ROCK FISHING
Dedicated rockhopper DARRIN CLARKE likes to take his fishing to the edge – literally. Images by SHANE CHALKER.
DAD had already told me we had to go about five times. Every time I begged him to let me have one more cast. My last five crabs had been hit so hard that it felt like someone was bashing them with a baseball bat. Back then my thinking was that big fish need big hooks. That’s probably why I kept missing the fish. I was using an Alvey and the drag was set so tight that I couldn’t pull any 50lb line off it by hand. The sidecast was mated to a standard beach rod and a 4oz snapper lead below an 8/0 long shank. The bait was one of those big purple crabs you find around the high tide mark. I’d never caught a big blue groper before but I was sure this was my time. I knew there was a massive one out there from the power I had felt in the previous hits. This last crab was my final throw of the dice. My bait landed in the exact same spot again. I didn’t even feel a bite. All of a sudden I was hanging on with my rod doubled over and my knees beginning to buckle. An intense rush of fear swept over me – I was about to get pulled in. I was 15 but looked 12. My Dad and my bro Dave grabbed hold me as five metres of line peeled off my locked-up Alvey. Then the fish’s head turned and I started cranking with my Dad and brother hanging onto me yelling encouragement. Then I got my first glimpse of what was the biggest fish I’d ever seen apart from on TV. Adrenalin got the fish to my feet. We were all screaming as that eight-kilo bluey washed up over the ledge. I’d never before had such a feeling of absolute euphoria. It was the first time I had ever sworn in front of my Dad without getting into trouble.
More than a quarter of a century later and that spot still has heaps of big groper, snapper, bream, pigs tailor and kings. No one ever goes there. The walk in and out is just ridiculous. It takes ages to get there through the bush over a steep mountain. The walk back during summer is a killer. It’s a place that I love and dread going to at the same time. There are other spots where I get big blues but the fish are harder to find because these rocks have more fishing pressure on them. Just about every spot I fish has a decent walk in and out. I worked out long ago that the harder a spot is to get to, the better it is. I haven’t been to heaps of these spots in years. I have some other spots now. Spots that no one ever fishes apart from me and occasionally a mate or two. At these rocks I can expect at least one bluey to either reef me, snap me off or get landed every time I go. I expect them because the spots are unfished and every big groper I catch swims away. The best things about these spots is they are only a five-minute drive from home, there is no long walk and they are the most productive rocks I’ve ever been to. But like most things that sound too good to be true there is a catch.
A reef about 200m off my local beach was where it all began. It’s only ever out of the water at low tide when there’s no swell. My mate Jase told me how he used to paddle out there on a boogie board with his rod and tackle and clean up on bream and blackfish back when he was a teenager. It looked awesome. I knew there had to be heaps of groper out there. On the first flat day after Jase told me about it I paddled out alone on my surfboard. I had my rod tied to the leg rope and all my gear in a backpack on my shoulders. Standing on the reef for the first time was such a buzz. I rigged up then started searching for crabs but they were hard to find. There was no red weed and no red crabs. Even though I only found five of those green/grey crabs with the real hard shells and four sea urchins I still was sure the rock was going to produce.
I’ve lost heaps of groper over the years. I’ve had rods busted, reels destroyed, hooks straightened and 60lb line snapped with ease. I realised a long time ago that “come here” gear is required to have a half a chance. I was using an ABU 10000c spooled with 60 on a FSU 6120 rod. Grunt plus. The rig was a paternoster with a two-ounce snapper lead and a 5/0 suicide. I walked to the edge and trod on the urchins lightly till their shells only just cracked and threw them in. Nothing pumps up a groper like the smell of an urchin. After using four crabs I had caught three brown groper of two, four and seven kilos and lost one. The place was on fire. I had one crab left and intended to try to find more soon as I’d used it. I chucked out about three metres and let it sink to the bottom. I felt it getting smashed and could tell by the crunching power that it was a big groper so I really threw my shoulders into the strike, hooked up solidly and instantly felt that same rush of fear that I first got when I was 15. There’s no other feeling like it. Nothing was going to stop this fish and something had to give. As it turned out it was my reel’s anti-reverse. It snapped and my reel started winding backwards. I guess it just wasn’t designed to take that sort of locked-up pressure. If it didn’t break, my line would have because I had the drag set too tight. I usually have it set so line can only just pull off under maximum pressure so a big fish can possibly take a metre or two but not today. I’m not sure why I didn’t check it. Maybe I was just too keen to get my line in the water. I jammed my hand into the side of the reel and somehow managed to stop the handle spinning and turned the fish. I knew it was massive. It took another big lunge and I just let my reel wind backwards with it and then I managed to turn it again. As it came up it looked huge and its bright blue colouring was real eye candy. I washed it over the edge and jumped for joy. It was the biggest groper that I had ever seen. I released the other three and kept it, not only to weigh in, but also to show off. That’s something I’d never do now. Don’t get me wrong – I still like to show off. But these days I do it with pics, which is heaps more satisfying than killing a big breeder. Paddling in was a bit freaky. I had the fish and my rod tied to my leggy. The paddle in is over sand bottom with the odd rock here and there. The weight of the fish would stretch my leg rope to the point that I would get this feeling that I was being pulled backwards and then my leggy would spring back and loosen off. This happened all of the way in. It was a unique experience, especially when I felt the sensation of being pulled backwards straight after paddling over a big grey rock that I wasn’t entirely sure was a rock… The groper weighed 13.5 kilos and although I’m sure I’ve hooked bigger it is still the largest I’ve ever seen.
From then on I was paddling out any chance I got. I ’m sure I looked like a bit of a tool walking through all of the beach goers with my rods, backpack, surfboard and shoes but I didn’t care. There were days when surface fish were feeding on bait between the beach and the reef. My heart would pump hard while paddling out on those days. Mother Nature didn’t allow me to get out there that often so no school of fish was going to keep me on the shore and the way I saw it, if there were any sharks they would hopefully feed on all the fish instead of me. I was catching heaps of blues and bream. Life was good.
I was always looking for a challenge and started looking further out to sea. There’s another rock about a kilometre further out that looked insane. Just a small rock about 20m across with deep water straight off it. When the warm currents hit it, bait showers around it and all sorts of things turn up. Anything from cobia, sharks and tuna to kings, snapper and jews had been caught directly off it by boat. Even the odd marlin had been caught close to it. I had to somehow get on that rock. I just wasn’t sure how.
A kayak was an option but I didn’t have one so I convinced a mate to try to get his 10-foot tinny onto the back of it. We headed out but we couldn’t get on. Even though there was only a foot of swell the water rushing around the back of it made it too dangerous to attempt. I was disappointed but not beaten. I just needed to find another way. It was too far to paddle to from shore but I also knew paddling on was the only way. I realised that I had to jump out of a boat. A couple of days later my mate rang and asked me if I wanted go out with him in his boat chasing kings. This was my chance and I grabbed it by the balls. I turned up at the ramp with my board and told him what I wanted to do. He was cool with it. He got his boat fairly close to the rock and I jumped out with my board and paddled on. I stood on the rock and looked around, feeling a real sense of achievement. I had been dreaming of standing there for years. The first time I put my hand into the plentiful red weed I pulled out three red crabs. They were everywhere. I put my TLD in free spool and dropped my first crab off the edge. It sank 20m straight down and soon as it hit the bottom it started getting big thumps. The first two groper were around five kilos. More big thumps and I hooked up and struggled to pull in a 10-kilo fish that was still brown. I remember thinking that if the browns were that big the blues had to be enormous. My suspicions were confirmed a few minutes later when I hooked a monster that headed straight into the reef. There was nothing I could do. I just couldn’t stop it. That monumental bust-up topped off my first groper session on that little rock. I’d released the three browns but was still slightly nervous paddling back out to the boat through deep water smelling a bit like a big fish. Since then trips out to that rock have been few and far between. Work and family commitments keep me busy and the fact that I don’t have my own boat doesn’t help. I rely on my mates to be available when I am but the weather is the most important factor. There’ve been perfect days where my mates were busy. On some of those days I was desperate to fish it and even considered going to the ramp with my board and hitch hiking out there. I’d be lucky to get onto it more than three times every summer. My mates take me out and usually fish from the boat while I fish on the rock. People ask why I do what I do and not just fish from the boat. My answer is simple. There is nothing like it. In my opinion, catching a big fish from a rock is 10 times more satisfying than the same big fish from a boat.
The most important thing I’ve learnt is to never attempt paddling onto anything if there is any swell. This I learnt the hard way. I tried to time getting up onto the rock with this swell that I was hoping to wash me on but had a shocker. I didn ’t quite make it far enough on and was washed off backwards. I fell off my board and my bag filled up. Before I knew it I was about two metres below the rock I intended to be on with tonnes of water pouring off it onto me. I managed to get hold of my board and scream out to my mate who couldn’t hear me because he was already heading out to the front. I ended up getting washed onto the back of the rock with no control over how I got there. I quickly scrambled up to the highest point and sussed it for less than a minute before a wave started jacking up. I thought it was going to break right on me. I breathed a sigh of relief when it passed over the rock about knee deep without breaking. After that I tipped the water out of my bag and jumped straight back off and paddled away from the danger zone as fast as I could to the boat. Watching a decent swell coming straight at me with nowhere to run was just as frightening as getting washed off backwards. I shat myself twice in two minutes. I should’ve realised it was hopeless beforehand but the swell just didn’t look as big to me as it actually was. I should have spent more time watching it close up before jumping out of the boat. Luckily for me I learnt from that mistake instead of getting hurt or even killed. These days I won’t attempt anything unless there is minimal swell, the tide is low and the swell forecast from coastalwatch.com.au or seabreeze.com.au doesn’t predict an increase. I watch the conditions as the tide rises and as soon as the water looks like it’s getting close to coming over the top I leave. It’s just not worth risking my gear being washed away when that first wave comes over the top.
Any swell above two foot is a trip-stopping problem. So is high tide. But there is also a good problem with this rock. It has too many options. It’s the sort of place where you wish you could be 10 different people at once. One of me could fish for groper, another three for bream, pigs and snapper, another four chucking plastics, minnows, poppers and steelies and the final two livebaiting on the surface and down deep. There are so many things that I want to try out there and I’ve only just scratched the surface. We have a system where I drag on livies in a bait drum by rope. You can catch yakkas and slimies from the rock but while I’m on it I don’t want to waste time catching bait. When I’m out there I usually set out a livey on one rod while chasing groper on another. Groper are pretty much a sure thing on the rock and there is no feeling like those first few seconds of a hook-up with a big bluey, hoping the fish breaks before anything else does. I love their raw power.
I’ve fished a few other rocks up and down the coast now and had success everywhere I’ve tried. I’m forever scanning the horizon for new possibilities. I’ve identified plenty of rocks that look like they could be even better than my little slice of heaven. I like to hunt for potential hot spots on Google Earth and dare to imagine …
