Middle Lagoon - Part one

 

 

We had become a lot more confident in the boat, and we have only MINOR hesitation heading out into blue water.  We are looking for structure around 20metres deep when we heard the thunder.  Thunder ?? Now that didn't make any sense because the sky was clear.

 

Here we are in Middle Lagoon only a couple of hours from Broome towards Cape Leveque, we have running water (boil before drinking was the advice), flushing toilets and hot showers (if you get in before dark).  There was a line of camping sites close to each other in full sun along a ridge looking out over the ocean, or some shady sites with no water views.  As we were here to go fishing we weighed up the options and decided a site with more room and lots of shade was more appropriate for our needs.

 

Campsite Middle Lagoon

 

One of the attractions was the fact you could swim in the beautiful blue turquoise water.  We quickly fell into a daily routine of long days on the boat then enjoyed the freedom to swim when we got back, washing the sweat and fish guts off us.  WHERE are the Crocodiles?

 

The boat is launched off the beach near camp in the Lagoon and this can mean a 10 metre launch or 100 metres depending on the tide.

 

High tide beach launch

Now back to the thunder, the sound was being generated by humpback wales breaching.

Sound of thunder



1st sight of the whales

 

Whales kept coming closer to us

 

 

They were whales all around us, so we chose to stop fishing and drift.  Now our focus was on observing the whales, we found them to be breaching from only 400 metres away and they were in all directions.  When they came back down into the water it truly sounded like thunder.  We had been whale watching in a double hulled Cat out of Hervey Bay previously.  Sitting here in our 3.6 metre tinny on our own with no other boats in sight, the sheer size of the whales was impressive at the same time a little intimidating.   Other whales could be seen slapping their tales or just cruising past.  At times this felt like being on a push bike with a road train going past, way too close for comfort. 

 

 

 

Floating around, we actually heard the whale song.  Until today we thought it was a sonar acoustic sound made for television to make you feel warm and fluffy about nature, but out here it was clear as a bell.  Gene took the opportunity to mark off some potential fishing spots on the sounder as we drifted.

 

 

 

A very inquisitive mother and calf approached us and got to within 50 metres, she was slicing through the water always moving a little closer directly towards us exhaling air explosively through her blowhole.  We decided it was in our best interests to start the engine and move closer to shore

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This is the second day we had tried to catch the elusive Bluebone.  We followed the advice from locals in Broome to float over the structure not anchor up, and use crustations for bait.  We had no trouble loosing our bait, feeding the fish and whilst we did catch a few Bluebone they were all undersize.  We were constantly loosing gear as well, you would drop the line get a couple of nibbles then hold on for dear life as your line spooled off then was gone.  That meant nights around camp re-rigging gear with 100 pound leader, if they were going to fight dirty so were we.  The Bluebone must be pretty tricky and tasty fish because the only large shark we saw, (nearly as big as the shark that circled us at Kalumburu), was one following our line as we hauled a Bluebone into the boat.

 

Bluebone - Back he goes undersize again

 

 

We went back to camp again empty handed however even if we didn't catch any legal size fish at Middle Lagoon the whales were worth the trip.

 

Re-rigging at camp