Man Vs Wild - Great Grey Sub style!

Wow what an interesting experience. When many people see our beloved WP they think of the beautiful bluewater and the fast currents that dominate the eastern and northern arms, where many a gummy, snapper and whiting can be found. The area from Tenby Pt-Lang Lang and above provide a stark contrast to this.......

Arriving at 6.30 with Dad we drove up and down the road at Jam Jerrup making sure this was the place cheaterparts (Stephen from VYak) had told us about. Turns out it was, as he arrived about half an hour later than us. In this half an hour we had managed to unload and had started the walk out across about 600m of quicksand and mud to the water's edge. Almost dead low tide is not the time to be launching here. I was taking a step, sinking to the knee and above, moving the kayak forward and supporting my weight with it to take another step, then repeating the process. It took about 40 minutes to walk 600m. I thought Dad was about to keel over and die! Of course when cheaterpants arrived with Di (His wife), he was far better set up than us, with a great pneumatic wheel setup that took them half the way, then they knew which path to stick to and managed to launch just after us. This was where the bad part of the day ended (The walk!), and the good part began.

We paddled out for a bit until we were in about 1.5m of water. It was basically dead low so I got the rods set up. Cheaterparts, Di and I watched with amusement as Dad's first run (With the culprit likely to be a big black ray a.k.a "The Sofa") sytematically tore him to shreds before spitting the hook some hundred metres or so away from the boat. Then the action started as the tide began its run in. My first rod was sent out with half a squid head and while I was setting up my other one I had the telltale tap-tap-tap of a gummy loading up and soon it was game on. A healthy 3 foot specimin became my first gummy in the yak.

Then Di (On a light rod with a prawn for bait I believe) hooked up to a gummy, and by the sounds of it also hooked on to numerous other lines! It all went ballistic in their canoe as cheaterpants then proceeded to make it a double hook-up. One keeper, one just under for them. Not to be outdone, Dad then also hooked and landed a nice keeper gumbo.

This was all in the space of about 5 minutes and I had just set both my rods up for the first time when one started to load up again. I waited to feel the full weight of the gummy and struck, and within seconds I had lost about 50m of line. Characteristically, it then headed straight back for the kayak and dug deep for about 30 seconds then took off on another blistering run. The phrase "You're gonna need a bigger boat" did pop into my head more than once. While this was happening, my other rod also loaded up and on its run (And in the massive confusion now!) it broke off. Probably a good thing as the first one was dragging me around enough! I finally got it back to the kayak and tried to grab it. Not being able to reach the tail I grabbed the dorsal fin. Oops. It took off again, making its third massive run before eventually being brought back to the side of the kayak. I grabbed the tail and the fight was over.... Or so I thought. I could not hold this beast still, and it rolled in my arms and kicked its tail. One end of my paddle (Which was 'safely' tied to the side of the yak) got caught in the current, went vertical and threatened to take off. As the Great Grey Sub thrashed around in my arms it also kicked my bait bucket overboard. By the time the very very nice man that is cheaterpants had up anchored and retrieved it, the bucket was probably 500m closer to Warneet!

I dispatched a very angry gummy then shoved it into the rear storage hatch, where it struggled to fit (It was probably a smidge under 4 foot). A very good feeling. I had unfortunately no leader material left so could not rig up my line the other gummy had broken so was fishing with one rod. Dad in the meantime had caught a couple of good sized elephants which were released to fight another day, possibly because elephant fish are the devil.



The fishing slowed down as the tide came in (Probably moving in closer to feed on more crabs as the exposed banks were being covered) and we moved nearer to shore. Not much action here, so cheater and Di headed towards Lang Lang and Dad and I headed closer in, where Dad caught another gummy. Two each for us, so we called it a day. As we got in to shore, Dad saw that the tide was still a fair way out and with a "No way I'm walking through that again" headed back out to soak some more baits. I headed in, packed up and put the kayak on the roof. Then I enjoyed a tepid coffee from our increasingly unreliable thermose.

Shortly after, Dad, cheater and Di came back in. Cheater had caught another nice gummy and they were off to Morningto to stock up on some more squid for bait. We headed back in to wash the kayaks and have some hotter coffee. Below is Dad posing with a couple of the better specimens from the day.


In the wash up - If you want a gummy from a kayak, you could go to a lot of worse places than this, but make sure you go on a tide that is at least half in, and I suggest fishing the outgoing on a channel edge and the banks as the tide rises.