Well its been over a week since Deefa and I have got back from Exmouth so here’s a report. We fished 100% off the shore hence our trip name ShorEX and about 95% of the fishing was done with bream gear on soft plastics except one night chasing spangos where we geared up.

We got into Exxy on Thursday at 2pm after blasting up in 11 ½ hrs and the first stop was the marina for a lazy arvo flick. Started off slow but we got into Queenies ~2kg, Diamond Trevally and Deef got a nice flatty which went hard for its size (unlike the others caught later). Here’s a couple of pics of the diamonds.

Unfortunately the swell was up (the same time as those massive surges at Shark Bay) which made fishing the west side very difficult the next morning, nevertheless we bashed Bundegi up towards the Pier for a few hours. Caught a nice mixed bag comprise of Dart, mini Gs, a Flutemouth and a Grinner.. all on SP.. the Flutemouth was the weird capture for the week how it managed to pick up a plastic I don’t know…

That night we hit the marina again with some stinky mulies chasing Jacks and Gribbo’s girlfriend Bel was lucky enough to get one. Deefa met his match with the rocks and ended up worst for wear.. thanks to the ladies at the servo who helped us find some Dettol and gave us a bag of a dozen pies for free (really fixed the munchies)

Day 2 we hit the west side again to be plagued with big swells this time we wet a line but had no luck. Back down to Bundegi were we found a bait school but nothing wanted to play.. had a couple of follows but no hookups. Due to Deefa’s leg we decided to camp and berley up and see if we could find some bities that night but we were plagued with small bream and fingermark. Deefa got a slightly bigger mini G that night which kept him happy.

Day 3 we pushed right round the cape and well into the national park and tried a couple of spots. The first spot we tried looked very fishy with some nice structure close to shore and a sandflat.. I managed to pull two big lizards both close to 60cm from the sandflat but we didn’t get anything else despite deef throwing the tacklebox at the reef. We pushed onto spot #2 which we had planned to hit just before the high and fished a sandspit and channel… first cast and out comes flatty #3 for me, another 60cm monster. Out went a bit of berley and in came a nice 3kg golden for me on 2kg… Just when deef thought he was having a slow trip he managed to hook up to number 8932174892374109 charlie court which was then swallowed by what he called a very large golden… out flew the line into the backing and then close to being spooled on 4lb and his tiny heartland z. he managed to get the line back and the fish close to the sandbar we were fishing when the golden decided he wasn’t hungry anymore and the Charlie was kindly returned to deefa.. he wasn’t happy. He plugged the same spot where he hooked up to be reefed pretty quickly… there were some decent fish there. We finished off that day with one more fish for me … ANOTHER 60cm flatty from that spot. Surprisingly all of them caught that day fought like a dead sock… lucky they’re very tasty!

That night was spent chasing spangos out on the tip of the cape with Gribbo… we 4wd-d a track which took us past where we wanted to go and after a mammoth hike we found water… I took the GT gear out that night and churned up the water for no result then switched to bait. Gribbo showed us in true local style how to catch spangos and pantsed Deef and I 4 to 1 undersize to 0.

Day 4 we fished the west side at one of the closer accesses as the swell was down a bit where we found a baitschool and several large turtles… deef managed to hookup to two of the bohemiath turtles … accidentally… well they fell for what the locals told us was “the plastic of choice” chartreuse atomics they seemed to only catch Charlie courts and turtles! (to all the greenies out there… he busted the line off as soon as he knew what he’d hooked) There were a few queenies around but it was mightly hard to set the hooks on the SP jigs we were using and so we only managed few trevs. Lesson learnt when catching queenies on plastic really set the hook hard!

Last stop was a quick trip down to Learmonth after sampling some of the best gold band fish n chips I’ve ever hard.. yummo!... we fished the flats near the jetty for another couple more mini Gs then decided to see what was happening on the jetty only to find a heap of squid hanging around the pylons! And there was my dinner!!! Key to catching squid.. small pink jigs… sorry to the poor girl with the huge blue jig that I showed up handlining squid in off my loomis.. one of the guys on the jetty lost a huge queenie on a live hardyhead close to the jetty.. only shows you shouldn’t rush things when you’re close to landing the fish of a lifetime!

That was pretty much all the fishing we did.. we were spent and hit the hay early on the last night rather than trying to fish again… There’s a few pics we didn’t take many concentrated more on the fishing. 4 days in exxy shore based was hard work but still great fun!

[img_assist|fid=184404|thumb=0|alt=Mini G|caption=one of many mini Gs we got on plastic]

[img_assist|fid=184383|thumb=0|alt=Deefa in action|caption=hooked up to a little diamond]

[img_assist|fid=184387|thumb=0|alt=deefa's diamond|caption=deefa's diamond.. aint it pretty]

[img_assist|fid=184412|thumb=0|alt=Hooked up|caption=hooked up to a nice golden on 2kg]

[img_assist|fid=184407|thumb=0|alt=jack lives here|caption=Gribbo's girlfriend Bel's Jack]

[img_assist|fid=184425|thumb=0|alt=the chaser|caption=Deefa chasing down the bohemiath that took all his 4lb line! i wont post up the pic of his face when the bait got thrown back :P]

[img_assist|fid=184419|thumb=0|alt=the golden|caption=pretty little 3kg golden.. sorry photo is a bit over exposed!]