Hazell's 2 weeks in Ningaloo

[Hazell]

2 friends and their 6 week old baby, my wife and I were bound for Ningaloo station for 2 weeks of isolated camping right on the waters edge. This report is only loosely following the order of events because I chose the better photos not always the best fish to tell the story. I had never been to Ningaloo before and a lot of my fishing (all land based and yakking) was solo so I had to play it all by ear.

The trip up was long and did not get interesting until we pulled into the station. The bitumen turned into corrugated gravel tracks for about 30ks which was fairly comfortable in the forester if we kept our speed up. When we got closer to the campsite, the tracks got worse and a few big bumps saw my trailer launching into the air with the kayaks nose finding its way into my rear windscreen. A roll of tape later and we were back on track.


The weather was pretty average at first so land based was the only comfortable option. After throwing some poppers around but only having follows from trevally or queenies, I noticed that there were a lot of small long toms around. When they got scared they would tail walk along the surface, leaving no more than a skittering effect on the water. To mimic this, I put on a small richter plug and straight away I was onto a decent queenie which put up a good fight and made some great aerial displays. I took a quick underwater snap as I released him back to it's terrorizing of the schooling bait fish.



There were fairly high tides in the first few days and westerly winds were pushing swell up into where some of the on-the-beach camp sites were. Shovels in hand, we helped this family barricade their campsite but we soon realized we were losing and they had to pack up. As the last tarp was lifted, the water came crashing through and flooded what was their camp site.


This slow shutter photo shows what the wind was like a lot of the time


A few breaks in the weather allowed us to get out for some boat sessions. We found a few squid on a couple of trips but I was hoping for and expecting more. I found it harder going than in DohDohDohDohburn sound but the rough weather may not have been on our side.


I pulled this ~40cm Red-throat out of about 1m deep coral reef. I was using yellow/green gladiator plastics and the fish seemed to be loving them. I found the fish we slamming them as they bounced along the reef but they would just take me straight down and either snag up or bust me off. I tied this stick bait on to try tempt them out of the reef. First cast with it, I had a hook up and I put a lot of force on the fish to keep it above the reef. By the time I had it back to the boat, the 30lb flouro leader was completely destroyed and snapped as I applied some pressure to the knot. We were busted off most casts and a Picasso trigger fish was bothering my plastics so we moved on.


My only bait capture for the trip, a 1.5m shovel nosed shark. I put out shark baits (usually squid heads) several nights and had some great runs (including 1 that went airborne) but lost a lot from terminal tackle failure and poor hookups from the 'tuna circle' hooks I was using.


The stormy weather passed finally and left us with steady but manageable winds. This boat was not exactly where the owners had left it, the wind and chop had ripped their mooring anchor out of the sand. Luckily there were 9 of them and they dragged/pushed/lifted/heeve-hoed it out of the sand and onto the trailer.

[Hazell]

It was finally time for some Yakking.


First fish was landed trolling a small minnow before I even reached the reef. I was not expecting this one, a fairly big sucker fish which made me think there was a shark trailing me. I shrugged it off and kept fishing. The sessions that followed were the most constant fishing I have ever experienced, I trolled up-wind with scorpion 52's and similar hard bodies and often the lures would be hit before I even managed to tighten the line up after a backwards cast. I'd then set the drift anchor and work soft plastics deeper into the reef as I slowly drifted down wind. Heaps of Red throats and chinaman cod were landed with the occasional spangled emperor thrown into the mix. I did not land any really good fish from the yak but I was never left bored, pointlessly casting and retrieving. out on the reef, it was rare to go more than a few of minutes without landing something and about 75% of casts were attacked but a lot of it was angry little reef fish too small to get their mouths around the hooks





Most mornings, I would get up before the others and go flicking lures for a couple of hours. Queenies were very common at one spot I discovered with a few landed in some sessions. Long Toms were always around but I had trouble hooking up with some of the lures I was using. Most of the time I was fishing with 15lb braid, 30lb leader. Its a bit heavy but the reef gave me no choice. On a couple of occasions, I would take my squid rod out (10lb braid, 12lb leader) and either not have the power to set hooks properly or get busted off on the first good fish. Here are a few more land based captures. The dart was an amazing fish to watch as it fought, It would glide through the waves as they formed, watching me as it swam side on, taking drag as it moved back out when the small wave broke.



And my biggest spangled emperor, on nothing else but a 15g halco twisty cast between some reef right on the shore line and another patch ~50m out. Of the hundreds of dollars I spent on stick baits, minnows, poppers, various plastics and jig heads... 3 things did most of the damage... 15g halco twisties, a 1/2oz richter plug and 4" bass minnows were hands down the most effective plastic I used (I tried atomic paddle tails, various squidgee fish and shads, squidgee slick rigs, eyeball tails and a couple of gladiator minnows as well)


Even when the weather was pleasant within the shelter of the outer reef, the conditions outside were not favorable. This kept us away from the bigger fish which were no doubt hanging around that area. However, we did get our 1 near-perfect day (or part thereof) and so we headed out for a quick trawl. As soon as we got out of the channel to the open ocean, what we assume were tuna were busting up the surface in several scattered schools. I had my trusty light gear with me, ready to go with a small metal slice. A few casts as we passed by produced nothing but we were after bigger fish. We had a 2m laser pro and a 4-5m rapala magnum trawling behind us for a while and then one of the heavy outfits started screaming. I jumped straight onto it as Rob went to pull the second up. Before he reached it, that too started screaming as we had our double hookup. Robs fish went airborne as we quickly discovered it to be a large Spanish mackerel. Mine however, made a solid run down deeper. The lines crossed and we had to do the old over/under trick. Robs fish was going mental, spending almost as much time out of the water as in, just like my first queenie but it's different when it's at least 15kg. Meanwhile, my fish seemed to have come un-hooked. As I started to retrieve the slack line, it came up solid and then nothing again. The fish then woke up and made its second and final run 180 degrees around the boat, made a massive jump out of the water and dove down into the reef below, finally showing itself as a Spanish mackerel. All I could do was lock up the drag and that slowed it down before it reached the reef below. It then seemed to stop dead and while I was slowly dragging my fish up, Robs had destroyed a high tensile lure clip and set itself free with His already battle scared laser pro as jewelery. As I pulled my fish closer to the surface, I noticed it was foul hooked which explains the strange fight and that it was barely attached to the fish. It was not until I had a hand firmly gripped around its tail that I felt the relief you get when you land a monster. The results was a 120cm ~15kg narrow barred Spanish mackerel.


Throughout the trip, I had no trouble finding fish but I was yet to land any trevally. I was starting to think I was going to leave without catching one of my main target fish (queenies were primary). On one of my final days, I took a walk, rod in hand to the area which had landed the big spangled and started throwing around various lures. It was high tide and bait fish were holding up between some barely submerged rock/reef and the shore. This put them in a narrow channel and it wasn't long before the predators started barreling down the corridor, chasing the bait fish into dead ends or up into ultra shallow water. The speed they were passing through made it very hard to sight cast but I focused on casting at the predators entry and exit points and very quickly came up with a couple of smallish GT's (unhappy fish in the pic below) and a reasonable gold spot trevally.

After a quick photo shoot through which it constantly grunted like a pig, this particular fish was on its was way seemingly not bothered by the quick but hard fight we had.


Light tackle sport fishing is what really excites me so I spent my final day chasing queenies and trevally as was rewarded. An ultra-low tide saw my queenie flats almost above sea level so I walked straight out and started casting poppers and metals along the drop offs. I was getting constant hits but no solid hookups for a while until BANG. This trevally put up a harder fight than the mackerel and was the last fish I caught. It will leave a lasting memory of the area and I'll be back up there soon, hopefully exploring a different section.

[Zim man]

mate, what an awesome report with top notch pics to boot. a very entertaining read mate

[Sav02]

awsome post man thumbs up from me

[ruski]

Looks like an awesome trip! Thanks for sharing

[MAINEVENT]

What a report! Well done mate. Some magic part of the world up there.

[Piscateur]

Thanks for sharing. Looks stunning

[duffman]

good read good pics

[Hazell]

Thanks guys, It was an awesome trip.

[jigger]

great report and pics - how did the forrester handle offroad and on the beach ?

[bargeass]

brilliant mate. top read and some amazing pics to boot

[Hazell]

Originally Posted by jigger

great report and pics - how did the forrester handle offroad and on the beach ?

It went pretty well. Corrugations were quite comfortable but the trailer was banging around a lot. It handled the soft sand pretty well even loaded up and towing a heavy trailer. I was hoping to give it a better test run up there but after smashing the window I wanted to preserve it for the trip home. There were some dunes I really wanted to tackle with it.

[Hazell]

And a trip to Ningaloo would not be complete without some diving. Here are jsut a couple of shots that I liked.

[IceManDude]

Awesome Report and even better photos!!!!

[Jaxson]

that was a wicked report mate well done.

nice photos and great fish!!