The Eyre Peninsula: South Australia’s Fishing and Seafood Frontier

On Sat the 1st March at 2pm on GO there is an Encore Screening of my epic Jewfish mission into the Great Australian Bight; pencil that in.

But note that for variety of fish and ease of travelling and accommodation, the Eyre Peninsula represents a better option for most anglers and seafood lovers.

Every time I go to the Eyre Peninsula I am gob smacked by the piscatorial delights on offer, here’s a brief diary of what happened on my last visit.

Things kicked off proper when we boarded REX Airlines on the Adelaide to Port Lincoln Leg of the flight schedule.   Suburban Adelaide disappears behind shortly after takeoff as you cross the wonderful Gulf of St Vincent and then not long after the York Peninsula grows on the Horizon.  After that is the mighty Spencer Gulf, the larger of the two gulfs, and this makes the goose bumps grow further.  You see to a die-hard fisho like me the massive shallow fertile upper reaches of these Gulfs immediately  means rich fields for fish recruitment-and indeed many of the whoppers start their life here; the snapper, king George whiting, squid cuttlefish etc-this is their spawning and nursery grounds.
 
We then took in the sights of the Sir Joseph Banks Islands; these are towards the bottom of Spencer Gulf: it’s starting to get deeper by now, amongst the islands is Dangerous Reef, famous for Great White Shark Scientific Studies and Docos.

Finally comes the jewel in the Crown: Port Lincoln.  This stunning satellite seafood city is at the southern Tip of the Eyre Peninsula and is surrounded by 3 massive waterways: Spencer’s Gulf to the east, the Southern Ocean to the South, and the Great Australian Bight to the West.  Few places have such vast and iconic waterways nearby: it’s like Neptune has walked up onto the beach and put up a big sign: “Fishos and Seafood lovers-STOP HERE!”

There’s was range of accommodation on offer from Budget to 5 star, we stayed in the holiday park on Boston Bay, one of the largest natural Harbours in the world.

The locals were catching squid and king George whiting off the holiday park jetty, and there is a boat ramp near by-the place bustles in summer, but note that the calmest seas for heading further offshore come in two to four day long spurts between the cold fronts in Autumn and Winter.

There is also plenty of high end accommodation to choose from. For example the many executive apartments on the Marina: we had a peek in the ones right on the up market Monterey Drive… NICE!  There is also the Iconic Port Lincoln Hotel which is the largest flashiest place in town, with wonderful gourmet chefs, room service…the lot.

First morning was calm so we boated 90 min east into the middle of the Spencer Gulf, we were just to the south of the Sir Joseph Banks Group.   .   

Our skipper Michael Dodd from Port Lincoln Charters is veteran of the area, and helped me with the fishing side of my first book.   We were soon into the ‘rugger’ snapper-perfect eating size at about 1-2 kilos. Doddy and I regularly catch us the giant 20 pound plus snapper in this area, but this session we wanted a school shark and we got some good ones including Doddys superb 1.5 meter male specimen-a prized fighting and table fish.

Much of our success on this trip was due to the fact that we booked Doddy for 4 days.  On the calm days we went well out to sea, on the windier days he took us inshore for whiting and squid, or to the surf beaches. 

I’ve run out of room for now, but watch this space, next week I’ll pick up our adventure with the main event, deep sea fishing in the great southern ocean.

See you on the water.
Rob Paxevanos,
Author Australian Fishing Basics