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Bam'bu Exmouth Trip A small gang of us followed Bam'bu owner dave up to Exmouth for the September fishing and camping trip, there were 4 of us, plus the Irish who were already up there and Dave had about 10 friends who were staying in their house up there. Here's our trip in pictures, we all had a super time and it was great to get out of the Perth cold weather!  We headed off for Exmouth following the hwy north, along with about 100 other big cars and campers. These people were retired and had this awesome rig designed for pure travelling pleasure! It was custom built in Queensland and the owners were making their way around Australia! It was run on diesel and had its own tender car that was in the same color and style. Meanwhile we squeezed into martins busted up Toyota for the 15hr drive up!  We wasted no time getting out on the water - Dave only had 7 days there and he was determined to use every one of them, which suited us fine. We all planned to chip in and share the fuel costs and ice and bait. The first day we went to the Tantabiddy area and drove right over the top of the amazing Ningaloo Reef. It was stunning and the water was pretty warm. The snorkelling was good, but we found lots more fish later on at other places. The Bambu boat was big enough we weren't cramped and could do lots of fishing too.  Sylvio caught the first decent fish - it was a Striped Tuna, which we filleted and had for dinner later on. It was delicious. We caught most of our big fish by trolling lures behind the boat in deep water.  Trolling is actually very boring! We would chug along dangling 4 or 5 lines out the back waiting for something to happen, sometimes it would take 40 mins to get a bite, but on other occasions we couldn't get them in fast enough. Once Dave had found his "Spot" the action was on, 3 times we went through patches of big fish that saw all four reels peeling off line at an amazing rate, and all of landing big fish at the same time, we were amazed how we didn't get our lines tangled. The fish would go crazy one the hooks and sometimes it takes us over 30 minutes to get them alongside, assuming a Tiger Shark didn't hit them on the way up!  Every evening Dave stayed out till the sunset, squeezing in every minute he could to Fish! He's a fishing fanatic and pushed us hard during the week - by the end of the week were exhausted having done 8 - 12hrs a day out on the boat every day for 7 in a row! The sunsets were beautiful, but we all kinda were a bit worried coming in from 80kms out at night on autopilot and not being able to see a thing in front of us, even dave admitted he was worried about hitting a whale on the way home! Apparently though you just bounce over the top of them! Not a nice experience for us and Im sure nor for the whale either! But we didn't hit one and didn't know or hear of anyone else hitting one, during the days but they were everywhere, we saw at least ten pods each day we were out.  Hers the catch from a half day out, some tuna and mackerel.  Everyday was magical and everyday was perfect, here we are coming home, for once before it got dark! The computer on the boat got us around all the coral reefs and dangerous places, it was amazing you could have actually covered the windscreens and driven home surrounded by plastic all the way to the boat ramp inside the marina, it reminded me of flying a light plane on instruments! |
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 When we made the Exmouth Cape we saw lots of anthills, or more accurately termite hills! They were everywhere. These creatures compete for space on the plains. It was lovely warm weather by the time we got here, such an amazing difference to perth but only a long days drive away. From the Gt Northern hwy it was a 200 km drive to the town of Exmouth.  For all of us seeing whales so close was something we could never do at home. It was truly spectacular, Dave would drive up in front of them and they would come and swim and frolic towards us. Some would disappear under water, these ones stayed around and did little displays for us. Often we would see them tilt their heads and eye us off, as curious about us as we were about them. What we really wanted to see but was the Humpback Whales 'Broaching'. This is when they come out of the water in a huge leap, until the last day we could only see it in the distance, they would never do it near the boat.  Dave caught this Yellowfin Tuna, it was a ripper. We froze this one to take back to the Backpackers.  The boys get ready to bring in another nice Tuna. Man we had some Tuna steaks! The bag limit for most Tuna types is 2 per day per angler, and we normally got this early in the afternoon.  Tuna have a lot of blood, its important to keep the flesh nice by bleeding them quickly as soon as you catch them. Our boat was a fish killing machine, we kinda had a factory going at the back, but we didn't waste any fish, and threw more back than we kept. We mostly trolled, as when we line fished we would pull up so many undersize fishes that many would get hurt in the process, and it really wasn't worth traumatising 20 small fish for the odd big one, and anyway it was much more exciting catching big fish!  Heres the one that 'half got away'! It was a massive Spanish Mackeral that Dave hooked and it got bitten in half by a Shark, then to make things worse, Martin accidentally dropped it over the side when he was washing it. Dave wasn't happy!!  It couldn't have been scripted any better - it was our last day out and we were heading back to the marina, in fact we were only a few kms away from the groynes, and we saw 2 whales heading north. Dave steered over and the big fishes went under, like they had so many other times, but he sensed something was up and turned the engines off and we just waited. We couldn't believe it when she came straight up just 20 or so metres away from us, we also couldn't believe it when dave showed us the shot he caught! But I guess that's why he's the National Geographic doco maker and we aren't! Our camers in fact were facing the wrong direction! Thank-you dave and thank -you Bam'bu for what was truly the highlight of our trip to WA! Rock On! Sylv, Marty, Denise, and the gang xx |
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