A day out on Lake Argyle

We got up early and loaded up the car, with much excitement we headed for Lake Argyle for our full day out on the lake in our own hired pontoon. Our pontoon was there ready for us with an esky full of ice, all we had to do was transfer our things from the car and get the dogs on board. There were plenty of places to store things so we did not have everything everywhere. A little instruction from the staff and we were on our way out into this huge lake, we did not have to be back until around 5.30pm.

We were soon out in the open water, the scenery was fantastic and the bird life prolific. It was not long before Jock was itching to do some fishing so we found a nice sheltered spot and Jock sorted himself and Emma out with fishing rods. Well, I don’t even think Jock could have anticipated what came next! Emma squealed with delight as her rod was bending and bobbing, Jock ran across to help her and as he did his rod was bending. Fish everywhere as soon as the rods were put in to the water there was a fish to be pulled in, Emma was so excited but was so funny as she could not bring herself to touch the fish. Mind you just as well as we soon found out, well Jock found out, that these fish have a very long sharp barb.

As the fishing was so good Trevor Michelle and I decided we too should have a go, it was good fun but I just couldn’t handle the fact I was hooking a fish in the mouth just for fun so I caught the one then left it alone. Trevor was the only one that caught a different fish, we are not sure what it was but the ones we were catching were cat fish but up here called Silver cobbler.

We had a really good explore of the lake and enjoyed every minute, fishing was given up after about 110 fish!! Ruby had had the job of kissing the fish before they were put back, Phoebe just enjoyed lazing about and Chloe watched Jock fishing most of the time, all three dogs were loving their day out. We spotted one fresh water crocodile on our travels their would have been plenty more about but we did not see them. At lunch time had some pattis that Michelle had made and some burger rolls, there was a bbq onboard so all we had to do was cook the pattis. Mmm that is if the gas would work!! The men had a look at it and decided it was actually the wrong fitting so there was no way we were getting it to work. Luckily we had our satelite phone with us and we contacted the staff. They were very good and told us to stay put and they would bring another out to us. So lunch was delayed about half an hour whilst we waited and of course we could not move from our position.

Once we had our fitting fixed it was burgers all around. We then headed off into some lovely little coves and decided to head out a bit further. We had to keep our eye on the time to be sure we had plenty of time to get back to base before dark but at the same time we had decided we may aswell stay on the water to watch the sunset. As we tootled about we saw so many birds, trying to get photos of them proved hard because as we approached close enough for a photo they would scatter. The pelicans were the best ones to photograph as they took longer to take off, I got some good ones of those. Wish my camera was set on a faster exposure they would have been excellent.

It was a real shame when we realised we had to start back to the shore, we had time to get there and watch the sunset. We all pondered on our great day, cheaper option to us all going on a morning or afternoon tour of the lake and we had had all day. Something we would never forget, the sunset did not give us the best show but we were very happy with our whole day on Lake Argyle.