Day 97 – 20th April 2018 – Giralia Station

As the camp is fairly quiet at the moment, Denver suggested we make the most of the good weather and take the boat out fishing.  As we are assisting with a care taking role, Denver kindly let us use a private area on the Station to launch the boat from.

We met two lovely couples, Mel and Helen and Callie and Torren. They were staying at Giralia Station and both couples had their own boats. Mel has been coming here for years and knows the area very well.  At 9am we drove the 35km to the beach to launch. It was fantastic chatting with Mel who gave us some good information about fishing in the area. Apparently the best time to fish is approximately 3 hours before the high tide and he said that the fish pretty much stop biting after high tide peaks. He was adamant that we shouldn’t stay out more than a couple of hours after high tide or we might struggle to get the boat out again.

When we arrived we found a beautiful white barn owl nesting in the shed. We were too slow to get a photo of it but hopefully it will be there again the next time we come.

When we went to put the boat in it was quite a rocky outcrop and the tide was still a bit too far out to launch the boat. So we got the low down from Mel of where to go and the pitfalls to avoid and we prepared some fishing rigs to use and got the rods ready. The boat launch went well with me reversing the trailer. We needed to do a few slams of the brake to shake the boat off the trailer and into the water, but we got there without incident. At one point Torren noticed Col walking in the shallow water without shoes and let him know they found a Stonefish nearby a few days earlier. So it is important to remember that risk in these waters.

We found a good reef to fish and drifted over it a few times. We caught a few Spanish Flags and a few yellow fin fish that we were not sure of the name. We also caught some undersized Bluebone and Trickies. At one stage I had caught a fish and then at intermittent intervals my line would start screaming and run out then stop. As the fish neared the surface we saw that there was a big Cod that was chasing and grabbing the Bluebone and we managed to get it on video. There was so much happening out on the water, we saw dolphins and rays and it is a really beautiful place to fish. We didn’t have a lot of luck catching anything worth keeping, but it was an awesome day out on the water. There was no wind and the water was flat and the sky was blue.