Day 110 - Fishing in Shark Bay

Hi everybody, I hope you're all well. I'm not, as I think I may have poisoned my knee, but I'll get to that later.

So today, I managed to get myself on a fishing charter, to go out into Shark Bay. Although the water wasn't totally flat, like the day before we did manage to go out. So we were using pretty big rods, with 2 hooks in each, and I didn't realise why, until we starting putting whiting heads on the hooks. It only took about 30 seconds for me to get my first snapper in, a small 56 cm one, and then 2 minutes later I'd double hooked 2 more. Things then went a little quiet for a while, as we started to catch smaller ones, around 45cm. After our 4th location change, we hit the big time. Seriously, I could drop my bait in, and let it go down about 2 foot, and then you'd see about 100 snapper swimming around the bait. Absolutely crazy. I managed to beat my first fish, and get in a 68cm one, but in the process I got stabbed twice by his spines. Funny, in WA, you're only allowed to keep 1 snapper. I don't know why with that many in the water.

It didn't take long for everyone to catch their "big one", and once complete, we moved to a location to about 20 kms from shore, but only 4 metres deep to fish for mackeral. Now I don't think I've ever caught one of these before, but with smaller rods, no sinkers and a full Muley (pilchard) on the hook, it became lots of fun. God they can take the bait and run.

Oh, and to top it all off, and this is for Drew, Babba and Lance, I managed to all get in trouble with Toadfish. Now, these are the king toadfish of all toadfish. They're about 2 foot long, and 2kg in weight. See below for a picture. Still bloody horrible fish, and still get treated the same way, killed and then thrown back in.

So I finished the fishing, and after changes clothes are smells, I headed off to Monkey Mia Resort. Although where I'm staying it's not a resort, but a hostel. And this is where my troubles started. When catching that big snapper I got stabbed in the knee, and it looks like my knee is really sore now. I have trouble walking, especially up and down stairs which I need to do. Hopefully it'll fade away overnight, otherwise I might not be able to walk to the dolphins. Damn those fish spikes!!

Snapper

Mackeral

King Toadfish