Just a quick report on the week I recently spent with the family down in Albany and Peaceful Bay.

Arrived in Peaceful Bay to find it not so peaceful with a 5m+ swell and 20-30 knot winds for most of our 3 night stay. Pretty much all the beaches in the area were totally washed out from the swell altho we did managed to get around the main bay after the swell had eased on the last day to have a look around the inlet mouth, which is currently open. The only beach that was fishable was the back beach behind the small peaceful bay (I forget the name of it?) and we did find some massive herring and a couple good KG's one afternoon. The salmon seemed to be eluding us until I had a funny hook up on my small squid baited hook meant for a KG. This fish ran straight along the beach before making it self known in true salmon fashion with a big headshaking jump. After a short fight I landed my first salmon of the year, once again on a random small hook!

That was the only one landed or seen while we were at Peaceful Bay so I felt lucky to be the one that scored!

A few days later I caught up with Chrisp for a salmon hunt down in Albany. After convincing him of an early sunrise start we hit up Nanarup beach with high hopes. The beach had plenty of reallly good looking channels and gutters that we threw stickbaits into as we made our way along. The herring were plentiful and a good size but the salmon didn't show. Chris did land a solid skippy on the stickbait though which had him guessing for a second.

We ended up driving over to Two Peoples bay for a look and armed with a rod each and a few stickbaits we hit the rocks. After chatting to a young bloke who had been casting lures for a few hours for nothing I made the comment "Don't worry, a school of salmon could come along at any moment"... a couple casts later and we both hooked up bigtime. Reels where screaming and the hoots and hollars were loud! Unfortunately we both got smoked and busted off on the rugged rocks submerged right infront of our chosen fishing platform. A quick tie of new leaders and stickbaits I was straight back on. This time I kept my rod high and somehow avoided the rocks and after many big jumps and screaming runs I landed the first salmon of the day.

This fish absolutaly destroyed the trebels on Chris's stickbait that I borrowed too.

After taking forever with his bobbin leader knot (were you tying a PR?) he also was back into them.

A bit of tricky rock hoping was needed to get these fish landed on the rocks too.

Chris finally landed one!

The salmon were going absoluately mental, leaping from the water on the strikes only meters infront of us. We lost probably 15+ fish with 5 lures in total going with them. Over the 2 hours or so we landed 5, with the only option of getting them in to lock the drag up and go hard! At one point I felt like I was on an old tuna boat doing some poling as I literally had 2m of line from the tip of my rod and I just dropped it in the water as the school of salmon swam by right infront of me and instantly hooked up... although I tried to heave it straight over my head, I failed. haha..

The winning lure for the day was the old Waxwing!

The fish eventually moved on and we called it a day... the images of salmon smashing our lures right infront of us stayed in the front of our minds for days! Chris the lucky bastard is still down there and has had some more action since!

Certainly a session to remember that one...

Another great trip down South with the family and a few sneaky fishing trips in there too.

My new pup Sasha claims a salmon head.