Day 97 – 13/3/14 – Margaret River – Conto Campground WA

We were up early again, bloody hell that’s 3 days in a row, but this time for a different reason. The boys are heading off for a couple of days of bonding while the ladies are doing a tour of the wineries and shopping.

We (for the next two days ‘we’ shall mean Jack, Sam and I while ‘they’ shall mean De, Nana and Shelby) packed up and headed 30 minutes to the south to a Conto’s Campground in the Leuwin-Naturalist National Park. 

The boys have both recently installed a SAS survival app on their IPods and Sam had learnt how to make a compass using the sun and after just ½ an hour we had successfully found east and west, which I was pretty impressed by.

 In the afternoon we drove down to check out the beach in the hope of me having my first dip in the Indian Ocean. The swell was way to yucky so we decided to do a spot of fishing in the hope of getting another salmon. The beach wasn’t even suited to fishing so we found ourselves a nice safe spot where I could fish and the boys explored the rock pools.

I was using my big surf rod with a slug (metal lure) and I kept of feeling heaviness on the end that I thought might be a fish but everytime I bought it in it was empty. Maybe weed I thought as there was plenty around. After about 20 minutes I managed to land a Herring that the boys were overjoyed about. I had the same heavy feeling a number of times but now I was getting the fish (more herring) right to the edge of the rocks and where they would spit the lure out! This happened about 15 times, I was trying everything I could from really setting the hook to trying smaller hooks but they just kept spitting it out just as they came out of the water. One even made it to the rock I was standing on but managed to escape and bounce down to the ledge below before being saved by the next wave. I was a perplexed, but not to stressed as it was only herring I was losing, so we decided on 5 more casts. Of course with the next one I managed to not only hook a herring but get it all the way to the top of the rocks before it spat its hook! Ahh got ya! On closer inspection I realised that they weren’t spitting the hook it was just that their mouth is so tender that the hook was tearing straight through it once their body weight was on it! Poor buggers there must have been 20 or 30 fish out there who would feel like they just did 10 rounds with Mike Tyson!

It really was a safe spot. They were starting to get a bit sick of waiting for a wave to make a big enough splash!

The boys cleaned the fish and we had them ‘in a bag’, Sam’s favourite, and pizza for dinner before turning in.

‘They’ had been on a tour of a few of the wineries around Margie as well as doing chocky and cheese tasting finishing at a brewery. Don’t know any other details as what goes on tour stays on tour!