A three-day search along the Albany coast for West Australian salmon turned into chaos on the final cast for the Northern Addicts crew, with a thick school of fish rolling onto the beach at one of the region's most famous land-based shore venues just as the team prepared to pack up.
The session started with two fish lost on the rocks at Conto's earlier in the trip and a long walk along an empty beach in Albany under a postcard sky. "I've been chasing them for three days so far. Not much luck. I've lost two at the rocks at Conto's, and that's about it," the host said, before scoping a stretch of beach with the wind in his face and rigging up a 60 g Halco Twisty modified with a single hook.
The first sign of life was a herring that smashed the metal slug hard enough to be repurposed as bait. "The salmon do love eating herring. I have seen some pretty crazy things while being down here going for salmon, but this is not on," he added, pausing the session to bag up roughly 30 m of mono line dumped on the beach by a previous angler.
The breakthrough came after a relocation to the Salmon Holes area, where a school of West Australian salmon finally exploded onto the shore. "I just spotted a huge school of salmon. Hopefully they're still there. They're hard to see. I saw them break the surface just here," he said, before the entire wave turned black with feeding fish.
What followed was a chaotic multi-fish session, with the host and his partner Chloe doubling and tripling up in the wash. "Whole school came in. I'll get mine up then get yours," he said as the pair rotated lures and herring slabs through the school. The fish came in waves rather than a continuous bite. "They don't do it in drips and drabs, do they? They all come through or nothing."
Beyond the action, the video served as a safety reminder for anglers fishing the Salmon Holes precinct. "The fine for not wearing a life jacket on the rocks is $1,000," the host warned. "Even on a relatively calm day, the waves do creep up. People down the south, there's a lot of lives that have been lost. People just don't expect it. So it's definitely worth wearing a life jacket. Don't risk your life."
The takeaway for shore anglers chasing the West Australian salmon run is that patience and persistence are non-negotiable. "We've waited and waited and waited and all of a sudden they've all just come through," Chloe summarised after the dust settled. "Nearly as big as me." The session ended with the crew releasing fish back into the wash and packing up to make an Airbnb checkout — proof that West Australian salmon, like most beach fisheries, reward the angler who is still on the sand when the school finally arrives.