We had a convoy of 2 vehicles each towing a trailer, one with a mini excavator weighing 2.5 tons and the other loaded with electrical cable, conduit, tools and Polly pipe.
The track was in pretty good condition compared to my last time at the Point back in 1992. On that occasion our trailer snapped a spring hanger due to the corrugations on the road. It was a nightmare trip with Peter Russell having to drive back to Geraldton for replacement parts, that night Joe and I camped on the side of the track with the trailer. Happily this mission went more smoothly.
I had no idea what the setup was going to be like but knowing the owner i knew it would be impressive. I was blown away by the house. It was constructed of local quarried stone in a rough hewn style that looked awesome. The house took 18 months to build in 1999.
The following shot shows the desalination plant and one of the boats behind it a 30ft Center console Boston Whaler with twin 175s on the back. He also has a Yamaha Banana boat, a tinnie and zodiac here shown also with an assortment of outboard motors.
So upon arrival we got the main part of the works done and went fishing Sat morning early. We went out to just inside the bar where there was a 2m swell rolling in. We got there and located the lumps on the echo sounder that are supposed to hold the Pink Snappers. We caught nothing but wrasse and reef species. So next we motored out to the front of the cliffs and trawled the deep water. The echo sounder was reading 35m of water consistently up and down the cliffs we were hanging about 50m off the cliff face and winding back and forth through schools of pelagics that were chasing small bait fish on the surface. It was not long till Iain caught a nice Northern Bluefin Tuna. It did about three runs and took him 5-10 minutes to land it. After that Iain caught another nice fish a Shark Mackerel. The sea was starting to roll in what i thought was 4m swell so we bailed out of there.
This shot is us out the front of the cliffs in the swell. It was pretty hairy i was shitting bricks.
Bellow is a shot of the "Fault line" where 2 guys are fishing. One is floating a balloon out behind the NE breeze. This spot is the BIG fishing location at Steep Point. The upper ledge is where people balloon from and the lower section is the lure fishing spot. At times it is full of crew.
Iain with his Mackerel and Tuna.
Next day and the weather was the best it has ever been ( so i was told) i was working Iain, Brad Kevin and Graham went back out to go for Tuna. Graham pulled in a whopper and Keven had his 40lb + Spanish Mackerel chomped by a shark.
This Yellowfin Tuna Graham caught was bloody huge.
Chomp.
During the day we fished in front of the house for the bait we use to catch snapper "Western Butterfish" seen bellow.
One of the above Butterfish was chomped by something as i was reeling them in. I re rigged with some large trace and a couple of snelled Gamakatsu's cast out and pulled in a nice Tailor. When i cleaned and checked his gut content i found teh other half of my Butterfish.
That arvo the weather was still incredible still and about 24c, we trawled the South Passage around to Sunday Island. On the way I hooked 3 small Shark Mackerel all on lures; good fighters.
That night I caught a 3m Shovel nose ray and we got some nice Pink Snapper.
2.5m long Shovelnose. This poor bugger had a gidgee stuck in his head, some arsehole had tried to gidgee him and broke the head off .
More tomorrow. Ahh screw it one more.
Leopard Shark. These grow to be huge. I had to swim this bloke in the water. He was to exhausted to get any water going through his gills. After 5-10 mins he woke up and swam away.
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