Scaly at Ningaloo Station

It’s that time of the year again when the freezing cold fronts start descending on Fremantle, The Scaly Team get ready to head North. We were headed to Ningaloo station which is a sheep station located in the Gascoyne region of WA which also boarders the Cape Range National Park.

The long beautiful 14 hour drive starts at 3am with both cars arriving at the unit to grab two 14ft Dinghy’s loaded up with camping gear and fire wood to last the week. After 12 hours of Asphalt top driving we are met with muddy red dirt the Ningaloo Station track has to offer after a large downfall. Camp was set up and it was time to relax.

There is something really special about putting your mates who haven’t fished onto some really good fish. We caught a lot of species such as Spanish Mackerel, Cobia, Long nose Emperors, Job Fish and many more. The amount of tackle lost to sharks is just ridiculous but now part of the game when fishing these waters. Squid were everywhere which acted as a nice filler to many meals throughout the week, however it seems much harder to come across any Painted Crays.

Our good mates at Gage Roads were keeping us refreshed throughout the week so thank you Jamie. We managed to grab a lot of content for our upcoming Winter releases, which will feature Polar Fleeces, 1/4 Zips, Carpenter Pants, Caps and heaps more.

The highlight of the trip came on the last day, a quick dive at South Lefroy Bay saw us swimming with a massive Queensland Grouper. The size of this animal was just incredible, and we were lucky enough to be about 2m away from it as it glided through the crystal clear water. The rest of the afternoon was amazing, the strong morning Easterly started to feather down so we decided to head out behind the Fizz and fish the deeper water. We landed some tasty fish such as Goldband Snapper, Tomato Cod, Spangle Emperors and many more. As the afternoon was coming to an end we chucked some skirts out the back incase there were any Pelagic’s hitting the bait balls we often came across on our way in. We were about 2km from the Channel back to inside the reef as we were trolling past 2 boats when we hooked onto a Blue Marlin. After a 5 minute struggle the Marlin finally got the better of us on light gear, but will be a memory we all head back home with.

What a trip!