Walpole is a place I have always wanted to see
but never managed to quite get there until a trip in early may saw my wife
Gillian, my son Max and myself finally taking four days off and travelling
down to this beautiful little hamlet. Many of my customers have been to
Walpole and there are always plenty of stories told about massive black bream
in the estuary systems that Walpole lies on.
We arrived at Coal Mine Beach caravan late on a
Monday afternoon, unfortunately you cant check into this park prior to 2pm,
which saw a whole days fishing wasted. Not to worry we had until Thursday
night to get back home for work on Friday.
Our plans for the trip were to fish the Franklin
River and the other tributaries that flow into the Nornalup inlet chasing
black bream and what else might jump on our hooks. Also I wanted to spend some
time exploring the sandbars that encompass the entrance to the inlet from the
ocean. Skippy rock in particular was a place I wanted to fish as both Gillian
and myself have heard many stories of massive Skippy near the rocky outcrop.
Tuesday morning and the boat is already moored just
up from the rangers house at Coal Mine Beach, the clouds started rolling
through as you would expect for the south coast this time of year and sure
enough within and hour the heavens opened, fortunately for us we had already
made our way up the Franklin which pours into the southern end of the inlet.
Just getting into the Franklin is a feat in itself, I was thankful my boat is
only 4.1mts long and has a fairly shallow draught allowing easy movement in
shallow water.
The entrance to the Franklin is very shallow, in
fact there is only one small channel that itself is no more that 60cm deep in
its shallowest spot. On the left as you enter the river there is a large
shallow bar, apparently early in the morning and late afternoons big bream
filter out of there snaggy haunts further up river and onto these shallow
banks to feed. My plans however were to explore further up the Franklin and
fish the snags. The further up this river you go and we didn’t go that far
the more pristine it becomes. The karri forest borders the river and it really
is an experience in itself just to see virgin karri forest that still looks
untouched.
We motored up to a bridge that crossed the river
and tied up underneath to avoid the rain for a while and wet a line. Plenty of
bream there but nothing that we caught was even close to being considered
reasonable.
The rain finally settled and we kept moving
upriver, soon came across Nornalup townsite that borders the river. Just on
the outskirts of the township I sounded around a snag that looked very fishy
and was surprised to see the depth drop from 2.5 to 9metres. This looked
promising and over the next hour we caught and released over twenty fish
averaging 600-700grams.
Great session but still no fish in the kilo plus category, I was
starting to think I should have fished the entrance to the river on dawn for
the potential monster bream. Not to be I would have to be happy with some fun
on small fish.
That afternoon back at camp we decided to go over
the channel
that leads out to the ocean and have a look at Skippy rock.
The beauty of the Nornalup Inlet is that all the rivers and channels
that feed it are within five kilometres of each other so a quick change of
plan is no hassle.
Heading over to the channel was a little bumpy, the
southern ocean was whipping up a cold southerly wind and it had a bite. Still
the huge sand dunes that border the inlet near the entrance to the ocean provide
a surprising amount of shelter and lead to a reasonable ride in our small boat.
Navigating the bars that lead out to the entrance is a hazard but a bit of
common sense and you will have no problem. The channels leading from the inlet
start quite shallow but as you get closer to the entrance they cut deep gutters,
crystal clear water bordered by shallow sand bars. The professional salmon
fisherman had a camp set up near the entrance but didn’t seem to be doing
much, probably due to the wind outside. As you head around past the salmon camp
the water literally laps the dunes and the water has cut deep channels that drop
instantly from the surface to over five metres. Skippy rock lies opposite the
salmon camp and is a large outcrop of rock.
The main channel to the ocean flows right to this rock and it drops to
over 7metres in one spot, this is what we had come for. The hole in front of the
rock would be only twenty metres wide and it’s incredible to see the sheer
drop from the sand bar straight down. The water is some of the clearest I have
seen and it just smells fish.
We dropped the anchor on the sand bar and drifted
just on the edge of the drop off facing Skippy rock, berleyed up and threw out
two rigs both baited with whole whitebait on small gang hooks. A number two or
three ball sinker is required here as the current fairly pumps threw here.
Within thirty seconds I hooked up and was totally
unprepared for it. The fish bolted straight for the sharp rocks that line the
bottom of Skippy rock and busted me up. I had little chance of stopping it on
the 3 kilo line I was using.
Re-rigged and cast out to have the
same thing happen again. this was frustrating, these Skippy must be bruisers I
was thinking. I upgraded my leader to 10kilo and the following cast hooked up to
and landed a Skippy of about 800grams. Gillian had already landed two fish of
around a kilo by this time and things were not looking to good for me. As the
tide was starting to change soon after we got there we noticed a series of
eddies forming on the edge of the bank. I decided to try my luck casting on the
edge away from the razor edge rocks over the other side.
I had a hit and once again this fish was screaming
line off my reel, although this time instead of heading into the rocks he moved
onto the shallow bank and burnt at least 50metres of line off my spool. I
managed to pump back half the line before he decided I was no match and broke me
off AGAIN!!!!!
Gillian was having a ball at the
other end of the boat landing the biggest silver bream I have seen for a long
time. We headed back to camp just before dusk and decided to try again the
following day. I headed over to the rock at dawn the next morning set up and
waited. No joy for the first half hour then managed to land a few reasonable
Skippy but nothing to write home about. A few moments later a couple of old boys
motored over anchored up and on the first cast nailed a big Skippy that was
tearing line off his spool. Within five minutes he landed a beautiful fish every
bit of 2kilos. Typical I thought to myself I’d been sitting there for near an
hour with only a couple of small fish for my efforts and these guys come in and
nail a ripper.
We decided to head back out for our last session
later that afternoon and were rewarded with one Skippy of around 1.5kilos, a
swag a big silver bream, two black bream of around a kilo a piece and a dozen or
so other Skippy to 800grams.
The end of our trip had come. We didn’t see all
we wanted to but experienced some great fishing in a special spot that I will
definitely return to in the future..
