PILGRIMAGE TO BERMAGUI

For over thirty years, I have been making regular pilgrimages to the south coast of NSW with my family and friends. In the early days we headed out to sea from Narooma and Mystery Bay in twelve foot aluminium boats, which by today’s standards are considered small for fishing in calm waters. We didn’t venture far from shore and dashed back home at the first hint of a breeze, but that didn’t stop us from catching plenty of flathead, snapper, morwong and kingfish.

Following a boat breaking mishap on the Narooma Bar in the mid 1980’s, my father bought a larger boat (5.8m Baron with a 150hp engine) and we started fishing out of Bermagui. The bar at Bermagui is very user friendly which gives you more fishable days as compared to Narooma.

The Baron has been passed through the family and is now owned by my two brothers-in-law (Troy ‘Trucky’ Ashcroft & Rhys Grant) and myself. This arrangement makes sharing the costs of running the boat easier on the hip pocket, and also helps when we want to go fishing as we can manipulate the ladies a little easier (or at least that’s what they let us believe). Our trips down the coast are less prevalent in recent years as we all have young families, but we can still manage a quick trip if we get word that the fish are biting.

With a free weekend looming I was thinking of a fishing trip somewhere. I checked the internet reports for Bermagui and found that plenty of tuna and snapper were biting. This was all the impetus I needed to start the ball rolling on another Bermagui adventure.

The trip down

The trip from Wagga Wagga over the Snowy Mountains to Bermagui is a tough drive in the daytime. The only easy bit of driving is the first 40km from Wagga Wagga to the Hume Highway, from here on it’s undulating to mountainous with plenty of corners. In winter you also have snow, ice and fog to contend with. And did I mention that there is more wildlife than the Dubbo Zoo!

The car killing animals like kangaroos and wombats are thick on the road once the sun goes down and with almost 1800kg of boat in tow you have limited manoeuvrability and even less stopping power. A pair of 130W IPF driving lights on the front of my Toyota gives enough light to make the trip safer, but animals are unpredictable and you can never relax.

For this trip Rhys was unable to come and his spot was taken by David ‘Mitch’ Mitchell, whilst Trucky invited his father, John. We loaded the gear and boat at my house after work on Thursday and made the short trip out to the Wagga Boat Club to watch my daughter perform with her drama group (I wasn’t allowed to go before I watched her performance). Mitch, Trucky and Johnny looked very settled at the bar when I appeared after the show.

“Let’s go,” I said

They finished their beers and we headed off into the darkness at 7.45pm. The trip down went well with only a few fog patches, hardly any snow and no traffic to slow us down. Even the animals were staying off the road.

A few kilometres from Bermagui I was reminded of the need to maintain concentration when towing big boats as we came across a 26 foot boat and a Ford F250 which had jack-knifed. We found out later that the rear wheel of the F250 clipped the edge of the road at 100km/h and started a slide into the table drain, which luckily only caused minor damage to car & boat, and no injuries.

The lights of Bermagui were a welcome sight after five hours of night towing. Minutes after pulling up at our accommodation, we were tucked in bed for a few hours sleep.

Day 1

We awoke to the sound of pounding waves on the beach, which isn’t good when we planned to venture 30-40km offshore. As the boat was fuelled up I checked the weather forecast which revealed an unpleasant prediction of 15-20 knot winds. Wind of this strength makes the ocean choppy and the fishing uncomfortable.

Ever confident we headed out anyway for a look around and found that the sea wasn’t too rough. We drove the 25km out to the continental shelf and decided to troll some lures in search of yellowfin tuna.

The morning started well with a striped tuna grabbing one of the lures within minutes. This success was short lived as we trolled for another five hours without a bite. Later that afternoon we were back in the area where we caught the small tuna that morning and noticed a lot of bird activity.

Instantly three rods were buzzing out line. Hopes of a yellowfin were dashed when the runs stopped after a few metres. Mitch, Trucky and Johnny fought a trio of 3kg striped tuna to the boat.

I kept the boat idling forward as the lures were let back out. We immediately had another triple hookup with stripies pouncing on the small plastic squids. This action continued for an hour before one of the larger bibless minnows was eaten by a more serious fish. Fifty pound line was running freely off the spool as a powerful fish tried to escape.

Johnny was on the rod and carefully worked the fish back to the boat. With colour starting to show through the clear blue water, the hooks pulled and the rod sprang straight. Johnny groaned with disappointment.

The sun was below Dromedary Mountain indicating about twenty minutes of light left, so we had to leave the fish biting and call it a day. The wind and sea had abated allowing us to enjoy a cold beer on the comfortable trip back to the ramp.

Day 2

We opted on a change in tactics for our second day. Our theory was that we would troll the vicinity where we caught the small tuna the day before until we located the school and then use small cubes of tuna to attract the yellowfin which may be feeding in the same area.

The first part of our plan worked well with frigate mackerel and striped tuna in plague proportions exactly where we left them the night before. Once we hooked a few, we stopped the boat and started feeding cubes of tuna over the side about every fifteen seconds.

We took turns at berleying for the next five hours and apart from attracting two types of dolphin, and feeding every albatross in the Tasman Sea, the sea appeared devoid of tuna.

For the umpteenth time that day, I cut a new bait and fed it mindlessly down the berley trail. Twenty metres from the back of the boat, the line sprang taut and line started pouring off the spool. I reacted instinctively by pushing the lever up to strike and setting the hook.

A slow run indicated that the fish wasn’t a tuna, and more likely a shark. Given that I had no wire trace on, this was probably going to be a short fight. I cranked the drag up and started muscling the fish toward the boat. The shark was not going to come easy and after a few minutes the shark was no closer to the boat, but as it hadn’t bitten me off, I was thinking that perhaps it was hooked outside the mouth and I may be a chance of landing it.

The shark appeared out of the clear depths with its distinctive black eye and electric blue skin, indicative of a Mako. I could see the hook firmly planted in the corner of its mouth and locked up the spool to get the fish within reach of the gaff.

The Mako wasn’t beaten and opened its mouth, allowing the hook to move, and the teeth to slice through the monofilament. It was so close that we could almost taste him (Mako’s are excellent eating).

With an hour to go before dark, we decided to abandon our berley trail and troll for the last hour or so of light.

I pointed the boat back along our berley trail and straight away the frigates and stripies were climbing all over the small lures. A steady stream of fish were coming over the side when Mitch noticed a huge log floating in the water. I positioned the boat so the lures skipped past it and right on cue on of the big skirted lures cracked out of the outrigger. However, the rod barely bent around and no line came off the reel.

Mitch grabbed the road and winched in a 40cm kingfish. A second pass turned up another 40cm kingfish. It was interesting that these small fish were huddled under a log 30km offshore.

From here the frigates and stripies became so thick that you couldn’t get the lures out before they were attacked. We had fun on the small tuna and persisted in the vain hope that a jumbo sized tuna may grab one of the larger lures we had out.

Again the fading light beat us and we left a boiling school of fish to motor home.

Day 3

With limited time on our last day and a strengthening wind on the continental shelf, we chose to spend the morning bottom fishing.

The small leatherjackets that infest the reefs, stealing baits & biting hooks off, were less prevalent than usual, allowing plenty of snapper, morwong and flathead to find our baits. None of the fish we caught that morning were huge but they were plentiful and provided good sport on the light tackle used.

The fishing was that good that it was hard to leave. We kept pushing our departure back and back, and eventually decided at 2.00pm that it was time to pack up as we had a long drive home. It took us a couple of hours to wash the boat down and clean the fish and whilst not ideal, it looked like I was driving home in the dark.

My three companions barely lasted the outskirts of Bermagui before they were asleep. One of them would periodically wake up to see if I was alert before slipping back into a coma. It’s a good thing that the road is challenging, which helps in keeping tiredness away.

We didn’t get our yellowfin, but we caught plenty of other fish to distract us away from this goal. Perhaps a marlin in the Christmas holidays can be our next target.

© Jamin Forbes June 2007