Yeagerup Fishing Trip (Pemberton)

Phew! That was fun :-)
Neet and I havent had the chance to head to this spot before as it is part of a National Park and for some unknown reason they won't let Boss visit national parks :-(
However a good mate (Cheers GT) volunteer'd to watch the house and doggy sit Boss!

Da Crew we were with make the pilgrimage down there every year, the week after Easter, to avoid the crowds and get some fishing in before the end of the Salmon season. We were very happy to join them.

The spot we were heading is near the mouth of the Warren River called Yeagerup Beach. It is part of the D'Entrecasteaux National Park which covers 118,000 hectares of forests, lakes, woodlands, and dunes. Most of it is accessible only by 4wd, and certainly you'd never get anywhere near where we were without one :-)
You need to have a pass for the park in case a ranger spots you there. They also charge you for camping there, not much though and it goes towards maintaining the park and facilities.

You enter the tracks to the beach through the forest and past Yeagerup lake. Its lovely, with tree's overhanging the dark sand track. Then all of a sudden you see the huge dune system which is slowly swallowing up the forest. The dunes are big, I mean BIG. Not terribly hard going (with about 15psi in the tyres). They've put up posts across the most open part of the dunes so you know where to go. Once you hit the beach (takes a while going through the forest and dunes) its a wide and reasonably hard beach. It had rained a little since the Easter crowds had been there which helped. You could easily have done 100km/h down the beach (which Mark almost proved in his Disco :-) - he got to 95km/hr)

Just before we left for the trip I rigged up another small mod. Hanging under the fishing rods, above the esky in an unused space I hooked up some hanging space. Makes packing and accessing coats and clothes a heck of a lot easier. Needs to be improved but the trip proved the concept has merit.

Neet and I headed down there on Thursday, a day ahead of the rest of the crew, and had a quiet camp on the beach.

The new swingaway kitchen worked brilliantly. There's some small mod's needed, but that was to be expected. Its the first time out we've used it. It stood up the the 4wd'ing well!

The trip there was fairly uneventful except.... A truck threw up a stone and smashed our rear side window!!!! The repairs I did at the side of the road lasted the trip. I'd really like to just block out the window rather than replace it, but we'll see what the panel beater says (the other side needs some work too anyway)

The weather was at best average. A bit windy and a bit of drizzle, till late Saturday night/early Sunday morning when the heavens opened up and threw everything it had at us. The boys in their swags got saturated.

The fishing was crappy Thursday (just a few herring to show for several hours), and even Friday night, but Saturday morning.... It went off! I was woken by the shouts from one of the boys. I scrambled out of bed as quick as I could and hit the beach with my rod in hand. On the first (might have been second) cast I was on! Do I look happy about that? You becha :-) thats a personal best fish for me!

I ended up catching 9 herring, 2 big and one small salmon. We ate fresh salmon steak sandwiches for dinner that night :-)

There weren't many people on the beach on Thursday, but by Saturday there were quite a few. The rain set in on Sunday though and by mid morning we were the last ones on the beach and already packing to make a hasty exit. Neet and I were done and ready to bail in 15 mins so we headed into Pemberton ahead of the rest of the crew so we'd have first pick at the bakery :-) which was closed :-(

We had a little drama on the way back through the dunes, I took a run at one of the big dunes but didn't notice the dip just before the start of the hill. Hit that at a fair speed and gave the van a hell of a wack! It got a little airborne. It made a heck of a dent in the bash plates, and pretty much everything inside moved in one direction or another. Luckily mine's not a diesel! There's nothing under there to get damaged. Thats the advantage of using steel rather than aluminium for the bashplates. I can just beat it back into shape with a hammer (and weld some nice thick 10mm strap to it for extra strength ;-) just in case I do it again one day).

Mark also had some drama rolling a couple of tyres off their rims on the way back.
Thanks again to Mark for the invite, and Neil, Fiona, Andy, Andre, Bradley, Glyn, Pete, and a bunch of short people for a great time and good company :-)

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