Exploring New Ground - Fishing Airlie Beach
For a very long time it’s been a dream of mine to start travelling Australia at a young age, and last week I got a little closer to that dream by packing my stuff & moving to Airlie Beach with my Girlfriend & two best mates to live, party & explore for the next year. After a few days settling in, today I finally got to get out and do some fishing around the area. We made our way down to a small isolated beach with a few different rods & a handful of lures, not really knowing what to expect.
After a small walk through the bush, crystal clear waters, blue skies and endless exploring opportunities greeted us as we came onto the beach. We were very excited see what the afternoon was going to offer!!
It didn’t take long for us to stumble across our first bit of marine life… some good sized squid. As we made our way along the headland, we spotted a school sitting right on top of a bommie, we could tell they were squid as they were changing colours as they drifted back and fourth across the top of the bommie. Oak put one cast in and landed this beautify straight away. Unfortunately, after we landed one the rest of the school moved on. Check out the colours though 😍😍
We continued on our way, continuously excited to see what was around the next corner. We eventually reached a point were the tide was hitting hard enough to create a back eddie. We threw poppers, stickbaits, vibes, sub surface your mane it, until eventually we chucked on a small plastic & starting hopping it around the bommies. Within a few casts we were both on!
You can tell by the photo below the pure excitement I got of finally landing a fish after a few hours, especially that fact that it was a species I’d never caught before. These little guys are called Sand Bass, they are a close relative to barramundi (reason being why they look so similar) however, these guys only grow to about 40cm in length. Although they were only small, we were both still stoked to land one, as neither of us have ever caught one. Any bending is good bending in my opinion!!
Fishing bommies around rocky headlands with either weed or coral coverage is your best spot to target sand bass. They are such a unique little fish! 👌🏽
We continued to fish the points & bays all afternoon, managing to land a few small cod on the way, it wouldn’t be fishing without catching at least one cod right! As we made owe way back to the beach we were blessed with an incredible sunset. The sunsets up here have been amazing most afternoons, this one not disappointing either… Have a go at it!! 🌅
All in all this was a super fun and exciting afternoon, although we didn’t manage to catch the fish we were hoping. Like people say, its not always about the fish you catch but the places fishing takes you and this is a perfect example of that!! I hope you enjoyed this weeks SCF write up, but unfortunately over the time this video was filmed to the time you got to see it, my circumstances have changed and I will no longer be producing films regularly. This won’t be the last you see of me though, as I will continue to film as much as I can on my time off!! 🍻🎣
Watch the video below to see exactly how the afternoon unfolded!