Beach fishing at Bremer Bay

We had a long stretch of road ahead with a quick stop in Esperance. A few faxes and phone calls and a bit of shopping and we were on our way. It was an overcast day with intermittent showers driving through some pretty countryside. Bremer Bay was our planned destination, but with our extended stopover in Esperance trying to contact some of Josh’s colleagues and some locum agencies to arrange some work over in WA made this an overly ambitious ask. A sensible pull in at a rest area outside Jermanjup seemed a good idea, if only dad had not decided to pull extra weight and empty out the water tanks. What’s more empty promises of activating the virgin commode in the caravan, left us cursing him, as the rest area was without bog holes - no water and no dunnies!

We arrived in Bremer Bay on April 30. It’s a quiet seaside holiday village that boasts 2 caravan parks and the kids insisted we go to the one with the pool. We had been told that the fish were biting round Bremer so we headed down to try our hand. Not having a beach rod we decided to fish off the rocks. After losing a reasonable amount of tackle with no results we called it quits. It was disheartening to see some youngsters with good sized fish. Josh had been cursing lugging 4 fishing rods around the country for so long with so little use, but it was clear that our short rods weren’t going to catch us fish in these waters. So it was with some reluctance we decided to invest in a beach rod, and after some local advice from a real fisherman, we were up to speed on how to fashion a salmon rig. 

Trace made some awesome scones, the kids braved the pool which was the briefest swim ever, and with the weather fairly gloomy we rented some videos for the afternoon. After a terrible Woody Allen flick set in Rome, there was a ruckus on the other side of the caravan park. A rather ugly domestic argument had broken out and a child was crying, it was no holed barred and things were sounding pretty awful. Josh wandered down, but kept a safe distance and in the end decided to phone the police who were some 80km away. No one in the park seemed concerned, although the park manager had driven down in an attempt to calm the situation, but without effect. Trace saw the flashing lights some hour or so later and by then things had settled down. Fortunately, no one was hurt and they were kicked out of the park the following day. 

Our first expedition beach fishing was not entirely successful. Casting over the breakers is a skill in itself, working out how much weight to use is another and keeping the bait on a third. We managed all these skills with some success, but no fish. We didn’t lose any tackle though. The water was surprisingly warm, the kids had a nice swim and OJ sent our mini-rugby ball on the trade winds to Antarctica.