After finishing my 5 week long student teaching placement at Dandy High School on Weds and spending most of Thursday packing, The Greek Goddess showed up after work and we loaded her beast of a Patrol for an extra long weekend of fishing. Departing Melbourne at 730pm we arrived at our campground at Saltwater Creek in Ben Boyd National Park a little after 2am and instantly crashed.
Next morning I took we did some sight seeing, the beach is stunning.
After a quick coffee we did a little bit of sight seeing and scouting to the north, Boyd Tower is one of the original whaling installations and the rock formations underneath are stunning.
We decided to have a look at the estuary just on the other side of Navy Wharf that GTShoon and I scouted last time. GG was keen to get a fish on her new wild wicked wet weasal wand. Second cast....
https://youtu.be/_oZLyhOZaoU
Excuse my lack of fish ID skills, i'd had about an hours sleep.
Nice little silver trev! ended up with a few each but decided to kick on and look at the ledges.
Excluding Jervis Bay, Pulpit Rock at Greencape is arguably the most famous LBG location in the country. Facing north and along with it's south facing cousin named City Rock, these locations have been host to some incredible captures over the years.
The sheer scale of the place is staggering.
As we arrived, we could see some movement in the water. GG started casting a white XXXrap 12 and instantly started to hook up.
There was a massive school of these things. Watching them chase the lures was great fun.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DkJpeZAzOM
After landing god knows how many of them and being utterly exhausted from not sleeping then fishing all day, we had a quick spin of Saltwater Creek Beach for no result.
Next day, sunrise at the Pulpit was as always utterly stunning.
We had a great time spinning some more Pike then it went quiet a bit after sunrise. Not much happened and we played around with the sweep and ended up hooking a couple of Yakka's which I ballooned out.
Always keeping two rigged spin rods behind us incase this happened.....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlYHYSIWUJA
I had a 5 1/4 Willamsons jet popper on but couldn't seem to get a hookup. The GG on the other hand....her silver XXXrap was grabbed about 10m in front of us, the yellow tail flashing as it dove straight to the bottom while she frantically tried to do up the drag. Reefed. Absolutely devastated. Quickly retying another one as i switched to a diver, I didn't managed to get a hookup.
First cast with her new lure and with the drag done up tight, GG's new white XXXrap gets smashed, dropped, and upon later inspection actually broken almost in half. The lures didn't get any more action that day.
About 10 mins later I decided to check my balloons, wondering why the king had gone for a lure and not the livey it swam straight past.....
F........ me. Just F........ ok that was the overhead, what about the saltist.....
oh fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu.
Those were our only two live baits. After another hour of spinning hard we retired defeated.
Decided to slap out some bait off the beach next to camp that night and spin while we waited. The salmon here and big.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWp7SW0AHZI
That's a PE 6 spin rod with a clash 6000 and 40lb tasline. Bending like anything.
56cm. Picked up another one as well who was literally full of white bait.
Saltwater creek at sunset is really, really special.
Next morning back to Pulpit, determined to get some new livies and hookup again.
The wonderful GG delivers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=movEg9RvmQ8
Lucky enough to film this hookup. Tight drag. Slimey Mack. Perfect for live baiting. Again, fish ID skills were not good. Sleeping was difficult. and it was dark. GG continued to land slimeys while I spun for a pelagic.
That one is probably my favorite photo from this trip.
Having sought advice from the incredibly helpful John Derkacz, I managed to position the balloons just off the High ledge in the current line....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcPq7UH65Rc
Not quite as far out as JD described, but they didn't want to go any further. Good enough.
About 90 minutes later, it happened. The Hyper doubled over. The clash screamed and the balloon popped off and started drifting away. You never saw a fat man move so fast as I did to that rod.
About 90 seconds in, the seal that took my bait surfaced, waved me a flipper, spat the hook out and swam away. FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU
Cannot win. Another few hours for no result.
The next morning another stunning sunrise, some more slimey's but no hookups. We caved about 10am, and decided to scout the Lighthouse to Lighthouse walk to the north just with spin gear. Found this epically high ledge with some cemented in rod holders in literally the middle of nowhere. Can't really see it in the pics but we're way up in the air.
Headed back to the little beach to the north of the campground. GG hadn't managed to land a Salmon in the surf yet so she was super keen to get one.
Instantly we both hooked up, me landing this nice Tailor and GG dropping hers.
She proceeded to drop two more in a row, becoming quite agitated as I landed half a dozen of them. I was careful to make no sudden movements and back away slowly as I was afraid she may charge......
Finally, after her 4th drop in the wash, she landed her first fish spinning a beach! A nice 45ish cm tailor.
And already an hour passed the time we agreed to leave, we packed up our meager camp and headed home.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gti5k6hH9Ts
Thank you all for reading! Not the report I was hoping to write but I feel like we're getting closer and closer to busting open this LBG gig. A big thank you to GTShoon for the lend of some of his gear. To John Derkacz for sharing his incredible depth of knowledge and experience.
