Pete and Ben’s excellent adventure (Escape to the Great Southern)

[adidaspeteman]

Pete and Ben’s excellent adventure
(Escape to the Great Southern)

The grind of the day to day can wear away at your soul. This work torn slog can only be healed by one thing in my book; a trip out of the mouse city with rods packed for a spout of fishing in the country.

Me and Ben (da-houghsta) packed our bags and headed to one of our favourite getaway destinations, WALPOLE. Ben was keen to hit some top bream action and I was ready for my dose of buzzing drag.

The drive down went in a breeze, which might have something to do with Ben’s enjoyment of Top Gear. The barina got us there safely and with a quick unpack we were trodding the Bibbulmun track down to the Walpole Inlet for an arvo spin.



We got to the waters edge and noticed that the water was crystal clear. Last visit it was the colour of coke. The sky was clear and barely a breeze was disturbing the serenity of the Inlet. It was calm, to calm for my liking. I like It rough and in my experience the bream at the ’pole go on a feeding binge in breaking chop. But, we were in Walpole and Walpole always delivers to me faithfully.

Wading into the cool southern water the chill crept into my boots and I felt awake and ready for the first strike and Ben was itchin’ for some bream twitchin’. 5 minutes went past and the fishing started to bare fruit and the catching began.




So for the next few days in both the Nornalup and Walpole Inlets we walked in water waist high working out the bream movements. Because of the lack of rain the clarity of the water was unlike our last trips there. We generally found the blackies retreating into deeper water channels during the harsher light periods and in twilight they dared to venture into the skinny shallows. We found caught quite a few in our aqua wonderings although noticeably fewer then in our previous trips.






Ben loves his Bluescode and this tiny sinking stickbait proved deadly and versatile both in the skinny water and especially in the deeper channels. Next trip I’ll be packing a few as well as them Zipbaits sinking stickbaits that you were using Ben…




My trusty ZipBaits Khamsin Jr DR that I love to use wherever I go caught me a heap of fish (as you can see in the photo’s). Khamsin success set aside I felt the need to go smaller and the Ecogear sx40LC filled in the time slot between bright day and dark dawn/dusk nicely when smaller profile lures ere favoured.









We chucked a few other artificial things about as well as jig the odd vx35 blade here and there too with a variety of species taking a liking to the tiny metal.










One of the mornings we got up extra early and headed to Albany to show Ben the flats fishing on hand there. We drove through amazing thick fog and arrived at glassy thin water. The session was nice with a bunch of average bream landed in between the hordes of herring and salmon trout. Half a day had passed so we went through a drive through in town and made ourselves sick on double whopper…hehe.






Although we didn’t get cricket score daily sessions, we still pulled some quality specimens while enjoying the beautiful surrounds. There were some killer scenic sunrises and sunsets.








I’d like to thank Ben for his tiptop bonza company, delicious casserole and twisting roller coaster rally art through the southern forests. For the Exmouth trip in 2 weeks I am getting a pack of Travelcalm…..