Poison Creek (Cape Arid)

Poison Creek is 4WD access only, and that is the first thing to settle before anything else on this page. A four-wheel drive is necessary to get down onto the beach, and the department's own line is that road access to the park's campgrounds, Thomas River excepted, suits high-clearance 4WD vehicles with low-range gears only. Once you are on the sand it is hard-packed and easy to travel, which is exactly how the fishery works — you drive the beach until you find the schools. The bay itself sits between Cape Arid and Cape Pasley and is relatively sheltered on a coast that is otherwise brutal, which is why the salmon hold there and why anyone bothers with the road. What the place actually trades in is isolation — no bookings, and no water, fuel or reliable phone to count on.

Get onto the hard sand, run the beach, and look for schools travelling close to shore in the deeper gutters. Metal slugs, sinking stickbaits and poppers are the methods that work on the salmon, with 55g and 70g slices and a large minnow or popper covering most of it. The rock headlands are the other half of the trip and hold reef species including blue groper, which is where the bait changes — octopus for groper and most bottom species, mulies for salmon and mulloway, bluebait for skippy, herring, tailor and snook, and whitebait for skippy, herring and flathead. After dark the same beach turns into a mulloway and herring proposition worked on vibes. Boat anglers run out to Pasley Island for bottom jigging, which is a different trip and a different set of species again.

Australian salmon are the fish this place is known for, with the local report putting them at 2–5kg regularly and averaging 5–8kg through the summer peak, at a 300mm minimum and four a day. Skippy are 250mm with a bag of eight, herring have no size limit and a bag of 20, and tailor are 300mm with a bag of eight of which only two may exceed 500mm. Gummy sharks are on the local list year-round, counted inside the combined sharks and rays daily bag of three, which sits apart from the pelagic bag. Mulloway are single-sourced here and turn up on the night shift, at 500mm and two a day. Western blue groper come off the rock headlands and carry the number people get wrong most often on this coast — 500mm minimum and exactly one fish per day, and it is not a bluebone and not a baldchin. Reef species off the headlands sit inside a South Coast demersal mixed bag of four, with a bonus of four bight redfish, four yelloweye redfish and four swallowtail on top.

Arrive self-sufficient or do not arrive. The department's remote-area instruction for Pine Hill, Mt Ragged and the Thomas Fishery area is to carry camping gear, ample water and non-perishable food, first aid, a tool kit, spare tyres and parts, recovery gear and a CB radio, and none of that is wasted anywhere else in the park either. Check the tide and the weather before driving on the beach rather than after you are committed to it. Camping in Cape Arid is first in, first served with no bookings, so a long weekend is a gamble and a mid-week trip is not. Leave the dog at home — no pets are permitted in the park and 1080 baits are laid throughout it.

A 4WD is necessary to reach the beach at Poison Creek, and the department describes road access to the park's campgrounds, Thomas River excepted, as suitable for high-clearance 4WD vehicles with low-range gears only. Jorndee Creek campground is the nearest camp, reached by a 1.6km soft sand track off Poison Creek Road, with nine sites that are well protected from the wind and offer real privacy. Camping across the park — Yokinup Mia Mia and Belinup in the Thomas River area, plus Thomas Fishery, Seal Creek, Jorndee Creek and Mount Ragged — is non-bookable and first in, first served. Cape Arid National Park charges standard park entry fees, currently $17.00 per standard vehicle carrying 12 or fewer occupants, $8.00 per person for a large vehicle and $10.00 for a motorcycle, with concession rates available and a park pass covering entry. Do not expect drinking water or fuel — carry your own — and the department's remote-area kit of tools, spare parts and recovery gear is sensible practice out here regardless. No dogs or other pets are permitted, and this place is not accessible in any sense of the word.

Poison Creek's value is that it is a relatively sheltered bay on an otherwise exposed coast, tucked in between Cape Arid and Cape Pasley. That shelter is what keeps it fishing when the open beaches east and west are unworkable, and it is why the salmon sit there. The trade-off is that everything around it is open Southern Ocean, and the moment you step onto a headland you are in the conditions that killed a man at Thomas River in March 2024. Swell, not wind, is the decider here. Hard-packed sand makes the beach drivable, but tides and weather have to be checked before any beach driving. Salmon on the far eastern south coast show earlier in the year than they do around Albany, which is the sensible reading behind the locally reported November to February peak.

A fisher died in this park. On Saturday 30 March 2024, just after 2:00pm, a 36-year-old man from Gibson slipped off the rocks while fishing near the mouth of the Thomas River, in Cape Arid National Park about 150km east of Esperance, where he had been fishing with a relative. The full-scale search was suspended on the Sunday afternoon and his body was recovered by a departmental ranger from an extremely difficult position within a rock formation off the coast, reported on 2 April 2024. Thomas River is inside the same park roughly 30km west of here, and the Esperance coast has claimed eighteen lives since 2010. The department warns that coastal risks in this area are significant, and no part of Cape Arid is a gazetted mandatory life-jacket site, so wearing a personal flotation device is advice rather than law and fishing from the beach is the safer option. The isolation is its own hazard — no water or fuel to count on, no reliable phone, no bookings and a 4WD-only road out, and the 2024 recovery took police, State Emergency Service volunteers and departmental staff several days. 1080 baits are laid across the park and are lethal to dogs, which are banned anyway.

Yes. A four-wheel drive is necessary to access the beach at Poison Creek, and the local fishing guide lists the spot simply as 4WD access only. The department's own wording for the campgrounds, Thomas River aside, is high-clearance 4WD with low-range gears only. Once you are down on the beach the sand is hard-packed and easy to travel along.

It is what the place is known for. Poison Creek sits in a relatively sheltered bay between Cape Arid and Cape Pasley and produces salmon reported at 2–5kg regularly, averaging 5–8kg through the local November to February peak. The method is to drive the hard-packed sand until you find schools travelling close to shore in the deeper gutters, then cast metal slugs, sinking stickbaits or poppers at them.

Jorndee Creek campground is the nearest, reached by a 1.6km soft sand track off Poison Creek Road, with nine well-sheltered and private sites. Camping in Cape Arid National Park is first in, first served with no bookings, across six designated areas: Yokinup Mia Mia, Belinup, Thomas Fishery, Seal Creek, Jorndee Creek and Mount Ragged. Do not expect drinking water or fuel, and carry the department's remote-area kit — ample water, food, first aid, tools, spare parts and recovery gear.

Standard park entry fees apply, currently $17.00 for a standard vehicle carrying 12 or fewer occupants, $8.00 per person for a large vehicle carrying more than 12, and $10.00 for a motorcycle, with concession rates available and a park pass covering entry. Camping fees are separate and are not published on the park page. No dogs or other pets are allowed in the park, and 1080 baits are laid throughout it.

South Coast Marine Park zoning comes into operation in late 2026, and Cape Arid falls inside it. About 85 per cent of the mainland coast immediately adjacent to the proposed marine parks stays available for shore-based fishing where recreational fishing has historically happened, and the boundaries of some sanctuary zones have been offset to about 200m from the mainland high water mark, the distance varying with the coastline, so that fishing from and close to shore continues. Read the department's zoning map before a trip; the zoning is what will decide it.