight Lines

Chris.

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