Page 91 - Bush 'n Beach Fishing magazine

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ARAVANNING
ARAVANNING
& adventure
Fishing paradise between Broome and Port Hedland
* from P90
feel. When we were down on the
fishing and catching threadies con- sistently, I realised she was wind- ing in a couple of metres every few minutes. She was pretty much hooking up quality fish right on the shore break only metres from where we were standing. However, she was whipping me to run after popeye mullet the entire time, which I reckon was another reason she out-fished me because I hardly cast, being too busy catching bait for my queen. Ha ha, they’re my excuses anyway.
surf gear but we didn’t really need it. We fished with 7’ G.Loomis and 5000 Shimano Biomaster with 30lb braid and 30lb leader, and these were very adequate outfits for fishing Eighty Mile Beach because the waves weren’t overly big and we didn’t need to pitch baits too far.
beach, the blustery easterly wind was blocked by the sand dunes so it was calm on the beach and for the first couple of hundred metres out to sea, making the atmosphere even more mysterious.
The water off the beach itself wasn’t crystal clear and as clean as we had experienced in a lot of places slightly north. It was quite brown in colour and very dirty right on the edges where little waves were breaking on the shore. The water was rather shallow for a long way out too, with just a few steep- er points here and there, and a bit deeper closer to shore.
A few large sharks were in the shallow waters cruising around for a feed too – we could see their fins and backs in the water. So we had several super wild hooks ups of shark and threadfin in the shallow dirty waters, which made for a heap of fun. It was really good to have some fresh threadfin salmon for dinner most of the nights we were at Eighty Mile.
When driving on and off the beach, it is important to drop the air pres- sure in your tyres to around 20psi – we found this was spot on for the LandCruiser. It’s just as important when driving off the beach to put your tyres pressure back up to suit conditions, such as going back onto bitumen, rocky surfaces and trav- elling faster than 40km/h. It could become quite expensive otherwise, with damaged sidewalls and rims, and let’s face it you’re a long way from anywhere to fix or replace these things. So, make sure you take the time to get your tyre pressures right.
Now, you can’t go to Eighty Mile without trying to catch the great fishing and delicious eating thread- fin salmon, which lurk in the dis- coloured water along the beach. Fishing for threadfin off shore was very new to me. Normally we would see the fish feeding in drain mouths of estuaries that we could sight cast too, or see them on our new flash sounders sitting in deeper holes where we could use vibes in front of their face for a reaction bite.
We didn’t have big surf rods and
Until next month!
Though we had great success catching popeye mullet and frog- mouth herring with the cast net – wow this was a task on its own. Running fast into shallow water di- rectly into the school of popeye and quickly throwing the net to catch a few – they are smart and can see you coming from a mile away.
The WA sunsets are spectacular.
However, we had some threadfin success using these livies on a sim- ple running sinker rig and a 5/0 wide gape hook cast into the dirty water. When I say ‘we had success’, I mean Raylene nailed it. She well and truly thumped me, catching quite a few cracking threadies whereas I caught only one.
I think I was casting out too far because when I watched Raylene
Shel ls of Eighty Mile Beach.
Bush ’n Beach Fishing, June 2020 – Page 91
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