Endless Summer Fishing Trip Part 1: Fly Fishing Exmouth Australia

By Peter Cottrell and Rowan Nairn

It was two am back home in South Africa, we hadn't slept in days and were certainly in no state to be casting to a big Giant Trevally (GT) off the front of a moving boat. Our guide, Ian, was unsympathetic to our condition and used some pretty strong language to jolt us into action. Welcome to Australia mate!

48 hours ago and 8 time zones away we were in Johannesburg International at the start of 5 months of fly-fishing around the world. This was the culmination of 12 months of hard planning and a lot of daydreaming and here we were suddenly at the home of the GT and we were totally unprepared for what greeted us.

The destination was Exmouth, a small town in outback Western Australia. Principally a diving town, but in recent years, Ian has discovered it to have among the best sight fishing to GT's in the world. Ian, a straight talking ex-Rhodesian, turned out to be one of the most enthusiastic, demanding and friendly people that we have encountered.

Without him we would have been nowhere. On his suggestion we decided that the basis of the trip was to camp on various islands in the gulf and to explore the different varieties of fishing it had to offer.

The first night found us on an island just meters from the famed "100-pound" point and we were strangely quiet as Ian recounted some of his experiences in the Gulf. After that first fish we were now believers!

The next morning was a good indication of what lay ahead for the next 10 days. After rolling out of the tent at sunrise and catching some kingfish off the reef, Ian calmly suggested that we stop 'messing around' and 'go after some big stuff on the flats' as he deemed the tide to be right.

This flat turned out to be a long thin sand bar approximately 50 meters wide by 600 meters long perched precariously in the middle of the ocean. After anchoring the boat, we naively asked Ian 'what do we look for' and with a wry smile he replied 'No worries mate' and pointed to 2 clearly visible dark shapes cruising the flats not 200 meters from where we were standing. These fish can only be described as busses!

Like clockwork the fish cruised towards us, and seconds later the clouser was riding a bow-wave on the nose of a 20kg plus GT all the way to the rod tip. The hairy eyeball that the fish gave when it turned and casually swam away was the stuff of nightmares. We had not had time to recover before Ian had spotted a shoal of Golden Kingfish, which had suddenly materialized on the flat.

What resulted was a triple hook-up on fish in the 4 to 5 kg mark. The morning continued in this vein until the tide pushed us to the next island to work the beaches. Here we found ourselves walking a deserted beach scanning the gentle swell for signs of fish. It wasn't long before a shoal of Queenfish drifted past not 5 meters from the beach.

These fish can only be described as voracious and it wasn't long before we had had all hooked up in the midst of a massive feeding frenzy. Before we knew it the day had come to and end and we had caught more fish than we had dreamed possible. What a way to start the trip.

On more than one occasion while fishing off the oyster rocks deep in gulf the sight of a 3m Tiger Shark should have kept us away from the outset. However after being bust up by big GT's we paid scant attention to the ever-present Sharks.

The sight of these GT's fighting for the fly was mind-blowing, but to land one of these busses is another story. It was just a privileged to get the opportunity. The endless numbers of Queenfish were often very hard to pass up when the big GT's were absent.

This was much to Ian's displeasure as he often advised us that GT's can appear at the most inconvenient moments. This was sorely pressed home one day when, in a moment of weakness, when we hooked up a nice queenie and a massive GT came to investigate not 10m from where we stood.

No doubt we had a lot of 'I told you so" from Ian for the remainder of the trip. Other memorable fish included the hard fighting spangled emperors that provided much entertainment.

One of the beauties of Exmouth was that there was always somewhere else to fish. If the flats where too deep we could find ourselves burlying up off some deep reefs or making delicate casts in the mangroves for snapper or Sharks.

This obviously made for long days of fishing, buts it's funny how the arm doesn't get tired when there are fish to cast at. It should be noted that it wasn't all plain sailing. The average temperature was 45 degrees and there were biting flies, of many varieties, making a constant menace of themselves.

After a couple of days of this it didn't take much encouragement for us to make a silent but unanimous decision to make the 18 mile boat ride back to Exmouth in the dark. An hour and a half and one roo later we were nursing the first Bundeburg and coke in the only air-conditioned establishment in the town - the pub. These infrequent strategic trips back to Exmouth kept us on the straight and narrow.

The overall experience was above expectations not only because of the unique fishing opportunities but also because of the stark beauty of this remote destination. With the first leg of the trip behind us and 27 species of fish on the fly, including 6 species of Kingfish, we had a tough act to follow.

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