Hatching Hat Head kayak fishing plans

Author: josh

Category: Trip Reports

Created on Wednesday, 19 January 2011 15:52

Written by Josh

While the weather has cleared up - for the time being at least - the water around here in Nth NSW is still pretty murky. I'm not liking what I'm hearing about potential contamination from flood waters that have washed into the ocean so I'm not terribly keen on even attempting to find fish here right now. The situation is even worse up north of here of course, so with a few days to spare and a desperate need to go kayak fishing, it follows that one must head south... South West Rocks in fact... or to be more precise in this instance, Hat Head, just south of South West Rocks (this sentence brought to you by the word 'south'). 

The thought of spending an over-priced $52 per night for a sardine-size and shaped camp-site crammed in amongst others really didn't appeal to me, so I decided against staying at the popular SWR camping grounds. There is a couple of places to stay at Hat Head, though the more I google-earthed the surrounding coastline the more an alternative option became apparent, inspiring me to establish a fall-back Plan B in case things don't turn out ideally. 

Launching from Hat Head, the plan is to sail some 15km northwards to Fish Rock, kick-ass, chew bubble gum and then head on back. In a perfect fishing world, I'll reach my destination, catch the prize fish and be back in time for corn flakes. If winds hold true to predictions I should be able to reach my mark and then return in the same day. But if I arrive at Fish Rock later rather than sooner, or it takes more time and effort to catch the fish I'm looking for and my return trip (in whatever daylight time I have left) looks risky I'll simply resort to plan B; pull up a small discreet patch of beach where I can hole up for the night. To this end I've located a small cranny of coastline with a protected beach. Just 4km further to the nth east it's within reasonable proximity to Fish Rock. This is where I'll head if plan B goes into effect. It also means that I'm going to have to carry my camping gear with me on the kayak just in case I don't make it back to civilization.

It's a pretty small stretch of beach (which I'm hoping to not have to share with any beached whales like this one I found here on Google Earth) that I may very well have difficulty finding anything other than sloped ground to pitch a tent on. Because of this I'm also packing the Wilderness Equipment Overhang shelter just in case I have to resort to sleeping on the tramp, which may very well happen. Using the mast as the primary height pitching point, I'll then just peg the rest of the shelter out over the tramp to keep it protected from rain. Lets hope I have to resort to plan B to see how it turns out!