Salmon

[peter birch]

Alberto (albie) Musca and I got heaps out in front of dnye, Saturday in dunsy.
I did a short video with the 5 wt glass
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tVchb0az1T8

[DNYE]

Man that looks like a hell of a lot of fun!

Were gonna go brave the crowds again this sunday and hopefully break the cycle of bad luck.

[peter birch]

Dnye take a leaf out of rudi's book go south like south side of Hamelin bay
Wink wink , no 4x4's might just have to walk a bit and a bit. But you can see for miles
Down the beach from the rocky headland.

[DNYE]

No time to go that far down Birchy, i'd have to make a weekend of it.

Maybe after easter ill head down that way for a look

[Simon Gilbert]

I'm looking for crew for Friday.

Salmon have been confirmed to be in Perth so I'm off to Rottnest (haven't heard report from there yet - but it's a good bet).

Prefer someone that can meet me at my place in Stirling to help hitch the boat. Roger Smith will be meeting us at the Leeuwin ramp. Don't know the time yet - but considering the forcast at the moment it won't be really early (still need to miss the peak office workers).

Could be a long day since the wind in the arvo is looking to be really light - but I've got to be home arround 6pm.

Don't have to be experienced (if fact prefer people that don't have much). But must be prepared to scrub the decks if a drop of blood gets on them (I'll supply the brushes)

Is anyone else likely to go in their own boat (so we can cover more ground in the search)?

[Simon Gilbert]

I can confirm Salmon are at Rottnest.

Went across this morning to a bumpy south side and lots of cloud. This made spotting fish almost impossible. Looked at all the normal spots but must admit with the cloud we could have easily missed a school.

We ended up having a troll just out from Cathedral Rocks (much calmer) as a way to see if any salmon were around and quite quickly had two hook-ups on REALLY big salmon. We ended up dropping both but turned around with a fly rod in hand to see a reasonable school just below us.

To cut a long story short, I was fortunate to have another reasonable fly fisherman on board (apart from myself) . Liam got one with the first cast and I think dropped another one or two. Richard however busted off on this first two salmon for probably 20 years. I think one had something to do with the shock tippet he last used up at Long Island more than 6 months ago and the other was popping a 8kg tippet (how did he do that?) . While he was fighting his second, I even got a line in and managed to hook up quickly. By the time I released mine and he had busted off, we lost the school. Even though we had the school on GPS it had obviously moved away and with the cloud, we couldn't see anything. Even after trolling around for probably 30 minutes we couldn't find any in that immediate area. But the swell stopped us trying too close in.

A while later a bit further around the north side we saw a whole school busting up on some baitfish. But not wanting to spook them, by the time we were in position, they nicked off. The busted up a couple of minutes later a few hundred meters away and we got close enough for Liam to get connected - but it was quickly lost. They seemed to bust up on small schools of small baitfish every so often but we could never get close.

Liam bagged a small Yellowtail Kingfish on a lure when we saw a small bust up - but we went home not finding the Salmon again. We got the idea that there were lots more Kingfish around on the very small schools of baitfish.

So it's definitely worth a go. They are really big fish. Just hope for a sunny day!

The only other things I can say is at least I've got my first Salmon in 3 or 4 years (about time they got to Perth) and that Richard makes a much better food caterer than a fisherman .

Here's to next weekend and better weather!!

PS - sorry Richard...but you deserve all you get. Fancy busting off two fish!! But your welcome back any time.

[Roger Smith]

Good one Simon!
Any photos ?
Rog

[Simon Gilbert]

Another try on Wednesday. Off to Rottnest again.

Reasonable weather, some cloud and a medium reducing swell. Not perfect but good enough. Problems was the fish hadn't heard.

So lots of looking, plenty of trolling but no luck. Did hit one good sized salmon out from Eagle Bay on the troll, but lots of more trolling around didn't see any more. A few herring out near West End but nothing like what I used to see years ago.

Not even ANY baitfish around the Natural Jetty.

Very disappointing!!

About half way out there was quite a big accumulation of bait and quite good sized tuna. I didn't have a great look but I thought they were Longtails (say 10kg plus). Rudi thought he saw a Yellowfin. We had a couple of reasonable shots but left them fairly soon 'cause we thought we could be there for hours...and with some cloud around (sunny at the time), we thought it was better to get out to Rottnest. In hind sight, probably stuffed up.

On the way back not far from Rotto, we came across a very tightly packed ball of bait fish getting hammered by tuna (Longtails I think) - again probably 8-10kg. We had several really good shots but were obviously using flies that were too big. They were very small but needed to be probably 20-30mm long. They were VERY small baitfish - not 'whitebait' sized. By the time we changed flies again, all the bait fish were eaten and the Tuna had moved on. Could have had something to do with the skill of the fishermen (I was skippering).

Also might have had something to do with Rudi bringing a banana out in the boat. We did find it easily and early on but perhaps the damage had been done.

So my advice at the moment is to try closer to shore (there have been a few reports of schools in close) or to go with several boats to cover more area.

Another piece of advice is to ensure you have fishermen of a reasonable skill level on board. Unfortunately I was too busy skippering (there was a big swell) to show them what to do

I will try over the next few weeks....one Perth Salmon a season does not make.

[DELVIN BENNETT]

We have also found a few on the three mile off Mandarie lately
Delvin

[Liam Surridge]

There were big schools around Mewstone rock on saturday, and it was a cracker of a day weatherwise too. They can be quite hard to find but once you find them it's a fish cast for cast...