Trip Reports
Swansea Salmon by Len Verrenkamp
Date:
16 September 2012

“Swansea here we come” was the cry as a darkish Bateau Bay was departed at 5.00am last Sunday morning. Why 5.00am when it’s only 40 min to Swansea for a 6.30am start? Well someone who shall remain unnamed decided keeping the boat at work (Wyong) would free up some space in our ever increasing car park of a driveway (kids and cars) which is just fine until I forget to take the boat home when a fishing trip is imminent, thankfully this time it’s on the way and a slight detour to grab the boat, pack, check fuel, oil etc was not too dramatic.

Arriving at the ramp the sun had risen on a near perfect day with little breeze and a relatively calm but rolling ocean, the line up at the ramp confirming sun shine and boats go hand in hand. Who was it said? There is NOTHING--absolutely nothing--half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats!

A quick chat with the boys (I am not naming people as there were so many, you know if you were there or not) had the non boater allocations sorted, launching commenced and Stickerman wandered in late as usual without his boat, immediately picked on the new guys Luke and Lachlan and said in his usual diplomatic way “I’m with #@$% you”!!!

With everyone launched and Richard the seal catcher (I will elaborate later) on board with me we met up with a mate of mine Brett on his Jet ski who has just caught the fly fishing bug and headed out to Moon island to terrorise the local Salmon population.

Now, Salmon fishing at Swansea consists of two approaches:

The theory of the first one is to watch for birds working the surface, try and gauge the direction the school is heading, possibly what they are feeding on, match the hatch so to speak and motor over in the boat in stealth mode so as not to send the school down deep and fire off some casts in the general salmon direction.

Reality tends to be very different!!!!

The second approach which is for the less faint hearted amongst us is to motor in as close to the rocks and breaking bommies as you dare, present your fly into the zone and strip like hell, for the skipper all the time whilst watching the swells, the rocks, the boat position, your mate, casting and trying to catch fish. You may have noticed I was quite a distance out from the rocks because I am no hero, the benefit I guess is it also encourages learning to cast a respectable distance.

Richard and I chose the get close to the rocks option and within a few casts he was onto a nice fish, at least a 10 minuter was the call as the fight progressed and being the first fish of the day the decks were cleared and net readied as we were both keen to get the boat off the mark, at about the 11min 23 sec mark a 55 cm fish was netted and happy snaps taken before releasing the fish and back into the rocks we went.

At this point I admit I was struggling with the close in option we had chosen, however as the morning progressed and with Richards encouragement and the fact just about everyone else was catching fish I got a good feel for how and where the waves would form and break and ventured closer in with each drift.

On about the sixth drift I watched four hungry salmon break from the pack and chase my fly, thankfully the one that won the race latched onto my fly and stayed there for a good 15 minutes until skilfully netted by Richard with a borrowed net (mine broke on Richards third fish). The fish was a ripper, measured in at 69cm, was my first Salmon on fly and I was stoked to say the least.

Almost on the next drift Richard hooked up on another fish and after some aerobatics it headed deep, quite deep actually and quite fast by the way Richard was losing line, we would have called it for a kingie had we not already seen it on the surface and next thing it was heading for the surface again, however this time the struggling salmon had caught the attention of a good sized seal and both came out of the water, the salmon in the seal’s mouth and Richards fly line flailing in the air.

For a moment I think Richard thought he was in with a chance of landing the seal then reality kicked in, the line went slack, the seal smiled wryly as it removed the body of the salmon with one bite and left Richard to wind the head back to the boat. A funnier sight I have not seen in a while!

After that sort of excitement the next couple of fish were relatively pedestrian, the seal had had his fill and buggered off and as things quietened down a bit more we motored around fishing and watching to see who was hooking up regularly, Bob and Dave seemed to have the bommie drift nailed with a few double hook-ups, Mal had installed his Zimmer frame in Chris’s boat and was doing his best to keep Chris out of it, Geoff hit the lake instead and nailed a trevally or two, however the whiting and bream were not so obliging and we did see Sticker very generously instructing Luke and young Lochie on the fine art of losing fish, I guess that was the least he could do as he was in their boat!

So another great morning came to a close with the much anticipated BBQ after the early start, a soft drink and information sharing on what worked and what didn’t, the clubs compulsory rule of life jackets for all was well received and from what I saw had 100% participation so well done to all.