After living in Kalbarri for my whole life I have come to the conclusion that the commercial boat pens in Kalbarri (locally known as the pens) is one of the best fishing spot in Kalbarri in my eyes at least.

The great thing about the pens is the variety of fish that you can catch of them ranging from Black Bream, Cod, Mangrove Jack and pretty much any fish you can think of. Another great thing is that it doesn’t really matter what the tide is doing of what time of day it is you can still catch fish. You can use just about any technique that you like you can fish with soft plastic, hard bodies, dead baits, live baits and any think else you can think of.

One of the best nights fishing down at the pens I have witnessed is during a fishing comp called the mulloway marathon, which fellow team mate Robbie Leck, a mate of ours and his younger brother and I were fishing in, on this night Robbie and our mate Bailey caught 7 sized mulloway ranging from 55cm all the way up to about 90cm all within a few hours of fishing.

Some of the best times to fish at the pens are at night when the tide is highest or at its lowest, during the middle of the day around lunch time can be a good time to catch good sized bream, mangrove jack and a few other species and dawn is also a good time to catch fish like mulloway, bream, tailor and so on.

The gear I use to fish at the Pens is a Shimano Stradic 2500 loaded with 10lbs platypus platinum braided fishing line on a flueger trion 2-4kg rod. Use this to catch bream, mulloway, mullet and other fish. Shimano Stradic 4000 with 40lbs depth braid on a flueger trion 3-6kg rod. I use this to catch cod, jacks, and any other bigger fish that live down there.

The bait I use at the pens: I tend to use cut up pilchards, prawns, and sometimes squid. The pilchards work well for bream, jacks, mulloway, cod and pretty much everything else that lives down there. The prawns work well on bream, jacks, small tailor, mullet and the odd cod.